WHY GREAT LEADERS DON’T REACT IMMEDIATELY

A leadership reflex that doesn't get talked about enough? The impulse to react immediately.

You get an email that catches you off guard. A team member drops the ball. A board member challenges your decision. And your instinct is to reply, correct, defend, or fix. Right now.

I’ve been there. Early in my leadership career, I thought decisive meant immediate. I believed that the best leaders were the first to respond. But over time, I learned something else: When you react immediately, you’re not necessarily leading. You’re just responding. And not always with your best thinking.

The Power of the Pause

Taking a beat doesn’t make you less decisive. It makes you more deliberate. The pause allows you to check your emotions, gather perspective, and assess the landscape before you make a move.

When I started racing, I had to rewire this instinct fast. You can't overreact behind the wheel. If someone dives into a corner or cuts you off, a snap decision made from frustration can take you out of the race entirely. The best drivers stay calm under pressure. They anticipate. They wait for the right moment to act. That same principle applies to leadership.

A delayed response isn’t a weak one. It’s a strategic one.

Not Everything is Urgent

We live in a world that confuses speed with competence. Inboxes, Slack channels, texts, pings—all designed to demand instant action. And culturally, we reward it. Leaders who respond quickly are often seen as more capable, more committed.

But here’s the problem: Urgency is contagious, not always accurate. It spreads through organizations and can trick you into thinking everything is a fire. When everything feels like a fire, we start treating all decisions as emergencies.

That’s how mistakes happen.

I’ve seen leaders approve plans they hadn’t fully reviewed, say things they couldn’t walk back, or discipline employees without understanding the full picture. I’ve done it myself. In most cases, if I had waited 24 hours, I would have made a better decision.

The Trap of Emotional Reactivity

The biggest leadership mistakes I’ve made came from reacting emotionally rather than responding thoughtfully. Ego, defensiveness, frustration—those are poor decision-making states. If someone questions your authority or challenges your plan, your knee-jerk reaction might be to assert yourself. But that rarely solves the issue. It usually just escalates it. Pausing gives you space to separate the signal from the noise. What really happened here? What are the facts? What do I need to ask before I act?

How to Build the Pause

This isn’t about dragging your feet. It’s about designing space into your leadership process. Here are a few strategies I’ve used:

• Default to "Let me think on this." You can still acknowledge the issue without locking yourself into a decision you’ll regret.

• Set response windows. Unless it’s truly time-sensitive, I try not to respond to major issues until I’ve had a night to sleep on them.

• Ask one clarifying question. Before jumping to action, get one more data point. Often, the first version of the story isn’t the full one.

  
  

What Your Team Learns From Your Reaction Time

People watch how you respond. When you react instantly to every problem, they learn to do the same. It creates a culture of reactivity instead of reflection. But when you model thoughtfulness, when you show that it’s okay to pause, assess, and then act, you teach your team to lead, not just react.

You also build trust. Teams don’t just want fast decisions. They want sound ones. They want to know their leaders are looking at the full picture, not just the loudest moment.

The Pause is a Leadership Tool

Great leadership isn’t just about being right. It’s about knowing when to act and when to wait. The space between stimulus and response is where your real influence lives. Some of the best decisions I’ve made didn’t happen in the moment. They happened because I gave the moment room to breathe.

So the next time you feel that jolt of urgency, that need to say something, decide something, fix something right away, try waiting. Sometimes, the smartest move a leader can make is to simply not move. Not yet.