Earlier this month my wife Tammy completed registered and submitted her first full-length screenplay (It’s fabulous by the way and will get made!). I feel blessed to have been able to bear witness to the process that went into the story’s unfolding. And, being a huge movie fan – I regularly use the medium during leadership facilitations – I get a convenient excuse to write this article! Screenwriting, I vicariously learned, is an extremely structured process. Central to any story are turning points that the main character must face and decisions they must make along their journey. A film’s characters, like an organization’s leaders, are given the opportunity to grow, stagnate, succeed, fail, be forever changed or not, as a result of their actions and behaviors. Screenwriters call this process the “character arc.”
The process that leaders engage in is quite similar to that of a film’s main character. Let’s call this our “leadership arc.” Like main characters, leaders don’t necessarily grow or become better simply by having opportunities to do so. Many main characters, like some leaders, do not change or evolve over time despite opportunities or compelling facts that invite them to do so. Here is a look at the opportunities or “major turning points” that a film’s lead character encounters along his or her journey and the leadership applications that approximate them.
TURNING POINT #1: The Opportunity – A new, visible desire or goal that starts the character on his or her journey.
Leadership Application: Developing Opportunity Readiness
Opportunities come to us in many forms, including promotions to positions of increasing authority. At each new level we face “leadership crossroads.” Each crossroad brings with it unique challenges that are bigger in scope and complexity than those previously faced. I encourage leaders who are engaged in transitions to begin by simply listing all the ways in which the new opportunity is different from what they have been called upon to do in the past. Then, using the list as a pre-cursor, we can conduct a “gap analysis” between existing and desired skills, actions, and behaviors needed to make the new opportunity successful.
TURNING POINT #2: The Change of Plans – A significant “happening” that forces the lead character to make decisions that will test or transform his or her original desire into a specific, visible goal with a clearly defined end-point.
Leadership Application: Recognizing that the Landscape has Irrevocably Changed
How often are we asked to change an original plan due to forces at least partially beyond our control? Companies are sold, key employees quit, your company acquires another company, fill in the blank with the myriad of your own real-life examples. In the movie Apollo 13, the audience sees the pain on Tom Hanks’ face as his character, astronaut Jim Lovell, realizes the spaceship he is commanding has endured too much damage to fulfill its mission. At one point he looks at his crew and says, “Gentlemen, we just lost the moon.” As leaders, we, too, sometimes “lose the moon,” but that doesn’t mean we grasp our situation with Jim Lovell’s clarity. Indeed, leaders often cling to the original plan or way things were far too long, because that’s what human are “wired” to do. As William Bridges puts it, “cars start, but people begin” when facing changing conditions. And, recognizing that a new beginning needs to happen takes time. The faster we learn the skills needed to adapt to the changing leadership landscape, the better we will be able to lead others on the new mission.
TURNING POINT #3: The Point of No Return: The moment a character realizes they no longer have the option of “turning back” and must fully commit to the new goal or reality.
Leadership Application – “All the World’s a Stage” When You’re a Leader
We watch our leaders constantly. We use their reactions as a gauge to determine whether the situations we face are as dire, uncertain, or loaded with potential opportunity as we think they are. Your reactions and behaviors, particularly early on in your tenure in a new position or when leading a new effort, set the stage for your leadership “story’s” eventual outcome.
TURNING POINT #4: The Major Setback – The point where all seems lost.
Leadership Application – Using Situational Awareness to Create Opportunity
Executives are regularly hired for their abilities as “turnaround” specialists. Skills that the best crisis managers exemplify include handling bad news with grace, confronting the current situation for what it is, and remaining confident that a “win” or turnaround will happen. Bill Marcello, a great leader and even better man and friend, whom we lost to a rare illness this past year, exemplified these skills.
Bill was the former CEO of Southwestern Community Services (SCS), a New Hampshire-based not-for-profit organization serving lower-income people and families. When a deadly flood hit the area served by SCS in 2005, Bill and his team knew they had no time to waste in serving their community. As usual in SCS’ operating environment, how this could be achieved and whether there would be external funding were unknown. Enter the concept of “flood capital,” a term coined by Bill himself. It was common practice under Bill’s leadership to plan for and influence potential opportunities before the organization had them so that they would be ready to take action as soon as feasible. By being ready in advance and urging his team to look at the situation as an opportunity to make well-planned, positive, and sustainable changes, Marcello influenced his organization’s ability to get funding and help hundreds of people in their darkest hours.
NOTE: As King “Harry” in a film adaptation of Shakespeare’s Henry V, Kenneth Branagh uses situational awareness in its fullest sense to prepare his demoralized and greatly outnumbered troops into the battle of Agincourt during the “The Saint Crispin’s Day speech.” As history tells us, the British prevailed at Agincourt! Here is a link to the speech.
TURNING POINT #5: The Outcome.
So many possible outcomes for the teams and companies we lead! And, ALL are contingent upon the decisions made during key moments in our careers, not at all unlike the turning points that make up a lead character’s arc. So, what will be your leadership arc?