In today’s ever-changing business landscape, leaders are under pressure to respond quickly to many factors, including changing market conditions, supply chain disruptions, new advances in technology, natural disasters, unexpected opportunities and employee needs.
How leaders respond to stressful situations matters. You’ll hear discussions about effective leaders being agile, but it’s not just about making decisions quickly and easily.
Leaders will either default to:
Reactive leadership, which is when decisions are made in the heat of the moment or quickly under pressure. When leaders react to a challenge or crisis, they tend to manage the symptoms rather than the root causes. While there are times that reactive leadership may be necessary, the Harvard Business Review (HBR) cautions that it can lead to missed opportunities and a tendency to prioritize urgent tasks over important tasks. (Remember that the Eisenhower Matrix can help leaders find clarity about tasks.)
Note: While leaders who default to reactive leadership might feel in control in the short-term, the situation may not have been resolved or rectified—just managed. When leaders respond to crisis after crisis with reactive leadership, they feel burned out and their team members often feel stressed, mistrustful and overwhelmed.
Proactive leadership, which is when forward-thinking leaders anticipate and strategically prepare for challenges and opportunities. They take time to understand patterns and align their actions with long-term goals, pausing to reflect and gather information before making decisions.
Note: Because proactive leaders consider the long-term, they build a culture of preparedness. For example, they create systems that prevent problems from escalating. Involving team members in anticipating and preparing for changes is empowering and fosters trust and innovation.
Now, let’s be clear: No one can be proactive all of the time, and we all need to be prepared to react and to make urgent decisions now and then. What we’re talking about here is your modus operandi — your “M.O.” In other words, how do you lead most of the time?
How to tell if you tend more to use reactive or proactive leadership
Here are signs you are leading reactively:
- Team members often ask, “What’s the plan?”
- Folks seem overwhelmed.
- You notice your team faces recurring problems.
- It feels as though you’re constantly fighting fires.
- Planning is hasty and in the moment rather than in advance.
- Planning feels like a waste of time; whatever you write is just going to sit on the shelf.
- The focus is short-term.
These are signs you are leading proactively:
- Your team members are involved in planning ahead, offering information routinely to inform strategy.
- The team establishes systems to improve situations and resolve challenges.
- During meetings, participants work together to anticipate potential issues and plan ahead.
- You delegate to team members and trust folks will handle the details.
- As the leader, you can stay focused on strategy and being future-ready.
The power of proactive thinking
As Cheryl Robinson notes in Forbes, proactive leadership is characterized by leaders who “act with foresight, clarity and purpose.”
Thinking several moves ahead is a competitive edge, improving morale and driving success.
It’s possible for folks to move from reactive leadership to proactive leadership.
Strategies to cultivate proactive leadership
Shifting from reactive to proactive leadership takes time, intention and practice, but it can be done. Here are five key strategies to help leaders become more proactive:
Cultivate your self-awareness. Make time to reflect on your reactivity during times of stress. Consider your default behaviours during times of stress. Do you respond quickly without getting feedback from your team? Are things chaotic? What would your team members say? Keeping a journal can help you identify patterns and triggers.
Prioritize preparation and planning. Build space in your weekly schedule to focus intentionally on deep, strategic work (not triage of this crisis or that challenge). Invite information from your team members and involve them in strategic planning. Some leaders use vision boards and pre-mortems (which is brainstorming ways a project could fail before you start as a way to anticipate challenges). Focus on building resilience and have the courage to view mistakes as learning opportunities.
Build psychological safety. When your team members feel there is psychological safety in the workplace, they will be comfortable speaking up. This is important because you want folks to flag potential issues early, share ideas and raise concerns. A healthy sense of curiosity fosters creativity and innovation.
Consider the possibilities. Instead of trying to control outcomes or fix problems, consider a broader context. What outcome could we create here? Where can I get the best information for this situation? Knowledge is power, so carefully consider who can contribute important details to inform your decision and strategy.
Have a future-focus. Instead of soliciting feedback (focused on what happened in the past and corrective), ask folks on your team for feedfoward thoughts (future-focused suggestions with the intent of supporting success). What could we do differently to do better supporting goals? What could support growth and possibility?
Strengthen decision-making in your team. When the staff who report to you are encouraged to figure things out and make decisions, there will be fewer crises rising to your level.
Tips for leading your team through change proactively
Change is inevitable, and yet, it’s human nature to resist change.
Shifting to proactive leadership means you aren’t going to wait for resistance from folks.
Instead, you can cultivate a coaching culture. This means:
- Inviting conversations, no matter how difficult. Effective leaders can hear bad news without getting defensive.
- Understanding why team members resist change. A big part of managing change is communication, especially being able to encourage employees to share their concerns.
- Getting support. To create change, you need to get folks to buy-in.
- Engaging your team in the process. By framing the transition around shared values (not just a timeline!), you build a sense of ownership in the process. This also helps to reduce resistance.
In an uncertain world, proactive leadership gives a competitive edge. As you shift from reactive firefighting to proactive foresight and planning, uncertainty becomes an opportunity for change and transformation instead of chaos.
Proactive leadership is proven to build resilience, foster trust and improve strategic performance.
Coach’s Questions
Where in your leadership are you currently reacting instead of leading? What would a more proactive response look like? What does your team need to bring you concerns sooner?
