Leaders are respond-able to their worlds
Our leadership definition has two sides:
Leaders are responsible for their worlds.
Leaders are also respond-able to their worlds.
What does it mean to be respond-able?
Respond-ability is the ability to respond in a way that’s not reactive. Instead, it’s a creative response that delivers a desired intention. It’s a response that allows you to honor the vision of who you want to be in the world.
What it looks like to not be respond-able
One of my life long struggles is thinking there’s a right answer. Even worse, I can get stuck thinking that I, and only I, have the right answer. Over time I have seen this cause harm to others and myself.
I shut others' ideas down without much care, causing harm to others.
I disrupt my deepest desire to learn from others, causing harm to myself.
When I respond from a place of thinking I’m right, I am reacting. This can look like me tuning out of the conversation. Or poking holes in someone’s thinking, hoping they see the error in their logic. Or moving ahead without involving anyone. These are my automatic, unconscious reactions.
When I’m being a leader, my response looks different. I am respond-able.
What it looks like to be respond-able
I can get hooked in conversations thinking that I am right and the other person is wrong. I want to tell you I don't react in those moments, but I do.
I can try all my old tricks to get the other person to see that I am right. It rarely works. I feel exhausted. That is my lightbulb moment when I realize I am reacting.
That’s my entry point to seeing I’m not being a leader: Reaction. Exhaustion. Frustration.
In one such conversation I instead blurted, “I need to take a pause, because no matter what you say, I will still think that I’m right.”
That was me being respond-able.
Respond-ability doesn’t mean prettily packaged responses. It means choosing to respond in a way that’s different from your standard reaction.
In that moment, I stepped into my leadership by:
Being RESPONSIBLE for my desire to be right and the impact it was having on the conversation.
RESPONDING in a way that broke my old pattern. Even though it was messy.
What happens when you’re respond-able to your world
When you’re respond-able, you have an opportunity to be an expression of the woman you want to be in the world. In my case, my response honored my value of truth telling and opened the space for me to learn from others.
Being respond-able also sets you up to have a different impact. Imagine the impact I would've had on Gina by continuing to poke holes in her thinking. She'd have felt dominated. Silenced. Shut down. I don't want that.
When I asked for a pause, I validated her experience with me in that moment. She freed herself from the need to defend herself.
The crux of what we do in our programs is disrupt old patterns that have gone stale. Sometimes it’s a pattern of behavior, sometimes a pattern of thinking. Often, it's a combination of both.
Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is insanity. Respond-ability is the antidote to insanity.
Call for reflection:
Which of your reactions can you not stand to be with? If you had all your creativity at your disposal, how might you respond differently? Try that.
Shine On,
Alicia