Issue 4 July 15, 2008
Step Back From Reactivity
Wait until you’re thinking clearly and know what you want to achieve, before acting, especially if you’re agitated or upset.
All too often, the ready, shoot, aim performance style prevails. The tendency to take action when you’re not really clear, can lead to untold confusion and wasted resources. The amount of time and energy it takes to clean up the resulting mess is also highly unrewarding for everyone involved.
You can prevent much misfiring, by learning how to disrupt habitual reactive patterns. Your reactions are reflexive and often unconsciously motivated tendencies. They need to be regulated. You can do this by pausing long enough to notice that you are indeed reacting and that the reaction is limiting both your range of vision and your ability to respond.
After you settle yourself down and get some objectivity, you’ll be able to see more clearly. This allows you to remember and focus on what’s really important overall and what you’re trying to achieve overall. Others will also welcome well-considered action rather that the often un-smart, un-kind actions that come from reactivity. As a result of all of this, action will be so much more fruitful.
Ted needed to deal with a high degree of reactivity in the team he was leading. The team was 9 months into a 2-year project that was off-course and getting considerable pressure to produce. Team members were frantic and unfocused. Ted wasn’t accustomed to being in a leadership position with so little authority and so many variables at play. No one was at the helm, strategies proliferated and the group was going in several directions at once.
Ted knew he needed to step up. He tried the simple stop-focus-act process with the team. He insisted that the group stop to re-establish focus, (even with the time crunch). He set the tone by remaining calm and firm. After just a few hours, they found alignment on a clear strategy going forward. It wasn’t perfect, but it enabled them to take coherent action and to get back on track.
Pausing is perhaps the most challenging part of this process. That’s where you step off the hurtling train of reactivity (e.g. anger, irritability, fear, insecurities, jealousy, etc), take a deep breath and regain perspective. When you come back to what needs attention, you’ll see it with fresh eyes. And your ability to bring value to the situation will be heightened.
This ongoing process needs to be practiced, because some reactions will always be triggered at the slightest provocation. Your personal leadership gets stronger every time you wrestle a pattern down, regain your purposeful vision and act accordingly.
Action steps:
1. Notice when you are acting from a negatively charged emotional state. This will alert you to potential harm you may do to yourself or others.
2. Name your reactions whenever you can. Giving them an accurate label (e.g. frustrated, disappointed, scared) makes them less slippery, more conscious and easier to manage.
3. Take one of your most frequently visited reactions and list 3 ways it limits you. (e.g. When I’m impatient, I don’t listen well, I am annoyingly judgmental and I feel stressed.)
4. The next time you’re on a roll with a negative reaction, write down what the reaction is saying. Don’t censor it. After you’re done writing, notice the distortions, generalizations and omissions that veil a more complete and truthful perspective.
5. When you’re in a group that’s caught in reactivity, remind them of the group’s larger purpose and look for ways to re-engage constructively around that purpose.
6. Learn more about the 4 main reactive patterns and their relational antidotes by playing the Contact-Zone™ Board game.
7. Subscribe to the CPR for Enlightened Performance newsletter.
