Ordinary Moments That Shape How We Lead
I was halfway through writing an email when I realized I was trying to accomplish two things at once. I wanted to be clear about what I would and wouldn’t take on. But I also wanted her to see what I had already decided: she had created the problem and was trying to hand it to me.
The first was a boundary. The second had a little payback in it.
I had been in a conversation with a colleague who had a lot of ideas about what could happen next. As we talked, I became less sure what kind of conversation we were having. Were we brainstorming? Were we deciding something together? Or was I being asked to take something on? I couldn’t quite tell.
What I could tell was that my mind had already raced several steps ahead. I could see the work the idea would require, the questions that hadn’t been answered, the decisions someone would need to make. And I could already see myself becoming the person doing the work.
So I began to write an email. I would clarify what I was willing to do, explain what wasn’t mine to carry, point out what needed to happen next. It was a good email. Clear, reasonable, probably even helpful.
And I was irritated.
That was what made me stop. Not because I suddenly thought I was wrong. I honestly didn’t know whether I was wrong. That was more interesting. Somewhere in the space of a few minutes, I’m not sure what she’s asking of me had become I know what’s happening here, which had become I need to do something about it. Those can feel like a single thought. They aren’t.
Reactivity has a plan
In August’s Inner Compass, “What Judgment Knows,” I wondered what might happen if I got curious about judgment instead of trying to get rid of it. Lately, I’ve been wondering the same thing about reactivity.
By reactivity, I don’t mean having a strong feeling or responding quickly. I mean those moments when an interpretation begins to feel like an instruction. Someone doesn’t understand me? Explain. Something isn’t getting done? Take over. Someone is struggling? Rescue. Something feels unfair? Defend. I’m not feeling valued? Withdraw.
Reactivity is remarkably efficient. Problem identified. Solution proposed. No meeting required. And I have my favorites. I can take over, resent having to take over, and then wonder why everyone keeps expecting me to take over, all in the same afternoon.
I can also explain well past the point when explaining is useful. I’m articulate. I can find another way to say something, then another, then a particularly elegant third version that will surely, finally, help the other person see what I see.
This is where reactivity gets interesting: the behaviors it reaches for aren’t necessarily my weaknesses. They may be my strengths. They can feel like competence. Responsibility. Helpfulness. Clarity.
For me, reactivity often feels like certainty: Obviously. Clearly. Someone needs to. My reaction contained both a judgment and an instruction. They arrived so close together that I experienced them as one thing: I see what’s happening, therefore I know what to do.
What’s the verb?
I used to think the work was learning not to react. Now I’m suspicious of that idea too. The problem isn’t that my reaction has a point. The problem is that it also has a plan. So I’ve started listening for the verb.
When I notice that familiar charge—the argument I’m rehearsing, the problem I’m already halfway toward solving—I get curious about what comes next. What does my reactivity want me to do? I don’t tell myself to calm down. I listen for the verb. Something small happens when I find it: I need to explain becomes I want to explain. I have to fix this becomes I want to fix this. Someone needs to take over becomes I want to take over.
The situation hasn’t changed. I haven’t necessarily changed my mind. But inevitability has become a possibility. The verb doesn’t tell me whether I’m right, and it doesn’t tell me what to do next. It simply makes my preferred response easier to see.
I sent the email
Just not the one I had been writing. I let the first one sit. Later, I came back to it and discovered something mildly irritating: I still agreed with myself. I still didn’t want to take on work that wasn’t mine. But now I could see that part of the problem was simpler than the story I had been telling myself. I didn’t actually know what was being asked of me.
So instead of trying to correct the whole situation, I got clearer about my own participation: what I was willing to do and what I wasn’t. The email I eventually sent wasn’t dramatically different. I wasn’t dramatically different either. I was still irritated. I still had preferences about how things should go.
But I no longer needed the email to do quite so much for me. I didn’t need it to make the other person see what I saw. I didn’t need one communication to settle what her intentions were. I didn’t need it to correct the whole situation.
I just needed it to say what I would and would not do.
The trouble with our strengths
This is what makes some forms of reactivity so difficult to give up: they work. Being able to see what needs to happen has served me well. So has stepping in. So has explaining. So has taking responsibility. People reward these things. Organizations reward them. Sometimes they’re exactly what leadership requires, which makes the question more complicated than How do I stop being reactive?
I don’t want to stop seeing what others miss. I don’t want to become less responsible or less willing to act. I don’t want to distrust my own judgment every time I have a strong reaction. I want to know when a strength has stopped being something I’m using and has started using me.
Sometimes I catch myself before I act. Sometimes after. Sometimes not at all. But now and then, when that familiar certainty rises—the point I need to make, the email I need to send, the thing I apparently need to fix—I hear the verb. Explain.
And something that felt necessary a moment ago becomes visible as something I want to do. Sometimes I still do it. But it no longer feels quite so inevitable.
