Hit the pause button so you and your team can fast forward

The coaching journey

The coach starts with two questions. The first is to describe how he typically approaches challenges. Pushed to reflect on this, Jan uses words that feel surprising and misaligned with his deeper intentions as a leader. His approach can be rushed, he says. His default response in the face of uncertainty is to act fast. Jan realizes that his impulse for instant solutions characterizes everything he does. When one solution fails to deliver, he quickly pivots, seeking new tools to achieve the “certainty” that he craves. Certainty to Jan is the same as knowledge. Delving deeper with his coach, Jan realizes that, to him, knowledge and certainty equate to success. These are breakthrough realizations. Questioning his leadership style for the first time yields a new understanding. Jan has pursued leadership as a competitive sport. This approach has taken him to the upper echelons of his organization, but at this new level, when his success depends on that of others, it no longer serves him.

The second question centers around the impact that Jan’s leadership behaviors have on his colleagues. He is asked to consider how his energy might influence and shape other people’s responses, perhaps in ways he does not anticipate. Fixated on results, he has never found it necessary to reflect on his own role in the human formula of teamwork and leadership. Jan realizes that his discomfort with uncertainty or a lack of knowledge leads him to rush others into decisions or, worse, into silence. He begins to see that his own inability to pause and sit with perplexity – to hold uncertainty – is having unintended consequences for his team and colleagues. In his rush to find answers, he is closing the space for input and collaboration, and stifling the creativity needed to drive the transformation agenda.

With his coach, Jan is able to frame this positively. These “negative capabilities” form a critical part of his identity, energy, and success as a leader. But unless they are held in check by the concomitant ability to hit pause and to invite conversation and dissent from others, they have the effect of blocking trust.

Armed with this understanding, Jan asks himself new questions. Instead of jumping in and giving direction, what new outcomes might he achieve by pausing, staying a little longer with the ambiguity in the room? What might emerge if he makes room for his team and his colleagues to do the same?

With his coach’s encouragement, Jan decides to experiment in the workplace. Not to deliver radical change nor to become a different person, but to control his well-worn (but now visible) impulse to rush in with answers and directives. Instead of looking outwards and judging others when they fail to perform, he will consciously examine his own behavior to build greater self-awareness. A set of exercises will help bring his unconscious impulses to light. In meetings, he practices being the last to speak, allowing others to outline their thinking while observing his own urge to intervene. Whenever he feels the impulse to take control, he introduces a brief pause, a few seconds to notice what is happening within him, before choosing how to respond.