Why Real-Time Leadership Is So Hard

Sometimes when we lead, everything clicks. We initiate changes smoothly, confidently, and compassionately. Other people respond constructively to our efforts, accepting and building on our changes, even if those changes are difficult and complex. Great things are accomplished.

At other times we feel stuck. Nothing seems to resonate. What makes the difference? Writing in HBR nearly 20 years ago, one of us (Robert) argued that what matters most here is our psychological state. When we’re in high-performance mode, we transcend our normal frame of mind and enter what he called the fundamental state of leadership. In it we express our best selves naturally and spontaneously. We venture beyond familiar territory to pursue ambitious goals, embody our highest values, feel true empathy for others, and embrace feedback, learning, and adaptation. (See “Moments of Greatness: Entering the Fundamental State of Leadership,” HBR, July–August 2005.) Others might call this mindset real-time leadership.

For decades we have taught students and clients about this enlightened state and have seen firsthand how individuals accomplish extraordinary things when they enter it. But we’ve also seen self- imposed obstacles prevent people from achieving it. After years of research, we have identified four common stumbling blocks. All four are ways of thinking: The misperceptions that there are no alternatives, that there is no hope, that there is no time, and that there is no need for leadership. These misperceptions can be overcome, however, and in this article we will explain how.

No Alternatives

Habits, formal processes, social norms, biases, punitive reward systems, professional standards, legal regulations, and even a simple lack of experience constrain people’s ability to consider other options. For instance, sometimes when we ask people to come up with ways to exhibit more purpose, integrity, empathy, and curiosity (all hallmarks of the fundamental state of leadership), their answers are just modified descriptions of what they were already planning to do. Take managers who are trying to offset shrinking profit margins, which many try to boost by trimming expenses. When we encourage people to come up with an ambitious purpose in response to the margin problem, many answer that they’ll eliminate expenses even more aggressively. This is the “I’ll just try harder” trap. If they stopped to think about why better margins matter—because, say, they allow the business to grow and create more value for customers—they might see other solutions, such as increasing profits by launching the company’s products in new markets.

Similarly, an industrial engineer who is implementing a new manufacturing process may interpret “leading with empathy” as taking more time to explain the new process rather than as listening deeply, seeking to understand, and treating employees as ends in themselves rather than as a means to implement the process. These professionals suffer from something akin to “functional fixedness”—the bias that limits a person to using an object only in the way it’s traditionally used (for instance, not realizing that a book could serve as a doorstop).

Often people need to adopt new perspectives to break free of this mental trap. Asking the following questions can help:

• When have people made exceptions to processes or norms in the past?
• Who might be willing to try something different here?
• What organizations handle the situation we’re in differently?
• What could we do that would mitigate people’s concerns while trying new things?
• How might this situation be like another, unrelated situation?

To understand the power of such probing, let’s look at a case involving a department chair we advised. Tasked with leading within a health care system that was heavy with constraints, the chair frequently found it challenging to see beyond the organization’s established norms. One was an emphasis on hiring doctors with top-tier medical and academic achievements. When his department was down to two candidates for a position, the internal debate was clear. One finalist had more impressive academic laurels, while the other demonstrated stronger teamwork skills. It seemed inevitable that the candidate with the strong credentials would be selected.

In that moment the chair asked himself questions similar to the ones we just listed. Guided by the introspection they prompted, he posed a crucial question to the selection committee: “If we prioritize teamwork as a core value, which candidate truly aligns?” That caused the committee members to stop and reconsider their inherent biases. They chose the team player, signaling a significant shift in the department’s hiring principles, which ultimately cascaded into a broader cultural transformation.

No Hope

A particularly insidious obstacle hindering real-time leadership is defeatism. This isn’t about limited perspectives or narrow thinking. It’s about feeling paralyzed, like a deer caught in the head­lights, daunted by seemingly insurmountable challenges. When individuals feel they’re facing inevitable defeat, leading with vision and courage becomes particularly hard.

For instance, when a young marketing executive suggested a groundbreaking campaign to her team, the idea was quickly shut down by senior management. Months later a rival company launched a similar campaign to great success. The executive, having seen her idea dismissed only to be validated externally, became overwhelmed by pessimism and reluctant to propose innovative solutions again.

When you think there is no hope, try these practices:

Review past successes.

We encourage people to ask themselves, “When have I seen or experienced excellence in similar situations?” Look in adjacent or even unrelated fields to see if there is opportunity for success even in the face of seemingly intractable challenges. For example, one manager we worked with, who was struggling to improve the work of a team that processed millions of HR transactions with an extremely limited budget, realized that the answer lay in adopting agile methodologies that technology departments were using to increase the volume and quality of their work on compressed timelines.

Set learning goals.

Sometimes what makes challenges seem daunting are our own expectations. However, if we set a goal of learning how to address a challenge well rather than of succeeding spectacularly on our first try, we allow ourselves to grow and to see small failures as acceptable along the way.

Involve others.

We also suggest people ask, “Who can help me deal with this challenge?” Sharing feelings of despondency often brings fresh viewpoints and avenues for solutions. Sometimes the simple act of vocalizing fears can lead to unforeseen answers to problems.

Break the challenge into smaller parts.

Facing a behemoth task head-on can be overwhelming. Segmenting it into manageable tasks not only makes it less intimidating but also can lead to multiple small wins, boosting morale.

After a decade of successful funding rounds, the CEO of one start-up faced a crisis when a crucial investment fell through. Having overextended itself by hiring a lot of people and investing heavily in R&D, the company was close to bankruptcy. In despair the CEO confided in a colleague about possibly shutting down. Both were initially despondent, but the colleague’s offer to restructure his pay sparked a conversation about other potential solutions. While one person’s sacrifice wasn’t enough to solve the problem, the suggestion helped break it into smaller parts and generated other ideas about how to lead in this moment. These ideas required buy-in and sacrifice from many employees, but they provided a glimmer of hope. At a leadership meeting several other team members expressed a willingness to make personal sacrifices too. This shared commitment galvanized the entire company, allowing it to weather the crisis.

No Time

Exceptional leadership usually requires an increase in up-front effort and preparation, which people often feel they don’t have time for. So instead they end up in reactive mode. Though we are all time-constrained, we can find solutions to that challenge by asking:

Which people or processes might I put more trust in?

One reason we feel overloaded is that we lack confidence in people or processes that, if we relied on them, could reduce bureaucracy, political protectionism, transaction costs, coordination costs, and so forth. Moving from distrust to trust also frees up mental space and changes how we perceive the organization, opening us to new ideas. Of course, we should trust wisely, but trusting others is one way to lead in real time.

How might I fix organizational inefficiencies?

Tackling this task instead of just trying to get work done will help you make the most of your limited time. We have found that if we examine managers’ deluge of tasks and meetings more closely, there are often wasteful practices in the systems and processes involved. Many tasks and meetings can be streamlined or even eliminated entirely.

How might I surface and address the activities most fraught with conflict first?

A common indicator of inefficiencies in organizational systems and processes is conflict. Leading in real time often involves confronting it rather than pushing through it, dominating it, or avoiding it. One approach, then, is to list projects or tasks that are most fraught with potential conflict—both internal and interpersonal—and then prioritize addressing them. This takes more time up front but usually saves a lot of time over the life of a project.

Sometimes people don’t see any need for leadership because they’re doing a task that doesn’t involve social interaction. But it’s possible to lead people even when they’re not present.

A manager at a sports entertainment company was tasked with overseeing summer camps involving various sports. Fitting this work into her schedule was a challenge, given her many other responsibilities. But the sports departments were overloaded too and highly resistant to spending any time on the camps themselves, even though they really needed to coordinate their use of shared facilities and help manage the campers’ safety.

With summer looming, the manager began highlighting inefficiencies in the camp processes, despite fears that her work might uncover redundancies and lead to job losses. She simplified the processes, encouraged collaboration, wrote a manual, and trained the staff with it. Among her improvements she set up automated systems and data collection for the departments, which could help reduce the time they invested in camps further. The result? She freed up time for everyone, earned the trust of her colleagues in the sports departments, and helped shift them from seeing threats to recognizing opportunities.

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No Need

Sometimes people don’t see any need for leadership because they’re doing a task that doesn’t involve social interaction. Alternatively, they may see no need to lead because they like the status quo. In such situations we try to help them expand their vision. Leadership may not be required, but it could still make these situations better. Thus we might ask them the following:

Who cares about the work you’re doing, and what could you do to inspire those people?

When we are analyzing data, writing a report, or doing other individual work, it’s easy to assume that there is no need to lead. However, it’s possible to lead people even when they’re not present. Individual work has impact. If we put our best into it, its beneficiaries become more likely to adopt, use, and appreciate the fruits of our labor, and our fellow professionals are more apt to admire and adopt our approaches.

Consider an accountant, Lisa, who sends out monthly financial summaries in dense reports. One month she decides to include a concise infographic highlighting key points. Soon departments that previously skimmed her emails begin actively engaging with her insights, using them more effectively in their planning and decision-making.

How could you transform this from good to great?

In many situations the usual approaches are perfectly adequate. Why engage in the extra effort to lead if there are no problems? Because often good situations can be made even better. When we’ve persuaded people to do the work needed to make good things great, they’re frequently surprised by how much more they prefer great—and wonder why they’d been content with good. People who believe that they can and should improve their organizations see more opportunities and have more impact.

Ray Anderson, the late CEO of Interface, a carpet tile company, once faced a challenge from a customer questioning the company’s environmental practices. Its products met all environmental regulations, and on the surface, Anderson had no need to push the company to do more. But the customer’s question prompted deeper introspection. An employee-led task force was created. At first resistant to its findings, Anderson dove into environmental literature. Inspired by a book detailing the environmental pitfalls of traditional business practices, he pivoted Interface toward sustainability, convinced that good was not good enough. Eventually Interface achieved carbon neutrality and pioneered sustainable products and processes that increased its profits. Anderson’s story illustrates that leadership is not just about meeting standards but about transcending them.

. . .

Leadership is fundamentally about unleashing potential: both your own and that of the people who follow you. In our experience people tend to leave much of the potential in their organizations untapped because of erroneous beliefs that they have no alternatives, no hope, no time, and no need. These perceptions are rooted in fear and a focus on what people lack. A person who can challenge those notions and resist fear, however, can enter the fundamental state of leadership and bring about tremendous positive change.