Proactivity is Response Ability
Proactivity is Response Ability
Proactivity is Response Ability
Proactivity is Response Ability
Proactivity is more than merely taking initiative. It means that as human beings, we are responsible for our own lives. We have the initiative and the responsibility to make things happen.
It’s at least 93.7% their fault! Again!
You’ve told them, I’ve told them, we’ve all told them and it is not making a difference.
This is a common theme in all of life and work. We clearly see the mistakes others are making. It impacts us. It can make us want to give up.
Sometimes we’re right about their mistakes and sometimes we’re not. Even when we thought we were 93.7% sure.
Focusing on the mistakes of others, whether perceived or real, prevents us from effectively leading others in our life and work.
As image bearers of God we are all given agency. Agency is the power to respond to any stimulus — positive or negative — with an independent response that improves the situation, making life better for everyone involved. Yes, for everyone, including the person who made the initial mistake.
Proactive agency enables leaders to define reality and offer hope in the face of difficult circumstances — taking those they serve from where they are to where they need to go.
Stephen Covey defines proactivity in chapter 1 of his bestselling book, 7 Habits Of Highly Effective Effective People.
Proactivity Defined
Proactivity is more than merely taking initiative. It means that as human beings, we are responsible for our own lives. Our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions. We can subordinate feelings to values. We have the initiative and the responsibility to make things happen.
“Response-ability”
Look at the word responsibility—“response-ability”—the ability to choose your response. Highly proactive people recognize that responsibility. They do not blame circumstances, conditions, or conditioning for their behavior. Their behavior is a product of their own conscious choice, based on values, rather than a product of their conditions, based on feeling.
Because we are, by nature, proactive, if our lives are a function of conditioning and conditions, it is because we have, by conscious decision or by default, chosen to empower those things to control us. In making such a choice, we become reactive.
Reactive people are often affected by their physical environment. If the weather is good, they feel good. If it isn’t, it affects their attitude and their performance. Proactive people can carry their own weather with them. Whether it rains or shines makes no difference to them. They are value driven; and if their value is to produce good quality work, it isn’t a function of whether the weather is conducive to it or not.
Reactive people are also affected by their social environment, by the “social weather.” When people treat them well, they feel well; when people don’t, they become defensive or protective.
Reactive people build their emotional lives around the behavior of others, empowering the weaknesses of other people to control them.
The ability to subordinate an impulse to a value is the essence of the proactive person. Reactive people are driven by feelings, by circumstances, by conditions, by their environment. Proactive people are driven by values—carefully thought about, selected, and internalized values.
Proactive people are still influenced by external stimuli, whether physical, social, or psychological. But their response to the stimuli, conscious or unconscious, is a value-based choice or response.
Towards the end of the chapter Covey defines the essence of proactivity.
Making & Keeping Commitments
At the very heart of our Circle of Influence is our ability to make and keep commitments and promises. The commitments we make to ourselves and to others, and our integrity to those commitments, are the essence and clearest manifestation of our proactivity.
It is also the essence of our growth. Through our human endowments of self-awareness and conscience, we become conscious of areas of weakness, areas for improvement, areas of talent that could be developed, areas that need to be changed or eliminated from our lives. Then, as we recognize and use our imagination and independent will to act on that awareness—making promises, setting goals, and being true to them—we build the strength of character, the being, that makes possible every other positive thing in our lives.
It is here that we find two ways to put ourselves in control of our lives immediately. We can make a promise—and keep it. Or we can set a goal—and work to achieve it. As we make and keep commitments, even small commitments, we begin to establish an inner integrity that gives us the awareness of self-control and the courage and strength to accept more of the responsibility for our own lives. By making and keeping promises to ourselves and others, little by little, our honor becomes greater than our moods.
The power to make and keep commitments to ourselves is the essence of developing the basic habits of effectiveness. Knowledge, skill, and desire are all within our control. We can work on any one to improve the balance of the three. As the area of intersection becomes larger, we more deeply internalize the principles upon which the habits are based and create the strength of character to move us in a balanced way toward increasing effectiveness in our lives.
Belief Determines Behavior
What you believe determines what you do and how you do it. And, since belief determines action, those who follow Jesus have a distinct advantage when it comes to being proactive agents for good.
“You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit — fruit that will last — and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you.” – John 15:16
God first chose us; we did not first choose God. Belief that we are chosen by God is essential. This belief empowers us to live a life of agency and advocacy for others because the source of our agency, and any result that comes from it, is entirely controlled by God.
Jesus, the source of all life, appointed us to act for the good of others — bearing fruit that will last.
Belief that we are connected to Jesus — an unlimited source — propels us to ask for hope, guidance, and the power to act even in the most difficult of circumstances.
Values Guide Our Actions
One of Covey’s greatest emphases in the first chapter is that proactive people are driven by values. In fact, Covey makes this point over 20 times in the first chapter. Our values must be time-tested if we are going to respond positively to outside influences.
“Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it — not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it — they will be blessed in what they do.” – James 1:22-25
The perfect source of values is God’s word, and the perfect way to instill values in our hearts and minds is to do what God’s word says. Notice this repetition of do and does in these powerful verses. It is in the proactive doing that we demonstrate what we believe and value.
Proactivity: The 30 Day Test
Covey gives us this fantastic challenge.
I would challenge you to test the principle of proactivity for thirty days. Simply try it and see what happens. For thirty days work only in your Circle of Influence. Make small commitments and keep them. Be a light, not a judge. Be a model, not a critic. Be part of the solution, not part of the problem.
Try it in your marriage, in your family, in your job. Don’t argue for other people’s weaknesses. Don’t argue for your own. When you make a mistake, admit it, correct it, and learn from it—immediately. Don’t get into a blaming, accusing mode. Work on things you have control over.
Let’s go and be lights, modeling for others solutions that renew those we serve and the world around us.
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It’s at least 93.7% their fault! Again!
You’ve told them, I’ve told them, we’ve all told them and it is not making a difference.
This is a common theme in all of life and work. We clearly see the mistakes others are making. It impacts us. It can make us want to give up.
Sometimes we’re right about their mistakes and sometimes we’re not. Even when we thought we were 93.7% sure.
Focusing on the mistakes of others, whether perceived or real, prevents us from effectively leading others in our life and work.
As image bearers of God we are all given agency. Agency is the power to respond to any stimulus — positive or negative — with an independent response that improves the situation, making life better for everyone involved. Yes, for everyone, including the person who made the initial mistake.
Proactive agency enables leaders to define reality and offer hope in the face of difficult circumstances — taking those they serve from where they are to where they need to go.
Stephen Covey defines proactivity in chapter 1 of his bestselling book, 7 Habits Of Highly Effective Effective People.
Proactivity Defined
Proactivity is more than merely taking initiative. It means that as human beings, we are responsible for our own lives. Our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions. We can subordinate feelings to values. We have the initiative and the responsibility to make things happen.
“Response-ability”
Look at the word responsibility—“response-ability”—the ability to choose your response. Highly proactive people recognize that responsibility. They do not blame circumstances, conditions, or conditioning for their behavior. Their behavior is a product of their own conscious choice, based on values, rather than a product of their conditions, based on feeling.
Because we are, by nature, proactive, if our lives are a function of conditioning and conditions, it is because we have, by conscious decision or by default, chosen to empower those things to control us. In making such a choice, we become reactive.
Reactive people are often affected by their physical environment. If the weather is good, they feel good. If it isn’t, it affects their attitude and their performance. Proactive people can carry their own weather with them. Whether it rains or shines makes no difference to them. They are value driven; and if their value is to produce good quality work, it isn’t a function of whether the weather is conducive to it or not.
Reactive people are also affected by their social environment, by the “social weather.” When people treat them well, they feel well; when people don’t, they become defensive or protective.
Reactive people build their emotional lives around the behavior of others, empowering the weaknesses of other people to control them.
The ability to subordinate an impulse to a value is the essence of the proactive person. Reactive people are driven by feelings, by circumstances, by conditions, by their environment. Proactive people are driven by values—carefully thought about, selected, and internalized values.
Proactive people are still influenced by external stimuli, whether physical, social, or psychological. But their response to the stimuli, conscious or unconscious, is a value-based choice or response.
Towards the end of the chapter Covey defines the essence of proactivity.
Making & Keeping Commitments
At the very heart of our Circle of Influence is our ability to make and keep commitments and promises. The commitments we make to ourselves and to others, and our integrity to those commitments, are the essence and clearest manifestation of our proactivity.
It is also the essence of our growth. Through our human endowments of self-awareness and conscience, we become conscious of areas of weakness, areas for improvement, areas of talent that could be developed, areas that need to be changed or eliminated from our lives. Then, as we recognize and use our imagination and independent will to act on that awareness—making promises, setting goals, and being true to them—we build the strength of character, the being, that makes possible every other positive thing in our lives.
It is here that we find two ways to put ourselves in control of our lives immediately. We can make a promise—and keep it. Or we can set a goal—and work to achieve it. As we make and keep commitments, even small commitments, we begin to establish an inner integrity that gives us the awareness of self-control and the courage and strength to accept more of the responsibility for our own lives. By making and keeping promises to ourselves and others, little by little, our honor becomes greater than our moods.
The power to make and keep commitments to ourselves is the essence of developing the basic habits of effectiveness. Knowledge, skill, and desire are all within our control. We can work on any one to improve the balance of the three. As the area of intersection becomes larger, we more deeply internalize the principles upon which the habits are based and create the strength of character to move us in a balanced way toward increasing effectiveness in our lives.
Belief Determines Behavior
What you believe determines what you do and how you do it. And, since belief determines action, those who follow Jesus have a distinct advantage when it comes to being proactive agents for good.
“You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit — fruit that will last — and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you.” – John 15:16
God first chose us; we did not first choose God. Belief that we are chosen by God is essential. This belief empowers us to live a life of agency and advocacy for others because the source of our agency, and any result that comes from it, is entirely controlled by God.
Jesus, the source of all life, appointed us to act for the good of others — bearing fruit that will last.
Belief that we are connected to Jesus — an unlimited source — propels us to ask for hope, guidance, and the power to act even in the most difficult of circumstances.
Values Guide Our Actions
One of Covey’s greatest emphases in the first chapter is that proactive people are driven by values. In fact, Covey makes this point over 20 times in the first chapter. Our values must be time-tested if we are going to respond positively to outside influences.
“Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it — not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it — they will be blessed in what they do.” – James 1:22-25
The perfect source of values is God’s word, and the perfect way to instill values in our hearts and minds is to do what God’s word says. Notice this repetition of do and does in these powerful verses. It is in the proactive doing that we demonstrate what we believe and value.
Proactivity: The 30 Day Test
Covey gives us this fantastic challenge.
I would challenge you to test the principle of proactivity for thirty days. Simply try it and see what happens. For thirty days work only in your Circle of Influence. Make small commitments and keep them. Be a light, not a judge. Be a model, not a critic. Be part of the solution, not part of the problem.
Try it in your marriage, in your family, in your job. Don’t argue for other people’s weaknesses. Don’t argue for your own. When you make a mistake, admit it, correct it, and learn from it—immediately. Don’t get into a blaming, accusing mode. Work on things you have control over.
Let’s go and be lights, modeling for others solutions that renew those we serve and the world around us.