You start the day knowing your most important priorities. Then an employee needs help, a customer issue escalates, and an unexpected request arrives.
By the end of the day, you have been busy and useful. But the work you intended to accomplish remains untouched.
In recent conversations with 11 HR, talent, and leadership-development professionals, they told me one of the most common leadership issues that they see is their leaders getting stuck in urgency and reactivity. They described their leaders as commonly scrambling, remaining close to execution, and struggling to create space for strategic thinking and developing others.
If this sounds familiar, we need to answer these two questions:
- Why does urgency keep winning?
- And, what can we do about it?
The cost of constantly jumping in
Responding to urgent issues is part of leadership. Sometimes, immediate intervention is exactly what the situation requires.
But when jumping in becomes your default, the costs accumulate. Strategic priorities stall. Your people have fewer opportunities to develop their judgment. Problems keep coming back to you, reinforcing the dependence that makes it difficult to step away.
You may deliver today’s results while leaving your team less equipped to deliver tomorrow’s.
To change this pattern, we need to examine both the demands around us and what makes those demands so difficult to resist.
Why urgency can be difficult to resist
An urgent problem lands in your lap. Before you have fully assessed it, you are answering questions, giving directions, or taking the work on yourself.
What makes this so compelling?
In my work with leaders, I often find that their urgent reactions are well-intended responses that are driven by protective needs: possibly to protect their worth, control, image, or efficiency.
If you need to prove your worth, an urgent problem offers an opportunity to feel useful and needed.
If you need to stay in control, stepping in relieves the uncertainty of letting someone else handle it.
If you need to be seen as competent, solving a familiar problem can feel more comfortable than addressing a strategic question without a clear answer.
If you need to keep things running smoothly, a problem can feel intolerable until it is resolved. You feel compelled to move fast, even when immediate intervention is unnecessary.
These needs can feel automatic (and often subconscious): a tightening in the body, a rush to act, or a sense that you cannot leave the situation alone.
You may know what matters most while feeling pulled toward what provides immediate reassurance.
How to solve for urgency and reactivity
Most leaders caught in urgency already know they should prioritize, delegate, and think strategically. Yet, when an urgent issue appears, they jump in anyway.
When we know what to do but repeatedly struggle to do it, we need to look at what is driving our response.
This is where the difference between horizontal and vertical development becomes useful.
Horizontal development adds knowledge and skills. It helps us learn how to prioritize, delegate, or coach. Think of it as adding tools to our leadership toolbox.
Vertical development upgrades our internal operating system. It changes how we see ourselves, interpret situations, and respond to the demands around us.
Consider a leader who knows how to delegate but feels valuable only when personally solving problems. Teaching another delegation technique leaves that need intact. When urgency calls, the leader is likely to take over again.
Vertical development helps that leader become less dependent on being the problem solver to feel valuable. They begin to find value in developing others’ ability to solve problems—and become more comfortable stepping back.
Repeatedly getting pulled into urgency can signal that our internal operating system needs to mature to meet the demands of our role. We may have the tools, but our protective needs keep pulling us away from using them.
Thus, the ultimate solution is to engage in vertical development efforts. Unfortunately, such efforts are rarely provided in organizations, which is a reason why getting stuck in urgency and reactivity is so common.
But, vertical development is not a quick fix. Let’s explore what we can do in the short-term and in the long-term to rise above our body’s tendencies to step into urgency.
Short-term: A reset for today
The next time an urgent issue pulls at your attention, pause and say:
“How fascinating.”
Conductor and author Benjamin Zander uses this phrase to encourage curiosity about mistakes. I find it useful when something unexpected demands our attention, too.
Say it with curiosity and a little levity. Use the moment of space it creates to ask:
- How serious is this?
- Does it need attention right now?
- Who is best positioned to handle it?
Effective leadership requires us to not be the firefighter, but to be the fire captain: assessing the situation and deciding how to respond.
“How fascinating” can help you make that choice.
Long-term: Upgrading our internal operating system
The immediate reset creates space. The longer-term solution is upgrading the internal operating system that makes urgency so compelling.
Start by reflecting on a recent situation: What did stepping in give me emotionally? What would have felt uncomfortable about stepping back?
Then examine the assumption underneath your response. Does being valuable require being available? Does accountability require personal control?
Test a different response in a situation with manageable stakes. Clarify the outcome, invite someone else to propose an approach, and agree on a check-in. Notice your discomfort without immediately taking over.
Reflection, feedback, coaching, and repeated practice can help you loosen the protective need driving your response.
If you are seeing this across your leaders
Before offering another time-management or delegation course, you need to explore providing something deeper. You need to help leaders awaken to and upgrade their internal operating systems (i.e., employ vertical development efforts).
I help leaders and organizations identify these deeper patterns and develop the capacity to rise above them. If urgency is crowding out the leadership your organization needs, reach out. We can explore what is driving it and where development will make the greatest difference.
