Are you reactive or proactive?
Have you noticed that your team is always busy but rarely has time to improve how work gets done? Is your team working hard all day, but still struggling to make progress on priorities?
There’s good reason for this, and it could be that your team are firefighting, reacting to external pressures, requests and demands, reducing their capacity to plan, improve and innovate. Today’s Virtual Coach considers what steps leaders could take to ease reactivity and improve proactivity in their teams…
Let’s start with a sporting example. A professional tennis player cannot win by simply reacting to every shot at the last second. There’s positioning, anticipation, reading the opponent, and a game plan. If they are scrambling, they may stay in the rally for a while, but they are unlikely to control it. The same is true for teams. If people are routinely reacting to requests, or interruptions, or emails, they may keep work moving, but they will struggle to create the space needed for proactive thinking and innovation.
We also watched as leaders influence the habits of their teams. For example, if a leader treats all inbound activity as urgent, or readily puts down focused work to deal with interruptions, the operational environment of the team aligns. Team members begin to learn that staying available matters more than staying focused.
So, how do leaders foster an environment that encourages proactive work, and rewards innovation?
- Set fewer, clearer priorities: teams become reactive when everything feels important. Leaders can reduce that pressure by being explicit about what matters most now, what can wait, and what is not a priority at all. It’s less about ‘doing’ the work, and more about ‘doing the right work’
- Schedule time for focused work: if calendars are full and interruptions are constant, proactive and creative work will always lose. Protect time for thinking, planning, developing, and iterating
- Be clear about what is truly urgent: not every request deserves an immediate answer. Leaders can provide clear guidelines about what is truly urgent, and what the impact of a delay would be, so that reasonable decisions can be made within the team, using reasonable timelines rather than existential threat
- Clarify ownership and decision-making: reactive teams often waste time because issues bounce around without a clear owner. Clear responsibilities help team members to act with confidence instead of checking, chasing, or duplicating effort
- Reward progress, not just responsiveness: some teams believe that quick replies and visible busyness are valued more than thoughtful outcomes. When leaders recognise that planning, prioritisation, and long-term improvement is performance-in-action, they can start to shift behaviours. Busyness is not a badge of honour, it’s ineffective and wasteful
The leadership challenge
We are the first to acknowledge that there are always going to be some situations that require a quick response. However, our goal is to remove ‘firefighting’ as a default operating model, so that valuable work doesn’t slip into second place.
Leaders play a central role in supporting this environment. By creating clarity, protecting focus, and resisting unnecessary urgency, leaders give their teams the time and stability to think ahead, work proactively, and create something better.
