Reactor vs Creator: How Back Take Back Control as a Leader

By Jaineel Mistry

When every stimulus triggers a reaction, we lose perspective. Slowing down is the counterintuitive way to reclaim attention, exercise judgement and lead consciously.

“I am the bottleneck.” That was how a senior leader in a fast-growing technology business described his working life to me. Every Slack message seemed to demand an urgent reply, and every problem seemed to need him to solve it. He was working hard, yet he could not lead with the clarity and calm that he deeply knew high performance requires.

When every demand requires a reaction

Paul, as I will call him, was not short of ability and competence. He was well respected on the outside, but on the inside it was reactive chaos: overthinking, questioning himself before speaking up in a meeting, overanalysing every interaction. A dip in revenue would trigger hours of mental noise.

You may recognise something of yourself here. Clients expect answers, colleagues need decisions, and mistakes carry a heavy cost. In a high-stakes role, you cannot simply step away because your mind is busy. I offer a shift you can make in an instant, one that saves hours of time and energy in the longer term and leads to better outcomes.

You may recognise something of yourself here. Clients expect answers, colleagues need decisions, and mistakes carry a heavy cost. In a high-stakes role, you cannot simply step away because your mind is busy. I offer a shift you can make in an instant and save you hours of time and energy in the longer term with greater outcomes.

In my book, Lead From Within, I describe the two ways of operating: the Reactor and the Creator. The Reactor’s attention and behaviour are pulled around by whatever happens outside or by thoughts within their own mind. The Creator notices the same demands from outside, or thoughts from within, and chooses how to respond to them.

Reactors are often capable leaders running at a pace that leaves no space to breathe and become aware. Both modes live within you, and you can move between them several times in a single meeting.

Being a Reactor has a cost

The cost reaches well beyond the time spent on one message. An abrupt reply can close down a useful conversation. Repeated intervention teaches a team to wait for your approval. An anxious change of direction creates work that later has to be undone, costing time and resources. Each reaction feels small, and together they shape how your team and organisation behave.

There is a biological cost too. Neuroscientist Amy Arnsten’s research showed that even relatively mild stress can rapidly impair the part of the brain responsible for planning, impulse control and flexible decision-making, shifting control towards more reflexive, habitual responses. You do not need science to prove this to you, because we have all been there.

AI is raising the stakes. As tools make every answer faster, the expectation of a faster reply follows, and the stimulus keeps arriving. When analysis is cheap, what remains scarce is the human judgement and presence of the person making the call, and the energy you bring to leading others.

So when someone suggests slowing down, your first thought may be: how could I possibly have time for that? It is a fair question. As a former management consultant, I would have asked the same question.

Slowing down begins with something more accessible than clearing your calendar. It means noticing the pace of your mind and creating enough presence to choose your response.

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” These words are often attributed to the Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl.

Rise above the noise

Imagine taking a lift up the tallest skyscraper in your closest city. Before you head up, it is hectic on the roads, with people, cyclists and traffic everywhere.

What happens when you take the lift to the top? The noise is still there, but your relationship to it has changed.

This is what slowing down offers: a lift up to a higher level of awareness. The deadlines, emails, responses and decisions do not go away. But from this place of calm and clarity, you are able to lead and manage them more effectively.

Psychologists Igor Grossmann, Ethan Kross and their colleagues have spent years studying what happens when people step back from a problem and view it as an outside observer would, rather than staying immersed inside it. Their research shows that this distance makes people wiser and calmer, cutting through the overthinking.

As you have probably experienced, we are often wiser about other people’s problems than our own, a pattern researchers call Solomon’s Paradox, and stepping back is what closes that gap, allowing us to see our own lives or a situation with the same clarity we naturally bring to someone else’s.

An email arrives questioning your recommendation. Your chest tightens and you begin drafting a defensive reply. From inside the reaction, sending it feels necessary. From a little higher up, you might notice that you have read a request for clarification as a challenge to your competence. That awareness changes what becomes possible. Rising higher does not remove the pressure. It changes where you stand as you respond to it.

Speed alone tells us very little about the quality of the leadership behind it. A Creator can still respond to a crisis within minutes. The difference is whether that response comes from conscious judgement or an automatic reactive pattern.

Three practices to shift from Reactor to Creator

Rising higher becomes practical through three habits.

1. Take a breath and notice your state. Before reacting to an email or to what someone is saying on a call, breathe and notice what is happening within you. Are you frustrated, anxious, defensive or afraid of disappointing someone? There is a difference between experiencing frustration and allowing frustration to write your next email. Ask yourself: what am I feeling, and how is it affecting how I read this situation?
2. Direct your attention. Whatever arrives first can easily become your priority, yet the newest request may have little connection with your most important contribution. Ask: where is my attention right now, and where would it be most useful? You might need to address an immediate risk, give a colleague your full attention, or return to the decision you have been avoiding.
3. Return to the present. A difficult conversation can follow you into the next meeting, and so can a disappointing result or the anticipation of a problem that has yet to happen. Notice when you are carrying one situation into another, and bring your attention back to the room you are in. Each habit takes seconds. Together they interrupt the pattern before it runs.

Make the space part of your day

Paul simply practised box breathing between meetings, which shifted his state in a matter of seconds. He also made space in the morning for some stillness before looking at his phone or any other stimulus, and it made a huge difference to the way he responded at home and work.

You can start with two to five minutes before opening your inbox. Sit still, let your breathing settle, and ask: what needs my best attention today? That gives you a chance to set direction before absorbing everyone else’s.

During the day, use the 5-Second Conscious Pause. Before replying to a provocative message or entering a difficult conversation, stop briefly. Take a slow breath. Feel your feet on the ground. Notice where your attention has gone. Ask: what do I want to create through my next response?

Five seconds will not resolve every pressure. It gives you a starting point for choosing differently, and repeated daily it becomes a habit that your team will feel before they can name it.

Conclusion

You cannot determine every market movement, client response or business outcome. You can notice your reaction and choose your next action. AI can outdo you at particular tasks, and it cannot be you, the person accountable for your choices and relationships. You will still react sometimes. We all do. Tomorrow, before you open your inbox, allow yourself to close your eyes, take a deep breath, and climb the elevator to a higher state of mind. Respond and lead from this space of calm, clarity and true power. This is what I call Leading From Within.

About the Author

Jaineel Mistry is an Executive Coach and the Founder of Thriving Scholar, where he has coached hundreds of driven professionals, entrepreneurs, founders and C-suite executives. He brings 12 years of leadership experience in the management consulting industry. His debut book, Lead From Within: 9 Shifts to Unlock Your True Self and Step Into Authentic Leadership, is available from Amazon and other retailers from 5 November 2026.