Letting go of our reactivity is the hardest leadership lesson

Drs. Joel C. Small and Edwin McDonald discuss ways to control reactive tendencies

Finding and bringing forth the leader that resides within each of us is an amazing and uniquely personal experience. Those of us who have experienced this amazing transformation understand that mitigating our reactive tendencies is the right of passage and must precede our personal and professional leadership transformation. Without this essential first step, our leadership development becomes difficult; often impossible.

Bob Anderson, the founder of the Leadership Circle, researcher, and author of numerous leadership books, describes two competing aspects of effective leadership. Creative competencies are the eighteen leadership characteristics that have a high correlation with effective leadership. Reactive tendencies are the eleven characteristics that correlate negatively with effective leadership. The reactive tendencies and creative competencies have an inverse relationship. For example, the greater the reactive tendencies, the less the creative competencies, and consequently the more our leadership effectiveness is diminished.

Anderson’s findings indicated that most human beings are hard wired to be reactive. Given this finding, our leadership development must begin by overcoming our inherent reactive tendencies so that our creative competencies can flourish. This can be a daunting task, especially when we realize that our reactive tendencies are subconscious, habitual, and the manifestations of previous life experiences that are deeply engrained within our psyche and create the lens through which we view the world. They are the stories that continuously play in our subconscious background and dictate our thoughts and actions.

Unless we mitigate and/or reframe these tendencies, our attempts at becoming a transformational leader are rendered ineffective. There is a prevailing theory that we can never reach our full leadership potential if our attempts at generating creative competencies, or any positive change, are in competition with an underlying narrative that does not support our efforts. Our subconscious reactive narratives are powerful negative forces that can easily foil any attempt at positive change.

Furthermore, and even more concerning, is the fact that these subconscious reactive tendencies and narratives have served as a psychological protective mechanism that shields us from vulnerability. Thus, in order to bring forth our innate leadership capabilities, we must consciously let go of them and expose ourselves to a degree of vulnerability that we have been avoiding our entire life.

Once our unconscious and habitual reactive tendencies are identified and brought to a conscious level, we can begin a process of mitigating these tendencies and their negative impact on how we show up for those we lead. Carl Jung stated this most eloquently in this famous quote:

“Until we make the unconscious conscious, it will rule our life, and we will call it fate.”

According to Viktor Frankl, the Austrian psychologist and Nazi concentration camp survivor, there is a space between stimulus and response, and within that space is our choice to respond. Having brought our unconscious reactive tendencies to a conscious level allows us to substitute a different and more appropriate response than the habitual knee jerk responses that are driven by our underlying reactive tendencies and negative narratives. It is in this very brief moment between stimulus and response that our leadership is defined and either flourishes or flounders.

Currently there are several useful assessments designed to increase our awareness of our reactive tendencies as well as our creative competencies. Line of Sight Coaching’s Leadership Circle Profile 360 assessment is simple, yet it delivers a clear and powerful picture of how someone is showing up for those they lead and pinpoints those areas of needed improvement.

Letting go of our life-long reactive tendencies and engrained narratives is difficult and may require the help of a coach who collaborates with developing new leaders.