Reacting Vs. Responding

As Leaders, it is important to recognize the difference between reacting and responding, especially when building and strengthening relationships.

Reacting is like listening to someone with the sole intention of replying, not being mindful of what the content or context is about. Reactions are more impulsive, quick, and usually not the best immediate reply.

The difference in the two is that responding is more about the intention of listening with undivided attention to the person, while being mindful of the environment and the feelings inside of us as well.

Reactions have little to no well-thought out processes. For example, when we stub our toe, (naturally) we don’t give a crap about our French; our reaction would be to suddenly speak in nine different languages! And even though in this scenario, releasing that tension would help reduce the pain, if we applied this approach to every problem in our life, it would be detrimental to relationship building. That’s because it’s reactionary rather than responsive.

If we stub our opinions against those different than ours; If we stub our expectations against unexpected outcomes; and we react out of pure instinct, we would have difficulties or never even build strong relationships. That’s because reactions are mostly run by emotions alone. (!!!!)

Whereas, if we do stub our opinions against those different than ours, but instead, take the time to question where they are coming from; and if we stub our expectations against unexpected outcomes, but instead take the time to analyze why or how the calculations went wrong; all with the intention of learning and coming up with the best resolve, considering both emotion AND rational thinking, then we would be able to build stronger and long-lasting relationships. That’s because we take the time to question things from multiple perspectives, thus enhancing our mindfulness and deeper search for understanding.

Some examples of healthy responding on a daily basis could look like something as simple as asking who left the pantry doors open in the office kitchen or as something as deep as taking the time to ask a team mate the reason they are falling behind with the intent of active listening.

And it might even be that when we go these lengths, we may be able to solve more than just one issue and circulate trust in building relationships in our team. Our teammate, let’s say Ren, may say, “I didn’t turn in my report this morning because there was a spill in the pantry directly next to my paper. Apparently, there was a tiny hole in my foam cup, and so I went to go retrieve more foam cups to fix this issue so that no other accidents like this would occur.” We come to find out Ren was taking action to fix more than one issue for others, he had his report, and that Kate had nothing to do with anything -except thank Ren for doing this kind act.

Other benefits of responding are that no fear or intimidation or irritation is induced to members of our team. Instead, establishment of clear communication is laid out so that we all are on the same step of understanding moving forward, and continue to build trust among each other.

As Leaders, we must respond, not react.
We must respond with the intentions to build relationships.
We must respond with empathy.
We must respond with mindfulness.
We must respond, not just with our hearts but also our brains.
WE must respond with integrity that consist of both emotion and rationale.