How to leverage your full creativity

Note: Today’s post references leaders. My definition is that everyone is a leader. It’s not a title someone bestows upon you, but rather a self-initiated orientation to your world.

The challenge in front of leaders right now is respond-ability. Respond-ability is leveraging your full range of leadership capacity to create the impact you want. It's moving beyond unconscious habits. 

The opposite of respond-ability is reactivity. 
 

Defining reactivity

Reactivity is using a small set of what’s available to you. That small set is often made up of learned behaviors or patterns you adopted to survive. Many reactions honor social conditioning. Society rewards you for reactions that uphold its expectations. 

Reacting hides the choices you do have. When we’re reacting, the distance between what happens and how you respond is small and automatic. We don’t choose our reactions; they choose us. 

The irony of reacting is that it feels like there’s no choice. Reactions feel like the only available option. They’re what you’ve always done. They feel natural. Authentic, even. 
 

Defining respond-ability

Respond-ability is a choice. That choice is conscious. It’s made by seeing what’s in front of you and asking yourself what's needed in the moment to create what you are wanting. It's knowing your level of participation and which parts of yourself you’ll include in how you respond. 

Respond-ability requires range in your leadership and acknowledges that each circumstance is unique. The key to respond-ability is a willingness to unlearn. It asks you to experiment outside of the comfort of what you’ve historically done.

Respond-ability is adaptive and cyclical. Your choices create learning that you further integrate into future responses.
 

Why respond-ability is crucial now

Respond-ability is crucial right now because it centers what is here, in this moment. Many of our current working circumstances have shifted. When you skip over seeing what’s here now, you’ll only do what’s worked before — without acknowledging that now might not be like before. 

Respond-ability requires creativity that honors new approaches. It lives in new approaches. 

Respond-ability is the path to shift your impact and to shape the world toward what you are wanting. I hear from many of you that you feel the breakdown of long-held systems. You see and feel the need to use different approaches. You know tremendous collateral damage is coming from practices that need to retire.

Respond-ability means inviting your full range of leadership back into the fold. To include more of you in how you lead, not less. 

 

Call for Reflection:

What do you need to unlearn to invite more of yourself into your leadership?
 

Stay tuned for an opportunity to develop your respond-ability as a leader.

Shine On, 

Alicia

(Image by Jonathan Borba via Unsplash)