Your days feel like a tornado of pop-up notifications, meetings, fire drills, and half-finished priorities. Everyone’s reacting fast but solving the same problems over and over again. You keep trying to get ahead, but the swirl just keeps spinning.
Reactivity is human. It’s where our brains are wired to go when we feel anxious, overwhelmed, or frustrated. Thinking narrows. We default to black-and-white judgments, recycled solutions, and hot stove learning (e.g., “I don’t know exactly what went wrong on that project, but I’ll tell you one thing: I’m never working with Steve again.”).
In this state, we don’t reflect. We don’t challenge assumptions. We rely on habit, avoid risk, and get burnt out on rinse-and-repeat work.
But here’s the shift: You don’t have to avoid the swirl, you just need to interrupt it.
Notice it. Help yourself and your team pause. And then build new habits that bring everyone back to healthier ways of thinking.
When you build these moments into your culture, you don’t just reduce stress - you unlock creativity, ownership, and innovation.
You can’t eliminate the swirl, but you can lead yourself and your team out of it. Start here.
When the team is stuck in frantic mode, don’t push harder, pause smarter. Choose a recurring moment each week (start of a staff meeting, end of a day, Wednesday lunch) to ask one simple question: “What’s something we’re reacting to that needs a healthier response?”
Let the team identify these occurrences themselves. Even five minutes of naming the pattern can loosen its grip and help everyone identify them earlier in the process.
When your team is stuck in reactive mode, the fastest way out isn’t to move faster, it’s to think better. Start collecting and using better questions - the kind that bring curiosity back online, spark perspective, and open up new pathways. You don’t need to ask them all. Just pick one that fits the moment.
Try these with yourself or your team:
The right question can be the pattern interrupt that shifts a meeting, a mindset, or a decision. Don’t just solve the problem; change the way your team thinks about solving it.
When people are in swirl mode, they fall into the trap of blame, helplessness, and rescuing.
Ask:
You don’t have to have all the answers. You just need to create the space for better thinking to emerge.
The swirl steals your sharpest thinking. It burns people out, breeds blame, helplessness, and heroing, and traps your team in the same cycles. Leadership isn’t about doing more, it’s about seeing differently.
When you learn to pause and think in healthier ways, you don’t just put out fires. You reclaim your energy, your clarity, and your power to move forward on purpose.