Lesson Two: The Leadership Response

Leaders take responsibility for their world.? In other words, they respond to their world.? They respond to their world in order to create the results they desire.

In Lesson One, we covered the definition of Leadership, which is the act of taking responsibility for one’s world.? We called the ability to do that “response-ability,” or the ability to create desired results.? The next logical step is to explore this response-ability, which brings us to Lesson Two: The Leadership Response.

The Leadership Response is a basic human response.? What that means is that it’s not something external to you that you have to add to your toolkit.? In fact, it’s how you’ve been responding to the world since the day you were born.? This is why I say everyone is a leader.? Everyone leads their life, to one degree or another.? The reason we tend to call some people natural leaders, and others not, is that some people are more effective with their leadership response than others.??

Becoming a more effective leader, therefore, is not about learning a bunch of new stuff to do.? Rather, it’s about becoming more effective in the way you respond.? It’s about becoming more conscious and intentional with your leadership response.

Ok, let’s define the leadership response.?

Action

At the center of every response is action.? When we use the word “action” we usually mean doing something tangible, as in an observable behavior.? Examples include performing a task, sending a communication, making a decision, calling a meeting, etc.? Taking action in the form of doing is very familiar to anyone who has spent time working in an organization. But “doing" only covers half of what I mean by “action.”? The other half of action is being.? There is always a “way of being” that goes along with doing.? To illustrate this point, think of how we can say someone is doing nothing, but we never say someone is being nothing.? We are always being in some way.? It’s not a coincidence that we are called human beings, rather than human doings.? So Remember:? Action is both Being and Doing.???

Impact

In simple terms, action creates impact in the world.? Impact comes in many forms; sometimes it’s clear and visible, and sometimes it’s ambiguous and even invisible.? An example of clear and visible impact is if I asked you to do something and you did it.? An example of ambiguous and invisible impact is if I asked you to do something and you didn’t appear to do anything.? These two examples are oversimplified to illustrate the point.? In reality, impact is far more complex.? If I asked you to do something and you did it, there is more impact there than what’s on the surface.? It’s highly likely that you felt something when I asked, or that you concluded something about me as a person because of the way I asked.? Or take the part “... and you did it.”? What did you do exactly?? Is it what I intended when I asked?? Or take the phrase “...and you didn’t appear to do anything.”? Does that mean there was no impact?? Of course not.? The point here is that Impact is a very complex thing to assess and it’s not just what you perceive on the surface.? We’ll go deeper on this later in this lesson — and in the rest of this guide — but for now, remember:? Action creates Impact.

Intention

Intention is what drives action.? You want something so you take action to get it.? You imagine a particular outcome and you act in a way you believe will bring about that outcome.? Intention is a desire and it’s also a belief.? It’s a belief that if I act in a particular way, I can create a particular outcome.? We’ll go deeper on the nature of intention, but for now, remember:? Intention drives Action.

This is The Leadership Response:

Intention → Action → Impact.

Intention drives Action.? Action is both Being and Doing.? Action creates Impact.

Feels pretty straightforward, right?? Simple and obvious.? What could possibly go wrong?!

Well, plenty can go wrong.? You’ve probably had the experience when your impact does not align with your intentions.? You felt clear in your intentions, you took what you believed to be the right action, but the resulting impact was not at all what you wanted or expected.? In other words, you created unintended impact.

Often the misalignment is easy to see in hindsight, like when you have a misunderstanding or miscommunication with someone.? But more often, that misalignment between Intentions and Impact is a mystery.? There are a few reasons to understand here.??

Impact doesn’t happen in a vacuum.? In this realm of leadership and human interaction, impact is not a simple thing to understand.? For starters, your impact on the world does not happen in a vacuum.? There are other forces acting on your world, beyond just your intentional action. Think of it as more of a two-way process.? You create impact in the world, but the world also creates impact in you.? There are other humans in your world, and those humans are carrying intentions, taking action, and creating impact.? In the next lesson, we’ll explore some of the dynamics that govern this relationship between you and the world.

We easily misunderstand our impact. ? Because it doesn’t happen in a vacuum, we can be pretty bad at accurately reading our impact. You’re often reading your impact based on the reactions and responses of other people, and people are messy and complex beings.? Any attempt to interpret the intentions and actions of others — and your impact in relation to those intentions and actions — is usually oversimplified and often wrong.? Nevertheless, we intuitively draw conclusions, unconsciously make assumptions, and generally believe that we are seeing the world objectively and clearly, when in reality, we are not.? A big part of growing as a leader is systematically improving your ability to see and understand your impact in the world.

Intentions are not always conscious.? Another way we fail to see the world clearly is in our own intentions.? Earlier I described “intention” as a neat and tidy description of “what you want,” but let’s get real here.? Your wants and needs are complex and mostly unconscious.? You have a human brain that evolved to viscerally assess threats and opportunities, long before it evolved to think rationally.? Your brain is hard-wired to pursue the things you desire and avoid the things you fear and this process happens below the level of conscious thinking.? So another big part of growing as a leader is deepening your understanding of yourself and what is truly motivating you.

The Leadership Response is not a linear process.? As you deepen your understanding of your own leadership response, it’s helpful to conceptualize it as a linear model, but don’t make the mistake of thinking it actually happens in a linear way.? It’s not even happening in a cyclically ordered way.? It’s all happening simultaneously, all the time.? It’s been happening this way since you were born.? You are always carrying intentions.? You are always in action.? You are always creating impact.??

What I do with my clients – and what I want you to begin doing here – is think of Intention, Action, and Impact as 3 questions:

• What am I wanting??(intention)
• How am I acting? (action)
• What’s here now? (impact)

When I said earlier that humans are messy and unpredictable, it’s because we rarely consider these questions in a thoughtful and meaningful way.? When you put your attention on these three basic questions, you become more present to yourself and what drives your behavior.? You become more self-aware.

Know Thyself

The purpose in conceptualizing The Leadership Response in this way is to give you a structure for growing your self-awareness.? In Lesson One, I said leadership always starts on the inside.? The leadership response originates inside of you and it radiates outward to impact the people around you, the groups and teams you’re a part of, the organizations and institutions you inhabit, and the societies you live in.??

In Lesson Three, we’ll explore a model to understand the world in which you are responding.

Get the free PDF Guide