How to Win with Alternatives

Ask leaders how they will respond to a crisis or a massive new opportunity, and they often will tell you they already know what to do. This is surprising because most crises and opportunities have unexpected elements. A high-powered executive whom we coach once told us, “In any crisis, I come out of the gate fast and take action. I go over, under, or through any wall in my way. With my people, I lead from the front.” To be sure, that approach has the benefit of decisiveness, but it offers a narrow path, especially in high-stakes situations. What happens when such leaders run into obstacles they can’t muscle their way through?

Another leader we coached had a different approach. He was an incredible delegator with legendary calm. This worked well until a crisis surfaced and his team started feeling lost and overwhelmed. He stayed steady, confident in his default style, telling people, “Don’t worry, I have confidence that you’ll figure it out.” They didn’t figure it out, team members began fighting with one another, and within months the company lost its market-leading position.

In our work coaching and advising senior leaders, we have found that when faced with unfamiliar or risky situations, leaders often rely on their familiar playbook. They act instinctively, falling back on behavior and postures that worked for them before. But should their operating environment experience a discontinuity, reflexes—which may still be right at times—can no longer be counted on. To be effective, leaders need to rise above their default reactions and generate more options for how to act in the very moments when they are needed most.

Few leadership roles come with a treasure map showing a direct line to where X marks the spot. That’s why the ability to generate multiple pathways to a desired destination is crucial to success. Whether it’s chasing a strategy that could drive 10x growth in a business, facing a potentially catastrophic threat, or guiding a team through uncharted territory, great leaders generate options so that when an opportunity arises or a crisis hits, they can pivot in real time and make the optimal move.

Our experience shows that leaders’ success depends on their ability to MOVE—that is, to be mindfully alert to priorities, to generate options so that they always have several ways to win, to validate their own vantage point, and to engage with stakeholders to ensure that they are along for the ride. (We lay out this framework in our book, Real-Time Leadership. To gauge your ability to MOVE, take our self-assessment at RealTimeLeadershipInstitute.com.) In this article, we examine the crucial second step of our model. Specifically, we look at four common leadership approaches and the scenarios in which each can be most helpful, and we introduce a process for navigating the options in real time.

The Four Stances

Dozens of research studies spearheaded by American psychologists Charles “Rick” Snyder and Shane J. Lopez demonstrate how people’s capacity to reach their desired goals can be increased by conceiving multiple possible pathways. Most people assume that success at a task is a question of perseverance or willpower. But Snyder and Lopez show that willpower must be coupled with “way power” to drive successful outcomes. Their research suggests that ideally you will have four or more options or pathways for achieving your goals (external priorities). It also demonstrates the importance of determining who you want to be as a leader in terms of your character strengths and values (internal priorities) and how you can best relate to others (interpersonal priorities).

Building on this work, we have developed an approach, called the “four stances,” to help leaders generate options for interpersonal communication. Think how tennis players nearly instantly shift their stance to make an optimal response to a ball hurtling over the net. The core concept for our approach is rooted in evolutionary psychology and how our basic reflexes (fight, flight, and so on) automatically deploy under dangerous or novel circumstances. In the more evolved world of leadership, the four stances help leaders identify and access more interpersonal options. The stances are:

• Lean In. Take an active stance on resolving an issue. Actions in this stance include deciding, directing, guiding, challenging, and confronting.
• Lean Back. Take an analytical stance to observe, collect, and understand data. Actions include analyzing, asking questions, and possibly delaying decisions.
• Lean With. Take a collaborative stance, focusing on caring and connecting. Actions include empathizing, encouraging, and coaching.
• Don’t Lean.Whereas a Lean Back posture involves observing and analyzing, Don’t Lean is about being still and disciplining yourself to create space for a new solution to bubble up from your subconscious. This stance also serves to calm you if your emotions have been triggered. Actions include contemplating, visualizing, and settling through diaphragmatic breathing. Infographics to convey the essence of the issues at stake.

To win in any leadership moment, great leaders need to develop and be able to access all four stances. To illustrate, let’s consider one of our clients, Isobel, a newly appointed president of a major business line at a tech company.

Isobel was in trouble and called us in. She was at loggerheads with the firm’s mercurial CEO, who had a tendency to be unreliable—contradicting himself, changing positions, and often making promises the company couldn’t deliver on.

“I’m getting a bad reputation for being aggressive at board meetings,” she told us at our first two-on-one coaching session. “I just tell the truth—someone needs to—but I’m the one getting dinged.”

As we talked, we identified a clear gap between her own and others’ perceptions. Leaning In—way in—was her default stance. As a former lawyer, she was a world-class debater, and her impact was far more powerful than she realized. It was clear she needed to overcome her reflexive behavior and find other viable ways to win. We described the four stances and asked her to consider alternatives to her default approach.

“But I need to be authentic,” she countered.

“Of course,” we responded, “but you can use other stances while still being true to yourself.”

We went through the stances one by one. In situations in which Lean In was the best choice, she saw that she could be more skillful by better calibrating the intensity of her remarks. If she could learn to Lean Back and not rush into conflict, she could slow down her reactions and be more strategic about when she would engage. If she applied Don’t Lean, she could take a moment to breathe, which could help her neutralize her activation by the CEO and keep a clear head. We were all surprised that asking about Lean With was what pivoted Isobel into a new way of operating. Drawing on Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson’s groundbreaking work on psychological safety, we asked, “What if your job at the board meeting was to make the CEO and directors feel safe?”

Isobel immediately embraced that approach, which appealed to her protective side. She spontaneously started thinking through the implications. Supporting the CEO would probably help him calm down and make the meetings less painful for everyone. In the Lean With stance, she could also tolerate his contradictions by understanding that his first reaction wasn’t always his final word. She decided that she would enthusiastically support his comments when they were in alignment with the executive committee’s assessment and refrain from reflexively challenging him when he veered off course, unless the board was close to a vote on that recommendation. After adopting this approach, her reputation with the board skyrocketed. She became known as a leader who made peace rather than war.

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