5 Spontaneous Impulses that Dilute Your Influence
Spontaneous impulses harm others and weaken leadership.
5 Spontaneous Impulses that cause harm:
#1. Interrupting to showcase your brilliance. When this happens, people feel unheard and disrespected. Eventually they disengage.
#2. Blame shifting to protect your ego. Humility builds trust. Blaming erodes confidence and ends feedback.
#3. Acting without listening. A leader in a rush solves the wrong problem and creates new ones. Short-term speed becomes long-term drag.
#4. Dodging hard conversations. Avoidance escalates frustration. I don’t blame you for choosing the easy path, but everyone’s waiting for you to invite the elephant to dance.
#5. Solving problems instead of seizing opportunities. Few things are more seductive than a fat juicy problem. You can’t lead forward by looking at the past.
3 ways to interrupt spontaneous impulses:
#1. Notice yourself.
Choose an action or emotion to notice that has destructive consequences. Notice…
- Eagerness to speak.
- Frustration.
- Urge to control.
- Need to be right.
- Drive to win instead of learn.
#2. Recruit a partner.
Self-awareness comes reluctantly. A trusted ally points out things you don’t see about yourself.
Share your list of destructive behaviors. Ask your partner to tell you when they notice the behaviors on your list.
Reflect on the emotions that motivate spontaneous impulses.
#3. Choose a replacement behavior.
You don’t stop spontaneous impulses, you replace them. When I notice my frustration, I physically feel a jolt. There’s my harmful friend. In that moment I realize I’m missing something. I calm myself and get curious. Potential replacement behaviors…
- Physically lean back. Posture alters mindset.
- Smile and nod. Signal openness, not attack.
- Take a breath. Create space to choose wisely.
- Ask a question. Curiosity slows reactivity.
Small interruptions prevent big regrets.
What unintended consequences are you creating?
Mastering Emotional Agility: Transform Destructive Emotions into Leadership Advantage
Stimulus and response—sometimes they happen so fast, there’s barely any space between them, especially when one of our hot buttons gets pushed. The key is to create that space.
Dan, I like your suggestion: pause, take a breath, ask a question. These simple actions help us slow down and respond more thoughtfully.
It’s all about becoming more aware of what you’re feeling in the moment—that’s emotional intelligence in action.
I find they happen so fast that I hardly notice. Sometimes I catch myself after I already began saying something that doesn’t serve. I have to pull myself back.
I can be guilty of #3 – Acting without listening – but it’s usually only when some of our near retirement people start ‘complaining’, or saying ‘this is how it’s always been and we should do it that way’, I interrupt and try to steer the conversation to the ‘how we do it now’, trying to sympathize at the same time. In my head at the time, I’m doing it so they don’t taint the newer staff, or the changes that I’ve worked hard to implement to make our team more efficient, have a better working environment, or simply making change the company wants.
However, I do realize that the whole team may only be hearing me interrupt that person and move the subject away from their comments without knowing the backstory. I feel different when these instances come up – almost like I know I’m doing it, but it’s…. too late to stop.
Ooof, leading is hard. 😉 Thanks Dan.
Your transparency encourages me. It’s encouraging that others deal with the same issues I deal with. Let me add, many of the leaders I work with are quick minded. When you add a quick mind to time pressure, it can lead to automatic behaviors that don’t serve long-term goals. Steady on!
Hi Dan,
Pure gold today ! Thank you very much for this valuable post. I gave in to an impulsive action of reacting to a barb over the weekend. I could almost hear the damage my credibility was taking! With your help that won’t happen again 🙂
~ Best, Cate
Well, maybe it’s good to say, “It won’t happen as much.” 🙂