Present Moment Leadership

What does this moment ask of me as a leader?

Leadership situations rarely remain stable. Present Moment Leadership helps leaders interpret what a situation requires and calibrate how they express empathy, competence, and agility. Rather than prescribing a fixed style, PML offers a practical way to respond with greater range and precision as circumstances change.

Explore the framework:

The Center for Innovative Leadership draws its philosophy from the research and scholarship of Center co-founders Michael Doyle and Christopher Myers. Doyle and Myers developed Present Moment Leadership (PML) based on careful review of existing research and consideration of the challenges facing leaders at all levels in today’s world of work.

Building on decades of scholarship in behavioral and situational theories of leadership, Present Moment Leadership focuses on leadership as the moment-to-moment enactment of differing levels of three interrelated dimensions: Empathy, Competence, and Agility.

• Organizations are more interdependent and collaborative than ever before, and leaders who engage others with empathy are often those best positioned to bring together the diverse experiences, insights, and expertise needed to generate innovative solutions.
• As the world of work grows in complexity, building competence in emerging knowledge domains, as well as core business fundamentals, is necessary to keep pace and guide organizations to innovative solutions.
• Leading modern organizations requires agility and a readiness for change, understanding when to let go of old habits and embrace new ideas, and how to flexibly navigate new challenges and innovations.

Ultimately, the PML model reveals that effective leaders are those who can:

1. Actively diagnose the needs of the current moment and
2. Deploy the right combination of empathy, competence, and agility to meet those needs.

Every moment – whether working with a new team, facing an unexpected challenge, or taking over an existing project – presents leaders with a different set of needs, and the most effective leaders find innovative ways to combine the right amount of empathy for others, the right extent of their own skills and competence, and the right degree of agility and willingness to embrace different approaches.

Want to learn more?

Leaders often have to act before a situation is fully clear. A team may need direction even as new information calls an earlier decision into question. CIL’s Present Moment Leadership white paper helps leaders examine choices like these through a guiding question: What does this moment ask of me as a leader?

For practitioners and researchers, the white paper provides a shared language for considering why a response that works in one setting may fall short in another. It explores the habits leaders bring to their work, the signals they might miss, and the choices available when they pause to take stock.

Access the white paper