Real Time Leadership Development

Citation

Tremaine, M. (2010), "Real Time Leadership Development", Gender in Management, Vol. 25 No. 2, pp. 157-159. https://doi.org/10.1108/17542411011026311

Real Time Leadership Development meets several of my criteria for a worthwhile book. It has a message, it is written with energy and enthusiasm – and it has a mission. First, the message. Yost and Plunkett are firmly of the view that leadership development is unlikely to happen at any of the many courses held to explain the arcane mysteries of developing one's leadership potential. They consider that leadership happens in “real time”, that is in the cauldron of immediate crisis on the job, when others are looking to you to “do something” – and consulting a textbook, or filling the whiteboard with a theoretical model is not what they have in mind.

They have written this book to help people in leadership positions use the challenges that inevitably happen in organisations to develop leadership then and there, as part of solving the problem. Not only does this change the whole approach to how best to go about helping people become more confident and aware of what leadership requires, it can even make you enthusiastic about the opportunities problems and issues provide for leadership development. However, the downside is that the burden of “real time” leadership falls on all those in leadership positions to recognise opportunities and exploit their development potential. In many ways, the assumption that leadership development happened at courses away from the workplace had the virtue of relieving managers of a complex and demanding set of responsibilities in situations where there are often no easy answers.

The real‐time approach also highlights further flaws in the micromanager's inefficient practice of personal surveillance and revision of even the most minor tasks. If you agree with Yost and Plunkett's point‐of‐view, the micromanager's reluctance to let others have leadership opportunities will inevitably limit their growth. Should you not agree with Yost and Plunkett, it will not be because they lack energy and enthusiasm in explaining their perspective and giving examples of the way real‐time leadership can work. Some books of this type and indeed some in this series called “Talent Management Essentials” are written as if from a distance in ponderous passives with authors well‐hidden from view in a way that induces a yawn per paragraph at the very least. In this case, the commitment of the authors makes a huge difference.

Their commitment is obviously because they believe so strongly in real‐time leadership, but it is also because they want to communicate across the practitioner/researcher divide and show practitioners ways that knowledge gained from research can be built into leadership development on the job. From its inception, Gender in Management: An International Journal has had a similar desire in its approach to its readership, to publish research‐based papers that both academic researchers and management practitioners can gain value from and create a site for dialogue where theory and practice meet. That shared mission gave me a further reason beyond the relevance and interest of the book to select it for review.

Any discussion about leadership, however, needs to acknowledge the slippery nature of the leadership concept. All too often those writing about leadership tend to slide from one meaning of leadership to another without seeming to recognise or acknowledge that they are muddling completely different understandings of leadership. Although many others have made this point and isolated two or three separate meanings, Grint (2005) does a particularly thorough exposition in his book, Leadership: Limits and Possibilities when he distinguishes leadership as a person, a position, a process or results.

Yost and Plunkett are dealing with leadership as a position within an organisation, a position held by a person with the responsibility to lead others – rather than merely manage – when situations are encountered which are outside mainstream policies that can be routinely followed. The authors have a clear, simple cyclic model of the foundations of leadership development that centres on business strategy “which is always the place to begin” (p. 4). In the model, relationships (the breadth and depth of the relationships that develop leaders) lead in two directions – to experiences (the real classroom where leaders develop and grow) and to competencies (the knowledge, skills and capabilities required to lead). The model also shows that experiences as well as relationships are linked to the building of competencies.

Using research work published on leadership competencies to guide their description of the process, the book's authors explain the importance of creating a framework that can be used in an organisation for “aspiring leaders […] to strategically guide their own development” (p. 22) since they need to understand leadership and the relevant factors within their own situations, so they can develop themselves. After all, even if it were desirable, it would not be possible for the human resources director to be guiding each of them every step of the way. The coherence and usefulness of the self‐development framework comes from its connections to the leadership development model. In this way, the first four chapters of the book link experiences, relationships and competencies, then integrate them with a leadership self‐development framework so that the relationships between theory and practice are explained.

The groundwork of the book has been accomplished in these first chapters and then it is possible to move on to more exciting territory, looking at ways challenging assignments can develop managers. The next group of chapters deal with topics such as: stepping into the unknown, stretch assignments, navigating the experiences, real‐time reflection and when leaders derail. In the daily reflection section, Yost and Plunkett cite Chris Argyris, Professor Emeritus at the Harvard Business School and his concept of “double‐loop learning”, which is the notion that ideally, in solving a specific problem as a manager, the opportunity should be used to think about how the solution could be generalised to help solve other potential problems in the future. Through this process the authors explain, reflection can be built into the way that leaders deal with the here and now. Naval‐gazing in a vague, directionless way and large periods of time for contemplative mediation are not required for reflective practice.

Yost and Plunkett also show that it is possible to build reflection into the day's routine by giving readers examples of daily reflection questions they can ask themselves in the morning and at the end of the day as reminders to build reflection into everything they do. In this way, those who read the book are not simply told that reflection is critical for leadership. With reflection, as with other aspects of leadership development, they are told what, why and how: what is important, why it is important and how to use it.

If you are still reading, by this stage of the review you may well be thinking that you have discovered the ideal book for plotting leadership development within your own organisation, but it is only fair to warn you that there is one aspect of this book which is extremely frustrating. When the authors quote a particular research idea and they want to indicate that they are drawing on a specific source, they put a number in the text which refers you to notes under chapter headings at the end of the book. However, these notes then give you only the authors' names and the year of publication. You have to look for the full reference in the list of references and you are not given page numbers.

Presumably, Yost and Plunkett do not want their writing to be weighed down with references in the way of so many academic texts. Nevertheless, if a reader has turned to the endnotes for the chapter to find out more, it seems only fair to give a page number rather than abandon any sense of responsibility and leave the searcher to read another whole book or article, perhaps fruitlessly, to find out more. After all, a busy executive is just as likely to find it infuriating to hunt through a haystack of words for a needle of information as a busy academic.