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Bad Leaders React, But Here's What Good Leaders Do

Bad Leaders React, But Here's What Good Leaders Do
by Gordon Tredgold

Don't let your emotions damage your career

Driven by their emotions, bad leaders react quickly to situations often without worrying about the facts or the repercussions of their actions, believing that they can always show good emotional intelligence by apologizing later.

Unfortunately, it doesn't work like that.

Leaders can't just react, they need to be calm and show composure, even under pressure. They need to show consideration, be perceived as thoughtful and taking the facts into account, and then giving measured responses.

You can't just lash out at people, or situations.

Impact of reacting rather than responding
When you do that it sets the tone for the organization, and it can create a stressful environment. One where people choose not to pass on information or bad news, because they fear that it will be the messenger who will get shot.

When we disrupt the information flow, it creates all kinds of issues, it can lead to you not being up to date or informed about what's going on, it can mean that you miss the opportunity to address a critical situation before it becomes a catastrophe.

I will never forget when I was in school and one of the pupils rushed into the classroom just before the end of the lesson, and tried to get the teachers attention. The teacher was infuriated, and felt that this was the height of disrespect and the he proceeded to scream at the pupil. He demanded to know how dare he come his into his class without knocking on the door, and then trying to interrupt the teacher. Before the pupil could answer the teacher threw him out of the class and insisted that because of his impudence, he should wait until the class had ended, and then he could knock on the door and be admitted.

Once the class was over, which was about 15 minutes later; the teacher invited the pupil into the class and asked him, in front of everyone, what was so important to necessitate the intrusion. The pupil smiled and said, 'the headmaster sent me to tell you that your wife called and your house is on fire".

Scarlet the teacher ran out of the class, with all of the pupils laughing as he left.

That was a great lesson for me. It taught me a couple of things, the first one being that when people choose to interrupt you, they do so because maybe they have knowledge that you don't and that they think you need to know right now, and secondly, over reacting can often make you look foolish, which is not a good way to build trust and respect with your teams.

Read full article on Inc.