Sometimes You're the Windshield

It started with a book. I was reading Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez, a densely researched and eye-opening read about how the world is often unconsciously engineered for the male experience. I recognize that half of the world lives this out every day! This book was recommended to me by our new Data and Insights Manager, Katy Blessing, and I am grateful to her for helping open my eyes.

One passage hit me sideways. It described why passengers, especially women, are more likely to experience motion sickness in cars. The culprit? Not some inner ear imbalance as we have been trained to think, but a lack of anticipatory control. Drivers can anticipate motion and adjust their posture before a turn, braking for a pothole, or just reacting to crazy drivers (I live and drive around Atlanta – we are all crazy drivers). Passengers don’t have the same opportunity. They are stuck in compensatory mode, reacting to forces they didn’t see coming. Their bodies are always a half-second behind.

It made sense immediately and explained once and for all why my wife hates my driving. Of course, the person who turns the wheel knows how to prepare for what’s next. The person staring out the window doesn’t stand a chance. But the passage didn’t stop there. It went deeper. Car seats and head rests are designed for average male body shapes, which means women often sit slightly differently, affecting posture, balance, and even safety. The vehicle may be the same, but the experience is anything but equal. As a side note, the recent innovation of testing female crash test dummies has a flaw: testers are using smaller male dummies rather than ones designed with the female body in mind, making the female fit into the male world rather than designing for women.

The Passenger Seat in Leadership

How often are we, as leaders, stuck in compensatory mode? Reacting to decisions made elsewhere, trying to recover from problems that were already in motion and usually inherited and created by someone else? How often do we sit in metaphorical passenger seats, buffeted by forces we can’t steer through? And how often do we unknowingly place others into that same seat, not designed for them and denying them the chance to anticipate, to prepare, to lead? 

The terms “anticipatory and compensatory control” are concepts from the field of balance and postural adjustments that are used by the central nervous system to help the human body stay upright, to move with purpose, and to recover when surprised. The key is that anticipation comes first, and it’s usually more efficient. The passenger seat metaphor isn’t just about cars. It is about agency. And not just agency in the big, philosophical sense. Agency in the way we hold meetings. In the way we design roles. In the way we lead teams. When we lead with anticipation, we’re steady. When we lead in reaction, we’re scrambling. And sometimes we make others scramble because we failed to anticipate on their behalf.

The body prepares for what it expects. If you’re about to lift something heavy, your core muscles tighten just before your arms move. That’s anticipatory postural adjustment. If someone throws a ball at your head and you duck a second too late, that’s compensatory adjustment, and you get hit. I was a lacrosse official for a long time and the practical difference between a safe and legal body check and one that is vicious, illegal, and unnecessary comes down to whether the player being hit can anticipate the check and brace their body for it. If they can’t, flag down and 2-3 minute non releasable every time!

The same pattern holds in leadership. Some leaders are constantly compensating. They react to staff turnover. They patch policies in student handbooks to outlaw something that happened one time. They hold emergency meetings. It’s not incompetence, it’s survival. Great leaders anticipate. They build margin. They prepare people for change. They communicate before the rumor mill starts turning. They create systems that adjust before the jolt. And when they do have to compensate, they do it from a place of readiness. Because they’ve already built in stability.

What Makes Someone Anticipate?

Back to Invisible Women, I kept reading and came across a reference to a study from BI Norwegian Business School that identified five characteristics of effective leaders. They were drawn from research on about 3,000 professional managers and tracked to well-known personality traits.

1. The ability to withstand pressure and stress
2. The ability to take initiative and communicate clearly
3. The ability to innovate and stay curious
4. The ability to support and include others
5. The ability to set goals and follow through

These line up with what psychologists call the Five Factor Model of personality: emotional stability, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. Anticipatory leaders often score high in openness and conscientiousness. They’re able to imagine what’s coming and organize to meet it. Compensatory leaders often lean on emotional stability and agreeableness. They can recover without losing their center or damaging relationships. Both are essential but the balance between the two is crucial. The best leaders don’t just recover from chaos; they build conditions where chaos shows up less often.

The Windshield Moment

As I was running out to pick up some pizza from our favorite Greek pizza place (they were out of galaktoboureko, but their baklava is an amazing substitute), a song from a long time ago came on the radio. It was Mary Chapin Carpenter’s cover of a Dire Straits song called The Bug (I actually owned the album on CD). This is the song with the great lyric, “Sometimes you’re the windshield. Sometimes you’re the bug,” which is the perfect summary. The driver uses anticipatory control. The bug, sadly, is stuck in compensatory mode.

I laughed. I considered putting the quote in a presentation. Then I committed with an image that might actually gross people out. Still deciding whether to dial it back.

I want to start asking the question in meetings, “where can we be the windshield and how can we minimize the times we are the bug?” How can we design experiences for others and give them the view from a driver’s seat designed for them rather than surprising them with hard turns and motion sickness? Leading with anticipation helps people stay balanced. Leading with reaction makes people scramble to recover.

I don’t think there’s anything I can do to help my wife get comfortable in the passenger seat (my driving is already perfect as it is!). The good news is her Jeep is way cooler than my Prius and has a much better sound system, so she drives most of the time anyway.