A common buzz word in the corporate world is “leadership.” I know you probably think you’ve heard it all when it comes to this popular topic, but I’m telling you: the discussion that I had with Jackie Jenkins-Scott about responsive leadership will really open your eyes to more effective ways to run a business or lead a team.
Jackie came out with a brand new book last month called The 7 Secrets of Responsive Leadership: Drive Change, Manage Transitions, and Help Any Organization Turn Around. In it, her three decades of experience 
as a senior and executive leader in public health, higher education, and corporate nonprofit boards is truly apparent.
Defining Responsive Leadership
I wanted to start off the conversation by asking Jackie for her definition of responsive leadership. She replied, “For me, responsive leadership [happens when] the basis of our decisions as a leader is the humanity of the company [or] organization.” I wanted to learn more, so I decided to delve deeper into that definition by asking Jackie about the four characteristics of responsive leadership that she covers in her book.
The Four Characteristics of Responsive Leadership
According to Jackie, responsive leaders wear their values on their sleeves. Four of the attributes that make a responsive leader are curiosity, humility, empathy, and resilience.
Curiosity: “As responsive leaders, we’re not only curious about the world around us, about our competitors, but we’re also curious about what drives people, what drives the organization, and how we can use that to learn and grow,” Jackie explained. She then highlighted that this curiosity makes us continuous learners and that it’s impossible to be an innovative leader if you lack this critical attribute.
Humility: Jackie said, “As leaders, we are not here alone. We can’t do it alone. We are the bridge between those that came before us […] and those who will come after us.” This attribute is all about understanding how much we have to learn from others in order to grow.
Empathy: “Even if we can’t walk in someone else’s shoes, we can try to understand, and that will help us as we’re making our decisions as leaders,” she reminded me. I agreed that this is an important aspect of good leadership, especially if we desire to build a bond with our team and create a sense of loyalty among them.
Resilience: For the fourth attribute, resilience, Jackie explained that some “people call it grit, but [it’s] the ability to recover quickly as leaders, as companies, and as organizations.” This attribute is all about our ability to get back up even when we go through the lows of business.
Unveiling Some of the Secrets
Next, I asked Jackie to give me a bit of an overview of some of the responsive leadership secrets that she covers in her book. The first secret that came to my mind after reading the book was “Compete Well By Leading With Heart” — it had struck a chord with me — so that’s where we began.
Compete Well by Leading with Heart
I started by bringing up a scenario that I remembered reading about in her book. What about leaders who invest so much in the people they lead and so much in the organization that they never want to leave? Doesn’t leading with heart make it difficult to make wise decisions for your own career? Or can it cause you to let your team walk all over you?
Keep Your Bags Packed
Speaking of whether to stay or go, we moved on to the next secret: “keeping your bags packed.” Jackie shared a quick story about a man named John Boom who gave a talk about this very topic when Jackie was a graduate student. “What he told us […] has stuck with me for my entire career– that we all will experience some points in our leadership journey where our values are going to be challenged,” and keeping our bags packed is a mentality that says, “I’m willing to walk away because my integrity has been put on the line.”
Jackie believes that this mentality will help us to do what’s best for the company and for ourselves. Keeping our bags packed also involves taking a deeper look at the humanity of the organization. She highlighted, “When my values are compromised, then I have to have the courage” to leave because my own humanity demands it — my own values demand it.
Look for Opposition
In the business world, I know that we all try our best to avoid opposition, even if we don’t realize that we’re doing so. But in her book, Jackie advises that we seek it out. This interested me, so I asked her to explain a little bit more about the secret, “look for opposition.”
Jackie explained, “Opposition helps us to fine-tune our product. It helps us to understand our product. It helps us to be able to explain the issue or the situation.” And this comes from not only looking for opposition but understanding it. There will always be a certain percentage of people in any company or organization who oppose, and a percentage of those who “oppose for good reason.”
According to Jackie, if we listen to them and try to understand what those reasons are, they may help us to make a better product, develop a better policy, or implement a better project. This is the essence of involvement and engagement from our teams. So, she says that understanding the opposition is very, very important to the successful implementation of any business decision.
Check Out the Podcast for More on These Leadership Secrets
If you’re interested in hearing more about Jackie Jenkins-Scott’s secrets for responsive leadership, go give the podcast a listen because, as always, this article is just an excerpt from a much more in-depth conversation that I think you’ll learn a lot from. Or, go pick up Jackie’s book, The 7 Secrets of Responsive Leadership: Drive Change, Manage Transitions, and Help Any Organization Turn Around, and give it a read.
Listen to the full episode 👇