Implications of Proactive and Reactive Thinking

Sports teams are taught how to react based upon proactive thinking.

Proactive and reactive thinking are both necessary to successful relationships and successful management. However, meta thinking can help you learn how to use each of these tools to advantage. Meta thinking is thinking about thinking. In this case, thinking about reactive and proactive thinking. By understanding the difference between the two and how to use them symbiotically, you can improve relationships and management issues.

Reactive Thinking Impact on Relationships

Happy relationships are based on both reactive and proactive thinking -- and knowing when to use them.

Reactive thinking is spontaneous and unplanned. Reactive thinking is based on automatic thoughts produced by schemas or patterns that have become familiar through experience. Schemas allow for quick reactions, both physically and verbally. Schemas are necessary shortcuts for many of the routines of life. See stop sign, put on brakes. The schema developed in driving school becomes even more automatic the more it is practiced. The result is positive. Schemas are negative, however, when they catalyze unhealthy thinking, such as suspiciousness, jealousy, anger, guilt and other negative feelings that are unwarranted based on facts or the reality of a situation.

Proactive Thinking's Impact on Relationships

Proactive thinking requires recognizing and thinking about patterns. Proactive thinking leads to planning and strategy. Proactive thinking considers possibilities and determines appropriate reactions before the stimulus occurs. Proactive thinking in relationships requires work. It requires awareness of family of origin patterns and self-awareness, including biases and weaknesses. Proactive thinking, according to Jim Wheeler, requires a knowledge of our own trigger words and an assessment of the validity of our reactions to those triggers. Proactive thinkers develop healthy reactive thinking skills.

Reactive Thinking"s Impact on Management

Reactive thinkers are often late due to acting on impulse rather than acting according to plan.

Everyone is a manager. A manager of time, a manager of money, and a manager of people. The scale may be as small as a family or friendship or as large as a multibillion-dollar company. The difference is a matter of quantity. The impact of reactive thinking is the same. Reactive thinking lacks planning; therefore, reactive thinkers are apt to run out of money, run out of time or always be late and come into conflict with people in their lives.

Proactive Thinking's Impact on Management

Proactive thinking leads to success in management of personal lives as well as business. Proactive thinkers consider possibilities, study trends and analyze outcomes. Proactive thinkers make decisions based upon data. Even those who attribute a successful decision to a feeling they had will realize, with careful evaluation, that those feelings are generally based on acquired information that is processed in the subconscious. Sports coaches are prime examples of proactive thinkers who plan reactive thinking. Through hours and hours of viewing video of their opponents in games and many hours of coaching their team, coaches develop a sense of what might happen and they plan how to respond.

References

• The Computer Technology Documentation Project: Proactive vs Reactive Management
• Proactive Change: Proactve vs.. Reactive Thinking
• "The Power of Innovative Thinking: Let New Ideas Lead You to Success"; Jim Wheeler; 1998