The Traps of Reactive Leadership

Hard-working, high-achieving people are often rewarded with promotion and positions of leadership. But often, their motivation, drive, and competence, prove to be counter-productive. Used to meeting their own high standards, excelling in their own expertise, and rising to challenges, they just dig in and work more furiously as more responsibility and demands are thrown their way.

This reaction reflects some deep-seated reactive tendencies that people rely on to be successful in the world, but unfortunately, when they over-depend on them and don’t develop other, more creative capabilities, end up undermining their best efforts to lead effectively. According to a theory developed by Karen Horney, a psychologist, who published in the 1930s, humans develop survival strategies in one of three ways: controlling, protecting and complying. These tendencies are formed early in life and often show up in the workplace.

Controlling Tendencies

These arise from a view that the world is a competitive place, full of threats. All your strategies are designed to ensure that you won’t lose. Do you recognize yourself in any of these behaviors?

• You get so immersed in day to day minutiae you lose sight of the big picture.
• You tend to do more and delegate less.
• You have a go-it-alone mentality and are protective of your turf; you display siloed thinking in a connected world.
• You are a stickler for high standards, and do not tolerate anything less than perfection; failure is unacceptable.
• You have the right answers and lack the patience for discussion or learning; it’s your way or the highway.

 

Protecting Tendencies

These arise from a view that the way to prove your worth is to hold yourself apart from or above others. Do you recognize yourself in any of these behaviors?

• You often think you are the smartest person in the room, and are unaware of or not interested in others’ perspective.
• You tend to take a critical, questioning and sometimes cynical view.
• You remain aloof, emotionally distant, and above it all.

 

Complying Tendencies

 These arise from a view that your self-worth and security depend on the degree to which you can gain others’ favor and confirmation. Do you recognize yourself in any of these behaviors?

• You seek others’ support and approval, and want to please.
• You conform to rules and procedures set by others, preferring to ask for permission, not forgiveness.
• You tend to be passive, rather than proactive.
• You don’t like to confront, to refuse, or to stand up to anyone, for fear they won’t like you.

 

The way you act as a leader can have unintended consequences, and, if you have too many of the above examples in your repertoire, you can end up disempowering your people and sabotaging your own success. As a leader, you have a strong impact on others, whether you are conscious of it or not. Your actions are watched and your words interpreted all the time. You make a difference every day in the lives and careers of others, and you have a choice whether this will be a positive or negative one.

Some of the consequences for you, and others, of this kind of reactive leadership, are:

• Extreme stress, exhaustion, and tetchiness that strains relationships.
• Work overload for the leader, and simultaneous disempowerment of the people who work for him or her.
• Lack of strategic perspective, leading to missed business opportunities and low employee engagement.
• Poor or no collaboration with others, no cross-fertilization of ideas, low likelihood of innovation.
• People who are afraid to experiment or learn, and end up playing it so safe that they disengage or fail.
• A culture of low trust that tends to have high employee turnover and high recruitment and retention costs.
• Micromanaging bosses who become bottlenecks and do not get the best out of their employees.
• Lack of anticipation or forward thinking, leading to perpetual reactivity and scrambling.
• Ineffective, or absent, communication.

 

There may be a perfectly reasonable explanation for why you choose to behave in this way, but it is worth examining what deeply held beliefs may be driving these behaviors.

Once you’ve opened your eyes to some of your reactive tendencies, and uncovered some possibly flawed assumptions you’ve been living with for years, you will never look back. You will be ready to transform yourself from a good to a great leader.