There’s a leadership tendency I keep running into, and it’s frustrating, confusing, and quietly debilitating to be on the receiving end of.
Over the last two or three years, I’ve watched leaders and teams name it again and again. But recently, in a coaching session, a leader put words to what was really going on with their boss, and it reframed the whole thing.
This popular leadership tendency isn’t micromanagement, which is where our minds usually run. “I’ll never work for a micromanager“, we shout from the mountaintops. This tendency is quieter, and it comes wrapped in a thin veil of positive intent the leader will use to defend any move they make.
The tendency I’m talking about is a bias for action.
Just to be clear, I believe in leaders who act when the moment calls for it. Using immediacy. Reading what’s emerging in front of them and doing what feels right. Being present and moving when needed.
But lately I keep hearing how bias for action has hardened into a cultural attribute. A founder or officer-level leader champions it until no one can question it. And the “action” it’s hooked to usually isn’t admirably calculated or strategic – it’s a knee-jerk, whiplash-inducing blender people get put through daily. Some have the courage to name how diminishing that is. Most feel they have to admire it out loud, like a badge they “get” to show off.
“We have a bias for action here.“
Back to that coaching session. My client had spent many months trying to adjust to a boss with an extreme bias for action; so extreme that priorities shifted constantly, skip-levels got pulled into new directions, and secret product missions spun up in silos. Nothing stuck for more than a few weeks. And it was quietly wrecking my client’s confidence and their ability to deliver, despite being one of the sharpest, most strategic people on the senior team.
You might be thinking: isn’t that just what a strong leader does? Respond fast to changing conditions, and adjust course? Isn’t that strategy?
It can be. Strategy *is* action applied to a real challenge or obstacle.
But what if what’s ahead isn’t a challenge at all, what if it’s a fear the leader is reacting to?
That’s what my client landed on. “What if this is how they process fear – by changing everything all the time?“, they said.
Try to sit with that. It’s an empathetic, almost generous frame, and it can change what you do next.
When a room is actually on fire, we need someone with a bias for action. We don’t need someone asking “what makes a fire extinguisher important in this moment?” We need them to find it, grab it, and put the fire out. But most of the symbolic rooms we’re standing in aren’t on fire, which is worth noticing.
So what can you learn from a leader or culture whose bias for action is burning you out? Try looking through two windows: one pointed out, one pointed in.
Looking out: What’s driving the bias for action around me? What might be going on for these leaders, now or in their past, that has them acting so fast? What are the moves in response to – a fear? An assumption about what happens if things stay still or the same? Something that went wrong before?
Looking in: What’s having me react this strongly, even viscerally, to the constant reshuffling? Is this a work-style clash (e.g. planner meets executor)? Have I ever actually named what this churn is like for me, even just on paper? And if I want to adapt, where could I get outside help to do it well?
Try to remember that you’re not going to rewire or change this leader, or this culture, by Friday. That’s not the experiment to pursue.
The experiment is smaller, and it’s all yours. Pick one:
- Write down your own work style and what you need to do your best work, just for you first, before anyone else sees it.
- Name the effect, not the person that’s impacting you: “When priorities shift weekly, here’s what happens to my focus and follow-through?” Then find a way to say it to your leader, plainly.
- Get curious out loud about the why behind the next pivot you experience, before you brace against it or even fight it.
None of these fixes the culture. But each one moves you from being subject to the blender toward having influence over your situation, think of it like having a hand on the dial of the blender. And that’s usually where the real work, and the real relief, begins.
Here are a few resources that I’ve found interesting and have been sharing with clients:
1 // On the long road of becoming who you are. (5 min read)
2 // The art of deciding what to care about. (10 min read)
3 // There are two paths of burnout. (2 min read)
