Stop Confusing Urgent With Important: A Leadership Guide to Reactive Culture

I used to drop everything the moment a client’s name showed up in my inbox. Years ago, this was my way of working every day.  I see this so often with my high-performing clients. Recently I had a client who experienced this every second of every day.

Didn't matter what she was working on. Presentation prep, a coaching conversation, deep project work; it all stopped. She'd panic and feel the need to respond within seconds, as if this were the highest priority, while everything else was dropped. This person’s physiological response was heightened, and they were operating from stress.

Meanwhile, someone else copied on that same email, someone on the back end, had already handled it. Turned out it didn't need to be done immediately, but everyone copied on the email was scrambling to get an answer quickly.

This happens constantly with the leaders I coach. And it's costing them more than they realize.

The Pop Up Problem

I've been on calls with clients where we're screen sharing, and I watch notifications pop up in real time. To-do reminders, Teams messages. Email pop-ups at the bottom of the screen. Sometimes it’s even a phone call or text because notifications are on. This is where we start working on the skills of productivity, time management, and prioritization in a simple structure. This allows them to work more clearly, calmly, and free up space to do what they are here to do: LEAD.

Here's what the research says: your brain cannot perform two complex cognitive tasks at the same time. What feels like multitasking is actually rapid task-switching, and each switch pulls you further from your focus and rhythm. The more you feed that pattern, the more your brain starts seeking more interruptions. It’s a dopamine hit.

It's the same mechanism as a slot machine. Or scrolling TikTok. Each ping gives you a small dopamine hit, and your brain starts craving the next one. That's the neuroscience. So if you find yourself at times addicted to your phone, whether it’s texts, Teams messages, or emails, it’s there by design.

If you're in a meeting with your notification sounds on, you're telling the person across from you that whatever might pop up on your phone could be more important than what’s being discussed. Turn the sound off or put it on Do Not Disturb.

The Meaning We Assign

For years, I did this to myself. A proposal request from a prospective client would come in, and I'd assign it the highest possible urgency, even though closing new business was already my top priority as a seller. I never asked when they actually needed it.

The day I started asking, everything changed. I'd find out someone was leaving for vacation the following week and didn't need my response for two more weeks. Suddenly I had room to plan instead of react in the moment and assign urgency to something that wasn’t truly urgent.

I see this constantly with Teams messages. People treat every notification like a true fire. When I ask, "How do you know this is the most urgent thing on your plate right now?", most can't answer. They're assigning meaning based on the sender's title, the subject line, and the tone, without ever confirming it.

The fix is one question: "Is this urgent?" Ask it every time. You'll be surprised how often the answer is no, and how much that question also helps the other person realize they were reacting rather than thinking through what was being asked. That’s influence, and it’s a great way to coach your team to prioritize properly.

What Your Current System Is Actually Giving You

Leaders defend the always-on approach because it comes with real, immediate payoffs. Let's be honest about what they are.

Why being reactive feels good:

• You feel responsive. Every message gets answered fast, which feels like great service and strong leadership. It also adds more email responses to answer.
• You feel busy. A full inbox and a packed notification bar feel like proof you're needed and working hard.
• You avoid the discomfort of saying no. Reacting to everything means you never have to make a judgment call about what matters less. And that feels better than telling someone else their ask is not a priority at the moment.

Those payoffs feel real. They're also short-term, and they come at a cost most leaders never total up.

The cons of staying reactive:

• Your highest-priority work gets pushed to the end of the day, when you're depleted, and it's too late to do it well.
• Your team gets less of you. Coaching, one-on-ones, and development conversations are the first things to get bumped when everything else feels urgent. Your team feels like they never get the time with you that they so desperately want and need.
• You train your team to interrupt you, because every fast response teaches people that pinging you works. You’ll respond immediately.
• You burn out faster because task-switching all day is more cognitively costly than deep, focused work, even if it feels easier in the moment.

Once a client sees that list side by side, the choice usually gets a lot clearer.

Why You "Don't Have Time" to Be Strategic

I hear this from so many leaders early on in the coaching process. They're too buried in the work to step back and lead.

My response is always the same: where are you making the time?

Because no one ever finds time, you need to make it.  Leading and coaching your team is the job, not the reward you get to after everything else is done. When you're heads down doing the work instead of developing the people who report to you, you keep your team small and burn yourself out in the process.

My Top Rules for Getting Out of Reactive Mode

1. Turn off your notification sounds. All of them, during focused work and during meetings with people. A ping during a one-on-one tells the person in front of you they aren't the priority.
2. Tell your team exactly how you want to be reached when something is genuinely time-sensitive. One channel that works best, not five. The best leaders I know have 1 preferred communication channel, and their team knows how to reach them for help.
3. If a request comes in via Teams or text, follow up with an email so nothing gets lost.
4. Ask "is this urgent?" before you react to anything. Then ask "when is this needed by?" Most of the time, you'll get more room than you assumed.
5. List everything that needs to get done that week, and calendarize it immediately. Not mentally. On the calendar.
6. Color-code your calendar so you can see at a glance how much time is going to email, project work, and coaching your people.
7. Get rid of every tentative meeting on your calendar. Accept it or decline it. "Maybe I'll show up if I have time" is how your highest priorities disappear week after week.
8. White space on your calendar is not free time. It's an invitation for someone else to fill it. If you have a block set aside to work on a strategic project or coach a direct report, that block is the meeting. Protect it like one.

What Changes

I had a client who quickly put these boundaries in place. Within weeks she had time back, real time, and she used it to coach her team, travel with them, and help them build their own communication and time management skills.

As her team grew, she didn't get more buried. She got more strategic because she'd already built the foundation that her highest-value work is developing people, not doing everything herself.

That's the shift. Boundaries don’t slow you down, but help you lead.

If you're not sure how close you are to burning out from the constant push-pull of doing the work while developing your team, I put together a quick assessment that will show you exactly where you stand on the burnout levels and what to do about it. Take the FREE Burnout Risk Quiz.