Proactive Leaders Plan their Next Move

Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. It’s the person who gets up and learns to dodge the punch second time around who stays in the game. The best leaders and managers are proactive in figuring out their next move based on what’s happening around them, dealing with challenging situations effectively and efficiently no matter the circumstances.

When we start our careers, we are taught to be proactive and take initiative – it’s often what sets us apart from other newbies in the workforce. We get people coffee and prepare the room for a presentation without being asked. Somehow, as soon as we get to management level, proactivity risks slipping away. Perhaps it’s overwhelm as we grapple with the shift from doing to leading, or perhaps it’s the opposite – a feeling of security: “I’ve made it, I no longer have to prove myself”. Whichever it is, it’s making us worse at our job. Ultimately, a manager who is not proactive can never be a leader. Let’s explore what proactivity looks like for leaders.

Proactive leaders roll with the punches

At face value, “roll with the punches” appears quite reactive, but in fact, it’s the opposite. It’s all about anticipating where the punch will land as it’s being thrown, so you can roll your body away from your opponent to minimise impact. That’s all very well, you say, but I’m not actually punched in the face all that often at work. Fair enough. But think back to the last time a project started going off-course: how far did things need to go before you saw the signs? How far before you course-corrected? In hindsight, perhaps you can see a lot more clues you could have spotted before you took action. Boland Jones, PGi CEO writes in Entrepreneur Magazine that “if you’re not course-correcting, you’re not taking enough risks”: a business heading in a single direction is much like a boxer running in circles around the ring to avoid their opponent. Sooner or later, it will be time to face the music, but by that time, it may be too late to save the project or the business.

To spot the punches before they hit, you need 3 things:

1. A Dose of Humility: putting your ego aside will give you a clearer view inside the heads of others (more on why getting inside someone else’s head is important in a moment).

2. A Dose of Reality: no one gets it right first time, and if they do, they may be missing out on bigger opportunities.

3. Adequate Preparation: negotiation experts The Gap Partnership recommend 9 hours of preparation for every hour of negotiation you do. Whilst we may not have much time in an emergency, it’s important to spend time actively considering how the situation might play out before it does – you owe it to your team.

Proactive leaders get inside people’s heads

Boxing is highly strategic, and a winner’s victory is rarely down to physical fitness alone – they’re most often the people who can best get inside their opponent’s head and anticipate their next move. How can we anticipate someone’s next move if we’re stuck in our own head? Whether it’s a stakeholder, a company or the economic climate, we need to make an effort to remove our own biases and look for external cues. What are they striving towards? What signals can I notice that give me clues about their direction of travel? How can I help them?

Being proactive takes effort, because the most impactful way to be proactive is to anticipate what’s next and respond ahead of time.

Getting inside someone’s head or taking time to properly read a situation takes preparation, but how do we do it?

IMPAct

Understand what’s Important

What is at stake here, for you and for everyone involved? Think beyond what people have told you and identify what they truly seem to value and where they feel the greatest urgency. What direction are they seeking to go? How does that affect you and the project?

Define Your Minimum Viable Plan

In the startup world, we talk about MVPs as Minimum Viable Products. It’s your product, stripped back to the bare necessities you need for a first version. You test the MVP with customers to check you’re on the right track before you invest more time and resources into a higher fidelity version. In this situation, your Minimum Viable Plan is whatever you need to get this project off the ground. This then becomes the immovable foundation of the project: without this cornerstone, the whole project will fall flat. If you’re being asked to add bells and whistles and you don’t have time, that’s beyond the scope of your Minimum Viable Plan. It’s a way to define what clarity looks like and protect the project in a world where 1 million things are being thrown your way.

Prioritise

You have your Minimum Viable Plan. What do you need to do to achieve it? These are your top priorities. Keep them front of mind and whenever you see them getting lost, you know it’s time to course-correct. Ask your team what their priorities are as a quick check-in: if their collective priorities aren’t aligned with yours… yup, you guessed it, it’s time to course-correct. Without asking this question, there’s a risk we all drive forward to similar outcomes, but only discover the crucial differences when it’s too late.

Act accordingly

This is the most important part of all. Once you’ve assessed the situation, course-correct early and often. How? Stage interventions: it might be as simple as realigning on priorities with the team. It might require stopping or reshaping different workstreams that aren’t driving collective output, or it might be a conversation with the most important stakeholders, proposing a new minimum viable plan.

Top leaders recognise early signs and nip issues in the bud before the consequences spread. Often, even the wrong intervention is better than no intervention at all. Deal with disaster sooner than later, or it’s a knockout.

Proactive leaders keep cool under pressure

Flustered or stressed individuals are rarely proactive. It’s no coincidence that Muhammad Ali’s boxing style was described as making him appear very “relaxed in the ring”. Keeping cool is the first step to remaining proactive and taking decisive action when the going gets tough. Proactive behaviour is also more reliable and considered if it comes from a place of calm versus a place of anxiety. Proactivity is not always about thinking fast or being the first to react. Taking a moment to collect your thoughts before planning ahead will drive a stronger outcome for the team, even when time is not on your side.

Proactive leaders coach by example

According to Frontiers in Psychology, authentic, proactive leaders indirectly influence the psychological state of their employees, so they too become more proactive. Together, such teams are proven to achieve more positive results and drive change.

Some leaders secretly see a proactive workforce as dangerous. They fear employees who think independently and do things differently, acting without permission. Alignment of values and goals is key here: as long as everyone is fighting on the same team and driving towards the same outcome, a dose of proactivity goes a long way to bringing everyone closer to accomplishing the goal, faster.

In a Nutshell

Proactive leaders are like great boxers who:

1. Roll with the punches

2. Get inside the other person’s head

3. Keep cool under pressure

4. Coach by example

Proactivity is an easy way to set yourself apart as an employee or as a leader, and it might just help you dodge a punch to the face.