--- title: "Urgency Isn't Leadership. It's Addiction: Jennifer Recla on the mindset breaking your team — The Coordination Tax" description: "Jennifer Recla — leadership coach who has worked with hundreds of leaders across nonprofits, mission-driven organizations, and large financial institutions — on the urgency mindset behind most organizational chaos, and why most leaders have no idea how much of it they're creating themselves." url: https://www.in-parallel.com/podcast/urgency-isnt-leadership-its-addiction-jennifer-recla --- Leadership Insights # Urgency Isn't Leadership. It's Addiction: Jennifer Recla on the mindset breaking your team Episode notes ## The conversation, captured **Date** September 22, 2026 **Participants** Kristian Luoma Jennifer Recla The Coordination Tax is a podcast by In Parallel about what actually breaks down when teams stop sharing the same reality. In this episode, host Kristian Luoma sits down with Jennifer Recla — leadership coach, trainer, and founder of Recla Coaching & Consulting, who has spent fifteen years working with hundreds of leaders across nonprofits, mission-driven organizations, and large financial institutions. Her argument is that most of what feels like a busy workday is not a workload problem at all. It is a mindset problem — the belief that everything is urgent — and most leaders have no idea how much of the chaos in their teams they are personally creating. The conversation runs from that mindset and the diagnostics she uses to find it, through what happens to a team that cannot read its leader, to managing up as a two-way skill, and closes on AI, clarity, and the four questions every leader should ask this week. ### Summary - It doesn't start with a behaviour, it starts with a mindset. The urgency mindset — everything must be answered now — produces the calls at all hours, the weekend emails, the raised voices, and the interrupting. - Coaching starts with workload, not strategy. Most leaders arrive exhausted, with no time to think, no time for strategy, and no time to develop themselves or anyone else. - Strengths come before systems: Jennifer uses CliftonStrengths to find what a leader can lean on to sustain a healthier schedule, because the leader is the role model — your team watches what you do, not what you tell them to do. - Emails and notifications are the biggest time suck, and they run on a false sense of urgency. Three experiments: turn notifications off, batch email to two or three checks a day, and hold a weekly planning meeting with yourself. - The weekly planning meeting is simple and it is gold. Zoom out, sort what genuinely needs you from what can be delegated or moved, and protect the white space for thinking, visioning, and reflecting. - Delegation has a dual benefit — it frees the leader's mental, emotional, and physical capacity, and it tells the team they're trusted, which is motivating and developmental at the same time. - The urgency mindset index runs low urgency → strong urgency → urgency addiction. Most leaders land in strong. Measure again three to six months later. - When a team can't read its leader, people split two ways: some shut down, retreat to what they enjoy, and go quiet until the deadline is missed; others speed up, and speeding up is how mistakes get made. A third group starts updating their résumé. - The ripple travels. No team works in a vacuum, so the chaos lands on adjacent teams and, eventually, on customers. - Managing up is a two-way skill: helping your leader uncover what they actually mean — unclear expectations, competing priorities, or the thing they said two weeks ago that contradicts what they said this week. - Done occasionally it strengthens trust. Done constantly it erodes it, and it starts to raise the question of who is leading here. - All work is about relationships. Tasks and responsibilities matter, but they cannot come at the expense of the relationships that drive motivation and productivity. - Constraint breeds invention: in nonprofits and smaller organizations, limited resources, older technology, and regulations nobody can change produce more creativity than better-resourced institutions manage. - The yo-yo problem: leaders with few layers below them swing between the strategic view and the weeds — which is micromanaging by another name, and a structural trap rather than a character flaw. - What mission-driven organizations do better is treat values and people as the number one asset — and with AI arriving, people skills need to go up, not down. We are not cogs in a wheel. - Three things a clarity-creating leader does: ask thoughtful questions and actually listen; talk about vision and goals constantly rather than once a year; ask for feedback, thank people for it, and close the loop on what happened to it. - The four questions to ask this week: how am I supporting you, what do you need more or less of from me, when did you not feel supported by me, and are you getting mixed messages from me? Stay curious, don't get defensive, and bring prompts — "everything's fine" is rarely the whole answer. ### What was discussed Why leaders create chaos — mindset, not behavior Key insight - Jennifer resists the idea that every problem is a leadership problem — it's more complex — while holding that leaders have a huge influence on how people react and respond. - The consistent pattern across organizations isn't a single behaviour, it's a mindset - everything is urgent, everything must be answered immediately. The urgency mindset — what it actually looks like Key insight - Calls at all hours, emails on weekends, replies expected within minutes. - More unregulated emotions — raised voices, interrupting — because everything is being treated as an emergency. - Each response is rational for the individual, and together they produce confused priorities and chaos. The first diagnostic — audit your workload Key insight - Workload first. Most leaders arrive exhausted with no time to think, to work on strategy, or to develop themselves and others. - Separate what is genuinely urgent — stop what you're doing right now — from what is important. - CliftonStrengths to find what the leader can lean on while building a more sustainable system around themselves. - The leader is the role model. Working all hours while telling the team not to teaches the team the opposite lesson. Why emails and notifications are the biggest time suck Highlight - Leaders answer email all day instead of batching it, and sit in meetings with every notification live. - Three experiments — notifications off, email in two or three batches a day, and a weekly planning meeting with yourself. - The weekly meeting - zoom out, decide what must have you, what can be delegated, what can move, then block the white space for thinking and strategy. - Delegation frees capacity and signals trust, which grows the person receiving it. A leader who always replies within a minute never leaves room for anyone else to pick it up. The urgency mindset index — where do you land? Highlight - Three bands — low urgency mindset, strong urgency mindset, urgency addiction. - Most leaders measure into the strong band, which is where the work is. - Re-measure at three to six months to see whether importance has started winning over urgency. Side effects when the team can't read the leader Story - Some people shut down — they retreat to work that suits their strengths, or step back entirely and go quiet until the deadline is missed. - Others speed up to get it all done, and speeding up is how mistakes and omissions happen. - A third response is to start job hunting - time goes into the résumé and the network instead of the work. - No team works in a vacuum, so the effects ripple out to adjacent teams and to customers. Managing up as a two-way skill Key insight - Helping your leader uncover what they really mean — unclear expectations, competing priorities, or a decision that changed without being announced. - Leaders miss things because pressure arrives from peers, their own leader, the board, external stakeholders, and customers at once. Give them the benefit of the doubt. - The shape of the conversation - what do you actually mean, what are the expectations, and how can I support you. - Occasional managing up builds trust. Constant managing up erodes it, and raises the question of who is leading. - All work is about relationships; tasks matter but cannot come at their expense. What smaller and mission-driven organizations get right Key insight - Limited people, older technology, regulations nobody can change, and external politics to navigate. - The constraint produces more creativity and more innovation than better-resourced institutions manage — workarounds built on top of broken systems. - The yo-yo - with few leadership layers below them, senior leaders swing between the strategic view and the weeds, which is micromanaging even when the structure invites it. - Values are genuinely ingrained and people are treated as the number one asset. Every company could borrow that. AI won't replace people — why you need more people skills now Highlight - Jennifer uses AI and is excited by it, and is clear it will not replace people. - That is exactly why people skills need to be ramped up rather than scaled down — we can't treat people as cogs in a wheel. - Kristian's note from In Parallel's own research - organizations using AI more report more coordination work, not less, as everyone can now produce PhD-quality volume. Three things a leader who creates clarity does Highlight - Ask thoughtful questions — not to interrogate, but to understand — then listen and respond to what was actually said. - Talk about vision and goals regularly. Set once a year, they don't survive in a vacuum. - Ask for feedback, thank people for it, and follow up. You don't have to accept all of it, but every piece needs a response. The four questions to ask your team this week Highlight - Go to your direct reports, your peers, and your own leader, and collect information. - How am I supporting you? What do you need more or less of from me? Where was the time you didn't feel supported by me? Are there any mixed messages you're receiving from me? - Stay curious rather than defensive. You are capturing data and looking for themes, not arguing. - Bring two or three concrete prompts, because "everything's fine" is what people say when the question is too big to answer safely. ## Links Jennifer Recla on LinkedIn: [linkedin.com/in/jenniferrecla](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenniferrecla/) Recla Coaching & Consulting: [jenrecla.com](https://www.jenrecla.com/) CliftonStrengths (Gallup): [gallup.com/cliftonstrengths](https://www.gallup.com/cliftonstrengths/) In Parallel: [in-parallel.com](https://www.in-parallel.com/) The Coordination Tax Index 2026: [download the report](https://www.in-parallel.com/coordination-tax/#report) ## Listen [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUqO2u8ozpI) ### Get new episodes in your inbox One email per week on execution intelligence, team coordination, and enterprise AI. No fluff. By subscribing you agree to our [Privacy Policy](https://www.in-parallel.com/privacy-policy). Unsubscribe anytime. 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