Is Your Proactivity Unintentionally Making You Look Reactive?
3 signals high achievers send that trap them in the "doer" lane and 3 strategic frameworks to help you reposition yourself as the leader you are.
Welcome to Reframed! Work is complex, career advice shouldn’t be.
I’m Ashley Rudolph and I write this newsletter for ambitious people who are ready to step into the next level of their careers. People have said that I share the kind of “real talk” that you only get from a close friend. Advice that feels actionable and helps improve their relationship to work. It’s exactly what I set out to do.
I hope you enjoy today’s edition.
Hello from snowy New York! I spent the weekend trying to take a break from the news cycle by doing cozy things like playing board games, writing this newsletter, making cheese boards, and, of course, taking Ailey to play in the snow.
The “go-getter” habits that got you promoted into leadership unintentionally make you look reactive. Here’s how to fix it and be seen as the right kind of proactive leader.
The Proactivity Trap
There comes a time in a high-achieving leader’s life when they’ll hear seven dreaded words from their manager: “I want you to stop being reactive”.
It’s a punch to the gut and, most times, you aren’t even sure what it means!
Especially if you’re someone who's built their entire career being the person who gets things done: rapid-fire email responses, being willing to jump on any task, and providing your manager with proactive updates before they’re even requested. These traits were the exact behaviors that got you promoted. But suddenly, those superpowers start showing up as a professional scarlet letter: Reactivity.
I’ve felt it firsthand.
As an executive, one of the most annoying habits to coach a senior member of my team out of was the tendency to bombard me with too much information. Here’s why. I spent my days context switching; working with cross-functional team members, preparing information for board meetings, managing 3 teams, and navigating conversations with the exec team (some good, some challenging). Outside of 1:1s with my team, I was laser focused on 2 categories of tasks:
things that were urgent and
things that were directly related to advancing our organizational priorities
Everything else was noise.
So when a senior team member shared everything with me (especially non-actionable status updates) I didn’t think, "Wow, they're so busy!". Instead, I subconsciously started to view them as someone without a filter, incapable of surfacing the right things at the right time.
Eventually, I learned how to coach my team on getting this skill right. Every single person knew exactly what to share, when to share it, and how to escalate information to me in order to get a quick response. It was a dream; not just for my inbox and my calendar, but because I finally saw them owning their roles.
CONTEXT
Why Proactivity Negatively Impacts High Achievers
The pattern of non-productive proactivity almost exclusively affects high achievers. For us, checking a task off a list is euphoric. It feels like a win because, for years, it was. As a star IC, your volume of tasks done proved your value.
But in leadership, the goalposts shift. Proactive updates that aren’t tied to business outcomes start to look like busywork. Or worse, they make you look reactive, like someone who lets small tasks dictate their day rather than business strategy.
If this sounds like you, here’s the good news: you don’t have a proactivity problem. You have a packaging and positioning problem.
Think about it. You already know how to move work forward. You can spot a deadline derailer from a mile away and you know how to inspire a team to act. Those are challenging skills to master and you’ve got them in spades.
In senior leadership, your value isn’t your ability to show you’ve done the day to day work; it’s your ability to rally the people, processes, and systems required to get the work done. Shifting your positioning is much easier than learning to work effectively, it just requires a change in where you deposit your time and attention.
MINDSET SHIFT →
One way to make this shift is to think of trust as currency. Early in your career, you have an “Execution Account.” Every rapid-fire update and completed task is a deposit that builds your reputation as a capable doer. But leadership opens a “Strategic Leadership Account” when you’re promoted into the next level. The trap most high achievers fall into is that they keep trying to fund the first account. Every time you send your manager a granular task update, you’re making an “Execution Account” deposit. When you move up, your manager stops looking at that balance. They start checking the monthly statements on your “Strategic Leadership Account”... and it’s empty.
INSIGHTS
3 Habits That Make You Look Unintentionally Reactive, Instead of Proactive
Here are three times when your proactivity makes you look reactive and unintentionally paints you as less senior than you are.
1. Solving problems that aren’t yours to solve
This might look like jumping in to solve a task or cleaning up a project the moment you see it’s off track. At the executive level, your value isn’t your ability to fix a slide deck or a single formula in a spreadsheet; it’s your ability to build a system where those things get fixed without you. When you “proactively” take the reins, you are reacting to the discomfort of a mess. This type of proactivity is low-leverage. It signals that you don’t know how to delegate or, worse, that you don’t trust your team. This is where I always point people back to a classic: The Eisenhower Matrix.
It’s a simple, four-quadrant framework that leaders have used for decades to stay sane. It reminds us that just because something is Urgent (the mess in front of you) doesn’t mean it is Important (your strategic goals).
When a task lands on your desk or when you’re tempted to snatch a task off someone else’s (lol), run it through the matrix:
Quadrant 1 (Urgent & Important): Do it now. (These are the true “fires.”)
Quadrant 2 (Not Urgent but Important): Schedule it. (This is where “Strategy” lives.)
Quadrant 3 (Urgent but Not Important): Delegate it. (This is the “mess” you’re usually tempted to clean up yourself.)
Quadrant 4 (Neither): Delete it.
When you focus on a Quadrant 3 task, you aren’t saving the day; you’re neglecting Quadrant 1 and 2. It signals that you don’t know how to delegate or, worse, that you don’t trust your team to grow.
2. Sharing too much detail about your work with your manager
We’ve all been there: you had a wildly productive Tuesday, you cleared out your inbox, and sat through at least five grueling meetings. You want your manager to see all that effort. In your mind, you’re providing “transparency” and “accountability”.
But as a senior leader, when you report at the task level, you are essentially asking your manager to do the mental heavy lifting of figuring out why your work matters. If they have to connect the dots for you, they see you as someone who can execute a task list, but not someone who can own the strategy.
So, instead of reporting on what you did, report on how your work laddered up to the organization’s goals. Instead of running through your task list, you’re going to group the small stuff (so it looks intentional) and elevate the big, strategic stuff.
During your next 1:1, if you’re tempted to share a list, try this frame: “I spent about 20% of my time this week on operational efficiencies, ensuring the team has the resources they need to keep our initiatives on track. I spent the rest of my time on [Major Priority X] and [Strategic Outcome Y].”
See the difference? You aren’t just “doing things.” You are maintaining the systems that enable the team to win. You’ve gone from reporting on your busy-ness to reporting on the big picture.
RESOURCES
If you’re stuck on how to position your contributions as a leader, this article in HBR has more great examples about how to frame your work in ways that aren’t execution-focused.
3. Over escalating issues to your manager
You hit a snag and you want to give your boss a “heads up” so they aren’t blindsided. But in leadership, an unnecessary “heads up” often just feels like you’re handing them a hot potato you’re too nervous to hold.
Work is essentially just a series of problems to be solved. If you escalate friction before you’ve attempted to smooth it out yourself, you’re inadvertently signaling that you aren’t ready to own outcomes.
I recommend trying to solve the problem first, then using one of the three filters below to decide how to talk about it. This keeps your manager informed without making them do your job for you:
Information aka The Olivia Pope “It’s Handled” Update: Use this for items your manager specifically asked to stay in the loop on. The heart of this update is: I encountered a problem, I solved it, and here is the result.
How to frame it: “As requested, here’s the update on Project X. We hit a minor roadblock with the vendor, but I got on the phone with them and resolved the issue. We’re still on track to hit our deadline on Friday.”
Why this works: This is SO much better than forwarding an email when you encountered the roadblock! This proves you are strategic and capable of handling “maintenance” without their intervention.
Requests: Use this when you are know the right next steps to take but need them to clear a specific hurdle that is outside your authority.
How to frame it: “I’m currently navigating a resource conflict between Team A and B. I need you to confirm which priority takes precedence so I can reallocate the budget by EOD.”
Why this works: You’re not asking them “What do I do?”. You are asking them to pull a lever only they can pull and proving that you did the research before looping them in.
Escalations: This is for big issues only. The rule here is: never escalate a problem without a proposed solution. You are escalating the decision, not the task. They may go with your proposal or they may have other ideas, but at least you came to the table with something.
How to frame it: “We hit a snag with the Q3 rollout. I’ve analyzed the options and I recommend we delay the launch by 48 hours to ensure the tech is stable. If you agree with this, I just need your sign-off on that pivot.”
Why this works: You’ve done the heavy lifting. You are acting as a partner in leadership, not a direct report looking for instructions.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
One of the biggest breakthroughs in my career was realizing that climbing the ladder is incredibly paradoxical. When you move up, you have to stop doing the very things that got you noticed in the first place. This shift can be disorienting. That’s normal.
Being successful as a leader is so fundamentally different than being a successful IC. It’s been that way since the dawn of professional careers and the modern day workplace post World War II. That’s exactly the moment when MBA programs skyrocketed in popularity. As the post-war economy boomed, organizations became massive and complex. Companies no longer just needed “doers”; they needed a new class of leaders trained in professional management skills like data analysis, decision-making, and relationship building.
Sound familiar?
In recent decades, the internet era, generations of MBAs and managers who passed down their leadership skills, and executive coaches have somewhat democratized access to those critical leadership skills. But the core truth hasn’t changed: these are skills that need to be developed; they are not inherent.
I share this because if this transition feels bumpy, it’s not a “you” thing. These are critical competencies that every leader before you has had to learn, navigate, and master. You can, too.
And if you (or your team) are ready to bridge that gap, let’s talk.
Good luck. See you next week!
Ashley
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This was REALLY good, Ashley!!
this is soo helpful!