As a former leader with teams from two people to 70 people, I was constantly reading articles, books, and blogs (just like this) to improve my leadership and my team’s performance. There are so many great things out there, and I wanted to implement all of them.
The challenge was using what I learned in an environment where everything was moving at once. Changes coming right and left, demands for improvement without the resources to support it, conflicting priorities from each level of the organization, including external clients. The faster things moved, the quicker I dropped what I had learned. It seemed easier to fall back into old patterns. At least they were comfortable, even if they didn’t always get the results I wanted.
If you have ever felt this, you are not alone.
So much of a complex environment is out of your control, yet you home in on every detail. That amplifies your reactivity as your mind tries to protect you from perceived threats. Every email feels like a direct attack. Even leadership guidance can feel like a threat, as it just adds to the data you are trying to digest.
So how do you make things stick no matter how chaotic your environment is? In the last blog, I introduced SNAP, my 4-step model to move from reactivity to progress.
• Stop Reactivity
• Narrow Your Focus
• Adapt to Conditions
• Progress
I talked about Stopping reactivity, leveling up your thinking to be more deliberate. That’s where you start. It gets you thinking more deliberately and begins to quiet the chaos. When you find yourself abandoning productive habits, that’s another sign to Stop and level up your thinking.
Because even in the middle of complexity, one thing does not change: you always have control over your thinking.
The next step is Narrowing your focus. This puts you back in the driver’s seat. The question you ask is, “What is within my control?”
One of the most important things you can control is your thoughts, which then affect your feelings and behavior. Once you move out of reactivity and level up to deliberate thought, you can sort through the complexity to identify what you can actually control. Someone else’s outburst in a meeting? Nope, not within your control. How you respond to that outburst? Absolutely. Getting emails at all hours of the night? Not unless you are sending them to yourself. Choosing to set a boundary about when you will respond? Yes. Can you choose exactly how your projects and plans will unfold? No, but you can decide how you work within those constraints and amplify your opportunities.
When you focus this way, you move out of reacting to everything around you and back into taking intentional action.
The next step is recognizing the difference between what is within your control and trying to control everything. When you are in complex situations, it is easy to stop delegating and start hoarding tasks. Delegation frees you to do the high-payoff activities of your role, develops your employees, and helps you avoid being the progress bottleneck. Resisting the urge to take over things that are moving more slowly than you would like or putting emphasis on things not being exactly the way you want them is part of stepping out of reactivity and one of the things you can control.
It may mean writing down thoughts that go with this behavior and changing them deliberately. Changing “no one can do it like me” to “my way isn’t the only way,” for example. Sorting the facts from the story is another helpful way to change your thinking. It can be helpful to write down the facts and even run them by a trusted advisor or coach.
Once you have the list of things within your control, identify one thing to do first. Staying out of reactivity, select one that will move you forward. Maybe it is scheduling the difficult conversation you have been putting off. It could be using your out-of-office to set boundaries for answering emails. No matter what you select, focus on what you will do, not the obstacles you see.
Even in the most complex environments, progress does not come from controlling everything. It comes from controlling your thinking and narrowing your focus to what you can actually move.
Once you are out of reactivity, focusing on what is within your control is the next step in making the progress you want as a leader. Remember, the one thing that you always control is your thoughts. The more consistently you return to that, the easier it becomes to stay out of reactivity and keep moving forward.
