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The Adaptive Leadership style is a follower-centered approach that focuses on the leader and followers ability to adapt to change. While the name of this approach, adaptive leadership makes one think that it is concerned with how leaders adapt, it is actually more about the adaption of followers. Originally developed by Heifetz (1994), adaptive leadership conceptualizes the leader not as one who solves problems for people but rather as one who encourages others to do the problem solving.

Adaptive Leadership is a purposeful leadership style that supports the acclimation of leaders, subordinates and organizations to flourish in various circumstances. Adaptive leaders are self-aware, performance motivated and usually have significant emotional intelligence. These attributes enable adaptive leaders to assign the right tasks to the right people and provide resources for professional development. They take decisive action, rarely doing so in a reactive manner without considering all possible outcomes.

Virtual organizations are not new and many organizations have relied on this model to operate effectively in a global market. Educational institutions, especially, have been operating virtually through the provision of online courses for quite a while, and have even offered a menu of ways that students can access their education- through the traditional classroom, virtually or a hybrid of the two.

Dr. Joel B. Goodin, Assistant Professor, School of Social and Behavioral Sciences

To teach, obviously, is to impart knowledge. Knowledge is often held by the more privileged in society —those who have had higher socio-economic family environments… those who have been able to afford more education… those who have cultural capital. Knowledge is indeed power.