Reaction vs Response

There is a moment — sometimes only a few seconds long — where leadership is decided.

Bad news arrives. A mistake surfaces. A plan unravels. An incident occurs.

What matters most in that moment isn’t the issue itself, but what happens next.

Some leaders react.

Others respond.

The difference between the two is subtle, but the impact on teams, trust, and outcomes is profound.

A reaction is fast, instinctive, and emotionally driven. It happens before the thinking part of your brain has properly engaged. It’s the sharp intake of breath, the spike of adrenaline, the urge to fix, blame, defend, or assert control. When you react, you are not choosing your behaviour — you are being carried by it.

A response, by contrast, is deliberate. It still happens under pressure, but it happens after you have engaged your thinking mind. A response acknowledges emotion without being ruled by it. It is purposeful, intentional, and aimed at serving the situation rather than discharging feeling.

Why this distinction matters enormously

For leaders, this distinction matters far more than most realise.

When a leader reacts badly to bad news, the damage often extends well beyond the immediate moment. A sharp comment, visible frustration, public blame, or a rushed decision sends a powerful signal. It tells people that bad news is dangerous, that mistakes will be met with emotion rather than curiosity, and that psychological safety is conditional.

Teams learn quickly in these environments. They soften messages. They delay escalation. They hide problems until they’re unavoidable. Issues don’t disappear — they simply go underground, where they grow.

Leaders who cannot move beyond reaction don’t just struggle personally; they shape organisations that are brittle, slow to learn, and surprisingly fragile.

Responding creates a different dynamic entirely. It creates space — for honesty, for learning, for better decisions. It tells teams that pressure does not remove the need for thought, and that difficult conversations are part of doing good work, not something to be punished.

When reaction takes over

Under stress, the human brain does not always behave helpfully. When pressure spikes, it is entirely possible to become trapped in a loop of action without thinking — reacting repeatedly without understanding whether those actions make sense.

A tragic illustration of this is Air France Flight 447.

Faced with confusing and conflicting information, the pilots became overwhelmed. Under extreme stress, their ability to reason degraded. Control inputs were made without a clear mental model of what was happening. Alarms sounded, warnings were missed, and the crew became locked into a cycle of reaction rather than response.

This was not a failure of intelligence or professionalism. It was what happens when stress overwhelms cognition.

Leadership failures often follow the same pattern, just on a smaller and quieter scale. When pressure mounts, leaders can loop — reacting, intervening, escalating, reacting again — without pausing long enough to understand the problem they are actually trying to solve.

Now contrast that with British Airways Flight 2276.

When an engine caught fire during take-off, the crew responded calmly and decisively. They rejected the take-off, communicated clearly, followed procedure, evacuated the aircraft, and avoided loss of life. Emotion was present — it always is — but it did not dominate decision-making.

The difference was not luck.

It was preparation, training, and the ability to think under pressure.

That is what response looks like.

You don’t rise to the moment, you fall back to your habits

The uncomfortable truth is that no one suddenly becomes thoughtful in a crisis.

When pressure hits, you don’t rise to the occasion — you fall back to whatever habits you’ve built when things were calm. Moving from reaction to response is not something you decide to do in the moment; it is a capability you develop over time.

Leadership pressure may not involve burning engines or warning sirens, but the cognitive demands are remarkably similar. Leaders are expected to make decisions under uncertainty, with incomplete information, and with real consequences. When they react, teams feel it immediately. When they respond, teams feel that too.

Reacting creates fear, dependency, and disengagement.

Responding creates clarity, ownership, and momentum.

So the question becomes: how do leaders train themselves to move from reaction to response more reliably?

Practising the move from reaction to response

There are a few proven ways to build this capability. None of them remove emotion — they simply stop emotion from being in charge.

• Meditation – Meditation isn’t about calm, and it certainly isn’t about emptying your mind. It is about awareness. It trains you to notice thoughts and emotions as they arise without immediately acting on them. That small gap — the pause between feeling and doing — is where response lives. Leaders who meditate are not less emotional; they are simply quicker to recognise when emotion is about to drive behaviour.
• Fitness training – Physical training places the body under stress and demands regulation. You learn to breathe, to stay present, to maintain form when everything in you wants to rush or panic. Over time, you become comfortable operating while uncomfortable. That capability transfers directly into leadership moments under pressure.
• Practising stress deliberately – Pilots train in simulators. Leaders rarely do. Yet leadership is full of situations that can be rehearsed: difficult conversations, public challenge, decision-making with incomplete information, holding your ground respectfully. By seeking out controlled discomfort, leaders build familiarity with stress rather than being surprised by it. Response is a muscle — it only develops when it is used.

Why this matters for your team

All of this matters because leaders set the emotional tone for their teams, whether they intend to or not.

People take their cues from how leaders behave when things go wrong. If the leader panics, the team panics. If the leader blames, the team hides. If the leader pauses, thinks, and responds, the team follows suit.

A reaction is automatic.

A response is chosen.

Leaders who remain trapped in reaction loops suppress information, damage trust, and slowly erode the capability they are meant to lead. Leaders who can move to response create environments where problems surface early, decisions improve, and people grow.

But there is an important balance to strike.

Leaders need to move to response quickly, but they cannot appear cold or emotionless. Teams need to see that you recognise the fear, frustration, or disappointment in the room — even as you choose not to be ruled by it. Empathy is not the opposite of composure; it is part of it.

A leader who says, “I can see this is stressful — let’s slow down and work through it” acknowledges emotion while modelling control. They show that feelings are valid, but behaviour must still be thoughtful.

When the bad news comes — and it will — remember that leadership is not defined by what happens to you, but by how you choose to act next.

Pause.

Engage your thinking mind.

Respond.

Your team is watching.