The Power of Pause
“Human freedom involves our capacity to pause, to choose the one response toward which we wish to throw our weight.”
[Rollo May]
I’m sure you are familiar with the phrase “go slow to go fast”. To me, this captures the very essence of the power of pause. Pausing, holding still for a moment and embracing a break can be the differentiator between rushing a decision out of an impulse vs. making an informed decision that is considering all the known facts; between an emotional reaction and a more measured response that mitigates the risk for a given relationship; and between following worn out “ways of doing things”, and embracing and processing new knowledge for the benefit of creating innovative solutions to solve a problem.
Welcome back to Spiegelbild!
Today, I want to shed some light on the different aspects of pause and why understanding its power is so important for leaders and in leadership. First and foremost, pause should not be confused with “emptiness”, a void or a space that needs to be filled. Pause is in itself a powerful means — to enhance brain health by taking a break; improve communication through creating rhythm and pace, and thus aid the comprehension of complex thoughts; and enhance learning by integrating “processing pauses”. Let’s take a closer look at these different types of pauses.
Being busy seems to be the desired state nowadays. It’s almost like a badge of honour that proves you’re giving it your all, all the time. Many of us define ourselves by what we do, which can lead to overdoing, overworking and overproducing. Allowing for downtime does not seem to fit in this picture. But pausing is critically important for our brain health — and for those we are leading.
Our brains can be compared to sponges. They can only take in so much information before they are saturated and need time to process. Allowing your brain to pause now and then makes room for new information to enter. Research has found that taking breaks can improve your mood, boost your performance and increase your ability to concentrate and pay attention. If you don’t allow your brain to pause and refresh, it doesn’t work as efficiently.
Pausing, however, allowing your brain some downtime, doesn’t mean you are totally checked out. In fact, some regions of your brain actually become more active when you aren’t focused on processing information. Scientific studies suggest that this activity is pretty important for our brain health. It may seem a bit contradictory at first, but letting our minds wander, doing less, engaging in activities that don’t require our brains to do much work is essential for our minds to replenish.
For this to work it is important to not confuse “downtime” with “leisure activities”. Going to a museum, reading a book, or socializing with a friend are all great ways to spend free time. But they don’t provide our brains a true pause. Similarly, watching TV, being active on social media or playing games on your phone all require our brains to process information and therefore don’t count as downtime.
Good and useful ways to pause can involve a nature walk, doing simple tasks, or indulging in daydreaming. Paying attention to your senses — listening to the birds, running your hands through grass, or focusing on the scent of a candle or an essential oil — can be especially helpful. The key is to pick something that allows your brain to do very little work and meander. Practicing how to pause and scheduling regular downtime is important and restorative for our brain’s function. [1]
Pausing, and acknowledging the cognitive limitations of our brains, is not only important to support brain health. It’s also crucial for processing information. Inserting pauses as a means to delivering speeches —for instance — is a well-known and documented practice. It appears to be common knowledge that the key messages in a speech are not only conveyed by words, but also by the pauses. This is because the audience cannot absorb information beyond a certain rate.
Breaking up complex thoughts or long sentences into smaller ones, and inserting little breaks in-between, can give rhythm and pace to a speech, and signify a unit of thought. When pauses are used strategically, it allows the speaker to connect emotionally and intellectually with their audience. The listeners feel acknowledged and become part of the communication dynamic as they are provided sufficient time to process and digest what is being said. The more complicated an idea, the more important it is to embrace pause as a means of communication, to slow your rate of providing information to match the listeners’ processing capacity, and enabling them to truly comprehend the knowledge that is being shared. [2]
And finally, pause plays a critical role in the process of learning. Here, again, training horses provides valuable life lessons.
Using pause as a learning tool can mean the difference between “drilling” a certain exercise and “expanding" mental and physical capability. Personally, my goal for training my horses is that I want to equip them with “knowledge” that makes them resilient and keeps them healthy in the long-term. This can mean exposing them to new situations and teaching them to stay calm in unforeseen circumstances — such as a tarp flapping in the wind, a bird flying up from a bush, or a rustling plastic bag — instead of giving in to their flight instinct. Or it can mean training a horse’s athletic abilities, i.e. focus on physical exercises that strengthen certain muscle groups, or introduce new ways of moving.
Regardless whether the focus of training is on my horse’s mental or physical abilities, involving regular pauses is essential for them to process the learning and internalize the new information. If I use pause strategically throughout my training sessions, whatever has been learned is retained easier and in a more sustainable way. As a result I can build on this “knowledge” and progress into more complex training. However, if I get caught up in “doing” a certain exercise, or in other words I drill instead of educate, I often find that I have to start almost from scratch during my next training session. Personally, I can’t find a reason why this experience would not be transferable and relevant for training and educating people in our care.
This is where I come full circle to the beginning of this blog: go slow to go fast. In my experience going slow, pausing while doing — while it may seem counterintuitive for our busy lives — allows our brains to better understand, process, and retain knowledge. Our brains have cognitive limitations. In his book “The Pause Principle” Kevin Cashman discusses the importance of pause in leadership in detail. I find the following analogy particularly insightful:
“What sleep is to the mind and body, pause is to leadership and innovation. […] Pause, the natural capability to step back in order to move forward with greater clarity, momentum, and impact, holds the creative power to reframe and refresh how we see ourselves and our relationships, our challenges, our capacities, our organizations and missions within larger context. […] Pause, like sleep, is a natural transformative process that cannot be ignored. In our fast-paced, achieve-now culture, the loss of pause potential is epidemic. For many, it has been lost, ignored, or completely abandoned; for others it’s unfamiliar, an unknown.” [3]
As leaders we are responsible for the health and well-being of the people we lead. We can only take care of others if we take care of ourselves. Our brains are not computers. They function a certain way and have their limitations. If our goal is to create and lead highly effective, productive and performing teams we have to pay attention to our own and our team members’ brain health. Our brains need breaks. They need to be given sufficient time to understand key messages, comprehend the complexity of certain challenges, and they need to be allowed to process learnings.
You may wonder what you as a leader can concretely do to support your and your team’s brain health? Here are a few tips:
Schedule downtime. If your agenda is jam-packed every day it is especially hard to let your brain relax and recharge. Mindfully scheduling a few minutes of downtime every day, with the goal of adding more as you get into the habit, might be a good start.
Allow downtime between meetings. Attending appointments back-to-back doesn’t allow your brain to process and replenish. Mindfully pausing between meetings might make your attendance more effective and efficient.
If you tend to dwell on troubles when you let your thoughts idle, try to use a meditation or mindfulness app.
Embracing pause can take getting used to. So, go ahead and practice. You will get better at it. Maybe you can encourage a discussion about the power of pause amongst your team and initiate a routine to embrace pause that involves all your team members? You may find you’ve gone fast by going slow.
During our equine-assisted coaching programs you will experience the power of slowing down, pausing, and increasing awareness for your senses. Benefits of working with horses include strengthened emotional and social intelligence, which can be helpful towards navigating your own emotions, managing your relationships and gaining new perspectives on opportunities and challenges.
Curious to learn more? Book a free 30-minute consultation through our website. We are here for you — one human-horse partnership at a time.
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[1] For more information check out this link: https://health.clevelandclinic.org/why-downtime-is-essential-for-brain-health/
[2] If your are interested to read more about the importance of pause in speeches this link might be helpful: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/three-reasons-why-you-should-use-pauses-when-speaking-sandra-mighty/
[3] Cashman, K. The Pause Principle. Step Back to Lead Forward. 2012. Page 3-4