n sports, coaches and commentators like to talk of big-game players, those who can rise above the pressure and the stress in the crucial games to make the right pass, select the correct shot or simply stay cool when others are losing their heads. Those qualities have never been in such demand in life in general. Whether they are running a business, the head of a school or in charge of a public-sector organization, today’s leaders constantly seem to be facing challenges from all sorts of directions, many of them unexpected and turning up out of the blue.
It is probably not a coincidence that executive coaching is in increasingly high demand. And two of those ranked among the best in the world at this, David Noble and Carol Kauffman, have collaborated on a book that aims to address just this issue. In Real-Time Leadership, they point out that getting your leadership right in high-stakes, high-risk situations “could be the difference between winning and losing; between the company surviving and perishing; between your career accelerating and faltering.”
Based on years of experience and research they have developed a methodology that, again, has echoes of sports. It is often remarked that the most talented athletes seem to have more time and space in which to play than their rivals. And so Noble and Kauffman stress that their framework helps create the space between “the challenges that are thrown at you and how you react.” Fittingly perhaps, it is called MOVE.
M is Be Mindfully Alert. This means leaders finding the space to be attuned to the Three Dimensions of Leadership (external, internal and interpersonal) so that they are clear about their high-priority goals, which character strengths and skills they want to develop as leaders and how best they can relate to others in order to achieve their goals.
O is Generate Options. Knowing what to do must be followed by thinking through how to do it. And this means generating options for moving forward. Doing this requires adopting four different approaches. The first is leaning in, or taking an active stance to resolve an issue. The second is leaning back, or taking an analytical stance in order to observe, collect and understand the relevant data. The third is leaning with, or collaborating with others with a focus on creating the best culture. Finally, there is not leaning, or just being still and taking in everything.
V is Validate Your Vantage Point. It is all very well having a plan, but an effective leader needs to make sure that they are not just presenting things from their own point of view. For example, if a CEO tries to win over his or her board to a strategy simply by overpowering them with information he or she is probably less likely to succeed than if they looked at the question from their point of view and answered the questions they most wanted the answers to.
E is for Engage and Effect Change. At the core of this is the notion of sending “leadership signals.” Noble and Kauffman say that it is not enough for a leader to set out his or her vision or intent, although that is clearly important. Even when it looks like the organization is in alignment, it is vital that the leader has systems in place to pick up on how leadership signals are being received and to make any corrections if required. “We’ve found that leaders can have difficulty calibrating the strength of their signals, often sending weak signals that leave their team in doubt about how to proceed or intruding on their team’s decision making by sending overpowering signals,” they write.
Some might find some of the mindfulness and exhortations to strive to be extraordinary in this book a little much — although such thinking is more in vogue now. But that should not detract from the strong mix of the practical and the inspirational. And there is certainly a case to be made for leaders to examine their actions with a view to understanding why they have perhaps not always achieved the success they felt they deserved. Just as powerful is the recommendation by Noble and Kauffman that leaders apply the MOVE framework to situations where things went well as a key to understanding why.
Above all, the authors urge leaders to realize that being extraordinary is about a lot more than their achievements. It is about their values and purpose and the extent to which they can apply that to their lives outside and after their careers have ended. Top leaders, like elite athletes, have a sense of what really matters to them, they write, and when it’s time for them to leave their current occupations, “they see it as stepping up, not dropping out.” But they stress that this does not happen without effort. And they might add that knowing when to move on is also a skill that not all leaders or athletes exhibit.
