6
Pause
You've now learned most of the core BUs you'll need to include in your very own Swiss Army knife of manager excellence. That's a lot of cognitive work. So let's take a quick break before we move onto the next BU.
How was that? While this exercise takes about one minute to complete, most people report feeling significantly refreshed and relaxed. This is the surprising finding we came across in our manager research at LifeLabs Learning: the most productive managers take the time to do … nothing. As lifelong workaholics ourselves, we (the authors) were skeptical about this finding. But there it was again and again. Doing nothing is often the best thing to do. And doing nothing well is a skill. We refer to this deceptively active BU as “Pause.” Despite the overwhelming pressure most of us carry to do more and do it faster, taking time to Pause yields better results.
Let's Pause and Talk About Why Pausing Is So Important for Managers
1. Pausing Creates Sustained Productivity
A delightful paradox of productivity is that people often achieve more when they take the time to do less. It turns out that brains (and bodies) tend to work best in bursts – varying from intense focus to complete rest (Trougakos and Hideg 2009). We refer to this ability to skillfully swing from expanding to recapturing energy as “oscillation competence.” Great managers are great oscillators and help develop oscillation competence in others too.
2. Pausing Sparks Innovation Faster
Where would our understanding of science be today if an apple hadn't fallen on Sir Isaac Newton's head? Did the apple knock the idea of gravity into Newton's mind that day? Not exactly. The insight appeared because Newton spent many hours working on the concept, and then … Paused. Perhaps you haven't made a discovery similar to the magnitude of gravity (yet), but you have likely also had your best ideas pop up at odd times – like those classic mid-shower aha moments. In fact, whenever you are stuck on a problem, have an important decision to make, or want to push yourself and your team to produce innovative thinking faster, intense focus followed by Pause is the best strategy. For even more impressive results, include movement into your Pause time. Research shows that walking while thinking increases creative output by 60% (Oppezzo and Schwartz 2014).
3. Pausing Resolves Conflict Faster
Perhaps the greatest rewards of Pausing are evident in times of conflict. When your stress levels rise, your heart rate accelerates, and your peripheral vision actually narrows – making your attention narrow as well (Williams, Tonymon, and Andersen 1990). This trifecta forces you to focus only on the task in front of you, which can get you stuck on the mental equivalent of the gas pedal. Add anger to the mix, and your need for speed intensifies. More Pause leads to clearer thinking, which leads to less destructive conflict and faster resolution.
Psychologist John Gottman found that, much like in the workplace, Pausing is also one of the best predictors of successful marriages. Gottman is famous for predicting with 93.6% accuracy which couples will stay together and which will break up. He has joked that this skillset makes him an unpopular dinner party guest. That said, it has made him an extraordinarily successful researcher. By studying thousands of hours of couples’ interactions, Gottman identified that Pausing just at the point of conflict escalation was one of the single best predictors of relationship longevity (Gottman 1999). These skillful couples either Paused and de-escalated (apologized, made a joke, spoke more softly) or they called a total timeout.
Take a look at the following conversion, and determine where Mia could have Paused to help the situation. Hint: notice where the conversation escalates and insert the Pause there.
Ouch. There were several opportunities to rescue this conversation, but one moment in particular was begging for a Pause. Did you spot it? Once Mia is able to calm down from this exchange, she wishes she had a magical Pause Button handy too. But since her only time-controlling device is the Do-Over Button, she decides to hit the button and try the conversation again:
There are three types of Pauses the managers we interviewed reported taking regularly, with category names inspired by psychologist Tal Ben-Shahar:
| Micro Pauses (a few seconds or minutes) |
Examples:
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| Meso Pauses (one or more hours) |
Examples:
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| Macro Pauses (one or more days) |
Examples:
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Pausing does not come naturally to people. We humans aren't wired for it. In fact, when people are threatened, our brains’ amygdalae can even go so far as to reroute how we process information. Instead of sending data to your neocortex (the area of the brain responsible for rational thought), the triggered amygdalae activate the limbic system. This response can be so extreme that psychologists refer to it as “amygdala hijacking” – a term popularized by emotion researcher Daniel Goleman (2005). The amygdalae “hijack” people's minds, making them operate in fight-or-flight mode before they fully realize what's happening. In practice, this looks like sweaty palms, a racing heart, and a one-way ticket to Regretsville after certain words fly out of your mouth or off your fingertips. It was a helpful adaptation for our ancestors who used it to react swiftly to saber-toothed tigers. It is a pesky neural system when it kicks in at work.
So, on the one hand, Pausing is nearly impossible once we are “hijacked.” And on the other hand, it is the only way to regain cortical control. How do you navigate the paradox of needing a Pause just when Pausing is most difficult? Gottman found that the most successful couples had a timeout cue (like shouting “avocado!”) to sharply break up a fight. The taxi drivers we mentioned in Chapter 1 learned to Pause by labeling their “honk urge.” The managers we studied also shared a variety of Pausing if-thens that worked for them. For example:
“If I start to hear ringing in my ears and my neck tenses up, I know it's time for me to take a break. Even if I'm in the middle of a sentence, I'll excuse myself and go wash my face to cool off.”
“The other person's voice is a good reminder to just slow everything down. If they start raising their voice, that's my cue to shut up. If they calm down, great. If not, I just say, ‘I'm having a tough time thinking clearly. Can we come back to this tomorrow?’”
“If I notice myself getting defensive, before I say anything I just silently count backwards from 10. Usually, that's enough time for me to think of something better to say.”
To become a great manager faster, start planning your Pauses in advance. Following are some of our favorite examples from the leaders we studied:
As you may have noticed from some of the examples we've shared so far, the Pause BU is even more effective when managers “Pause out loud” – in other words, they show their team that micro, meso, and macro Pauses are normal and important. For many employees, doing nothing seems like a violation of the workplace contract. And yet it is a vital part of bringing out the best in yourself and others. Think of it as addition by subtraction.
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In summary: Take micro, meso, and macro Pauses to increase productivity and creativity, and to reduce unproductive conflict. Pause out loud to normalize and encourage your team to Pause too. To practice this BU right away, take a short Pause before you move onto the next chapter.
 MY LAB REPORT |
Today's Date: |
| My takeaways: | |
| I regularly take the time to Pause: | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 (strongly disagree)(strongly agree) |
| Experiment idea bank: |
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| One small experiment I'll try to increase my score by 1 point: | |
| Post-experiment Learning Extractions: |
Bonus: Want to take your manager skills to the next level? Check out the bonus Inclusion Stations at leaderlab.lifelabslearning.com.