Instinctively Reactive Leadership – Another Cost

A few weeks back, I wrote about “toxic leadership” and how it is a huge cost to organizations. This week, I was led to think about another cost – “reactive leadership”. Leaders cannot be instinctively reactive. Have you ever seen leaders who react to situations and take immediate tactical decisions without analyzing the long-term, strategic impacts of those decisions?

Managing a team/organization means managing confrontations, conflicts and uncomfortable situations. These are integral parts of business. Leaders can decide to give their knee-jerk reactions to these confrontations or strategically and thoughtfully frame response to set the right precedence for organization culture and values.

When leaders are reactive, they:

• Expose their vulnerabilities
• Take impulsive decisions
• “Tell” a lot and “listen” a lot less
• Become overly obsessed with ‘correction’ and results.
• Loose trust and respect. People don’t see them as dependable leaders
• Fail in creating well rounded teams around them.
• Quickly punish people for making mistakes
• Instantly react to changes

Quick reactions from leaders are helpful when dealing with a potentially life-threatening (read existence-threatening) crisis for an organization. Sure, there are situations that need immediate reactions. But routine and long term decisions which impact organization culture and habits of people cannot be based on an impulse. They harm more than they help.

People look up to leaders for right examples, and most of the time, emulate same behaviors and actions. These behaviors and actions sets a culture of an organization. This is why leadership in organizations is a huge responsibility, because it ultimately determines the culture of an organization. Leaders ought to react thoughtfully.

Leader’s become transformational when they influence change and inspire people to act. As a leader, you can swing people into action by reacting (and thereby forcing) them or by taking proactive steps that inspire people to act and deliver. Your choice!

P.S.: Read this earlier post “To Err is Human – Treating People When They Make Mistakes” to see another example of reactive leadership and its cost.