I have carried a private theory about leadership for most of my career. When something goes wrong, I allow myself to be off balance for a while, mostly behind closed doors. I might be angry. I might judge someone harshly. I might rehearse a response in my head that I would never want anyone to hear. As long as the person who walks back out and acts is the one I would want to be judged by, that reactive period has done no harm.
For years I thought of it as an hour. It is rarely an hour. Sometimes it is a day, and on a serious matter it can run for a week. The length was never the point. What matters is that nothing acts on the reaction before I have done the work.
The primitive response
Something old in us responds to adversity before anything considered gets a chance. A difficult email from a parent. A budget that has moved the wrong way. A colleague who has made a decision that looks careless from where I sit. The first response is close to fight or flight. It arrives quickly and it feels certain.
The emotion is not the problem. What it blocks is the problem. In that early phase I lose access to most of what I know about managing people well. The patience is still there somewhere, and so is the context, but an emotional block sits in front of them. I cannot reach the rational, ethical, value-driven thinking I would bring to the same situation on a calm day.
It is silly to pretend the reaction did not happen. Leaders who deny their first response tend to leak it anyway, usually in the tone of an email or the edge in a meeting. The reaction has to be acknowledged. It just cannot be allowed to act.
Drafts, not decisions
The most useful way I have found to think about this is that first reactions are pencil drafts. Sketches. They can be rough and unfair. A sketch carries no authority and nobody publishes one.
Seen that way, rehearsing a bad response in your head is part of reasoning rather than a moral failure. Good and bad ideas get bounced against each other until the right one shows itself. That is how most decisions actually get made, whether or not we admit it. The discipline is in keeping the whole process on the drafting table.
This happens in small ways most days and in bigger ways most weeks. I have judged someone harshly in the first hour more times than I would like to count. I have composed the difficult conversation, decided what needed to change, and occasionally decided that someone needed to go. Then, once I had contained it and thought it through, I have usually arrived somewhere different. They needed more time, or more support. They made the call they made with the skills and information they had at that moment, and with hindsight I might have done the same. Occasionally the harsh judgement survived the process and the decision still had to be made. But it was made properly, from a different place.
The containment period is what gets me to that place. Without it, the sketch becomes the decision.
Four commitments
1. Acknowledge the draft. The reaction is real and human. Name it privately. Suppressing it drives it underground, where it shapes behaviour without ever being examined.
2. Contain it. Nothing acts on the draft. No message goes out and no decision gets made. Information gets gathered, colleagues get consulted, the resources needed for a good decision get lined up. All of that is useful. But the essential work is internal, and it is not finished until the block has lifted and I can reach my own judgement again.
3. Stay present. Containment applies to the reaction, not to the relationship. If the person concerned senses a change in me while I work it through, the draft has already leaked. It is possible to be undecided and still be normal with the people involved. Most leaders find this the hardest part.
4. Decide from the chair. I think of the balancing position as a large lounge chair, wrapped in a settled set of values, beliefs, ethics and character. When the reactive phase has run its course, I sit back into it. From there the harsh judgement usually softens into something truer, and the decision that follows is one I can stand behind. If I cannot stand behind it morally and professionally, I am not yet in the chair.
Two cautions
Containment has a cost for other people. If the pause runs long, someone may be waiting, aware that something is wrong and unsure what. That uncertainty can do more damage than a quick, fair conversation would have. This is why the third commitment matters as much as the second, and why the pause should end as soon as the work is done.
Pausing is also not the same as avoiding. It is easy to hide behind “I am still thinking about it” when the real issue is reluctance to make a hard call. The test is whether I am actively working towards the chair or just circling the problem. Deferral dressed up as reflection does not help anyone, least of all the person whose situation remains unresolved.
Where the idea sits
Others have described parts of this. Viktor Frankl wrote about the space between stimulus and response. William Glasser’s Choice Theory rests on the idea that behaviour is chosen, and that the only behaviour we control is our own. Daniel Goleman gave the physiology a name with the amygdala hijack, the moment when the emotional brain takes over before the thinking brain has had a say.
What I am adding is the leadership application. This is a discipline for people whose decisions land on other people. A first reaction, acted on, can unsettle a whole team or end someone’s career. The people who carry that weight need somewhere to put the reaction that is not the page.
Judge yourself on the day
The last part of the theory is about self-judgement. Do not assess yourself on the first minute, or the first hour. Assess yourself on the day, and on the decision you made once you were back in the chair. If something did slip out early, the day includes repairing it. Repair done well often leaves a relationship stronger than it was before.
The best leaders feel the primitive response like everyone else. The difference is that their drafts never make it onto the page.
Read next
- Calm Leadership in Schools: Timing, Decision and Resilience
- Governance Structures That Attract Education Investors
- The 360-Degree School Review
- Leadership in International Schools: 16 Articles for School Leaders
- International School Business and Leadership Articles
To talk about your school project, reach us through the contact page.