Leveraging Adaption and Innovation Preferences in Extension Work
Leadership and Administrative Skills
Matt Spindler
Urbana
Abstract
For a long time now, we have searched for ideal leaders who can be guaranteed to solve specific arrays of problems. However, leaders cannot hope to solve increasingly complicated and difficult problems by themselves. As the world becomes more complex, leaders need teams to work together to create and implement solutions to pressing challenges.
When teams come together a level cognitive diversity arises as a result of the differences that each individual brings to the cooperative process. Research has demonstrated that in cooperative processes the cognitive diversity that exists within a team is a relevant variable (Jablokow, Teerlink, Yimalz, Daly, Silk, 2015). Research further demonstrates that one source of cognitive diversity emerges as a result of variations in how people prefer to solve problems and deal with change. Adaption-Innovation (AI) theory asserts that the problem solving preferences of individuals range along a continuous spectrum ranging between highly adaptive to highly innovative, with mild and moderate degrees of those preferences in between (Jablokow, Teerlink, Yimalz, Daly, Silk, 2015).
AI theory indicates that individuals who have more adaptive problem solving and change preferences, in general, prefer more structure and focus on incremental improvements by generating solutions that fit within prevailing paradigms (Silk, Daly, Jablokow, Yimaz, Berg, 2014). Conversely, individuals who have more innovative problem solving and change preferences, prefer less structure and are more likely to generate ideas that don’t fit within established boundaries or structures. In practice, neither a more adaptive nor a more innovative style preference is inherently better. In fact, AI theory predicts that effective teams need a sufficient level of diversity to function well across a range of tasks and challenges. Improving abilities of practitioners, researchers, and leaders to differentiate, appreciate, and negotiate individual and team based cognitive gaps is a step towards creating a stronger more engaged learning system. The purposes of this professional development session are to: 1) help participants development an awareness of adaption-innovation theory as it relates to personal problem-solving style and building sustainable high functioning teams and 2) illustrate basic guidelines for identifying and interpreting cognitive gaps within interdisciplinary teams.
Authors: Matt Spindler
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Matt Spindler Evaluation Specialist, University of Illinois Extension, Illinois, 61801