Mastering Leadership

Chapter 8 Reactive Leadership: An Insufficient Triumph of Development

The evolution of Egocentric Mind into Reactive Mind is a triumph of development. As we enter adulthood, we leave behind the over-independence of adolescence and adopt the messages from our surrounding environment about how we have to be in order to get along in the adult world. This allows us to successfully launch our careers, get married, create families, and take on roles in the community. Adopting the messages, mental models, values, morals, and roles prescribed by the surround is the very triumph of development that as parents we are championing. It also forms the structural limits of this IOS.

Reactive Mind is well suited for growing into adult life, but as life gets more complex—with the competing demands of expanding leadership roles, growing families, and mounting financial commitments—Reactive Structure likely meets its limits. All structures have limits and when we meet them we face adaptive challenges. Furthermore, as organizations today change to be more agile, innovative, empowering, engaging, flexible, creative, lean, and fast to market, the Reactive Mind faces additional adaptive challenges. Reactive Mind is not structured for leading transformative change. It was formed to merge with the prevailing culture. It is not yet mature enough to individuate from the prevailing culture and change it. Reactive Leadership is ill-equipped to lead the transformation into these new high-performing cultures ...