Responsive vs. Reactive Behavior

by Ed Morler, M.B.A., Ph.D.
(excerpted from the Leadership Integrity Challenge)

Being responsive is being in the moment, being aware, and being able and willing to discern and differentiate relative priorities and take appropriate, constructive action. Responding is taking responsible action in the moment. Responsive individuals are those who listen and are willing and able to face and deal with whatever situation is at hand to the best of their ability, given the resources available. Only when one is responsive can one be responsibly proactive.

A reactive person is one who, in the past, was unable or unwilling to confront certain situations. Because the individual avoided these situations, the situations never resolved. Consequently, they act like magnets, keeping the individual’s attention stuck in the past. To that extent, the individual is literally unable to observe, much less respond to, what is actually occurring in the present. As a result, the ability to develop discernment and differentiation skills is significantly limited.

With any additional avoidance, the stuffed energy accumulates, resulting in an increased feeling of overwhelm. For this reason, when people are reactive rather than responsive, their emotions and behaviors appear to be, and are, exaggerated relative to the present circumstances. They are reacting to the accumulated energy of the past, which the current situation often only restimulates. The greater the repression, the smaller the stimulus needed to create a reaction, the greater the reactivity, and the more hostile or despairing that reactivity will be. When a person is reactive, he or she cannot and will not be responsibly proactive.

The outward attack that often accompanies reactivity is often a projection of an individual’s repressed anger at himself for his unwillingness to take responsibility for his own behavior. The intensity of the attack (not necessarily the volume, for the attack can be covert and passive-aggressive) is an indication of the degree of repression, fear, and denial present within that individual.

The opposite of responsibility is reactive judgmental blame (see “Blame,” page 171). It is also doing something only because one feels obligated. Responsibility viewed as a burden is not responsibility at all, but a victim’s or martyr’s way of controlling and avoiding responsibility.

As people feel overwhelmed, their willingness to take responsibility for their impact declines exponentially. Truth becomes increasingly skewed and, depending on the extent to which a person feels overwhelmed, that truth can become totally inverted. For example, when overwhelmed, what one person accuses another of is sometimes literally what he or she has done to the other person.

A man never describes his own character so clearly
as when he describes another.

—Jean Paul Richter

Any time we avoid being responsible, we automatically limit ourselves. The more we avoid responsibility, the more we allow ourselves to be controlled by things and circumstances “out there” and the greater is our sense of being powerless. We wind up acting like victims and become ineffective complainers. The more personal responsibility we assume for our actions, the more potential we have to direct toward achieving what we truly want. We are only flexible and able to create anew when we are responsive. When reactive, we are neither flexible nor creative.

When responsible people find themselves feeling upset, they recognize that their feeling is a message that something’s wrong. They quickly respond and transmute that upset energy into doing something constructive about the situation. Expanding awareness is about being more present to whether we are responding or reactive.