My favorite pause in a song happens at 2:40 in The Doobie Brothers' "Long Train Running."
That pause, called a caesura, left me on the edge of my seat when we listened to that song on road trips with my dad. I felt like the band was winking at me, that we had a secret between us, that the music was going to go on if I waited patiently enough for it to continue.
The power of that pause, in addition to being a clever way to ensure the listener is still with you, goes far beyond music, though.
It also happens to be the best parenting advice my wife and I got. And something I wish I would've been doing as a leader long ago.
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As parents of a newborn, we got a lot of advice. Some solicited, some not, but amidst it all the French philosophy of “Le Pause” won out.
Like the power of a caesura in a song, the "Le Pause" approach calls for parents to literally pause, observe, and see if their child can first solve a problem on their own, as Pamela Druckerman explains in Bringing Up Bebe: One American Woman Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting."
The funny thing is, it works. Not only do newborns soothe themselves back to sleep more often than not, it also has led us as parents to be significantly less stressed knowing we don't need to rush into save the day.
I'd argue that pausing before intervening works for leaders as much as it would parents.
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Here's a scenario that I'm sure you've been in: One of your direct reports comes to you with what, in their mind, is the single most important problem facing your organization. To you, this is No. 14 on your list and the third meeting in a row you've led in which someone on your team tells you Rome is burning.
How would you typically respond?
Depending on how well you're able to emotionally regulate in the moment, your response might range from telling them exactly what they need to do to dismissing the problem to blowing up the rest of your meeting to action plan.
What if instead you took a page from The Doobie Brothers and French parents and invoked “Le Pause” before responding?
Nobel-winning economist Daniel Kahneman would argue that “Le Pause” is what allows us to access what he calls System 2 thinking, our ability to rationalize, deliberate, and weigh multiple perspectives. Without pausing, we get stuck in System 1 thinking, whose primary objective is to solve the immediate problem in front of us, making us prone to errors in judgment, our own biases, and one-right-way thinking.
The next time you notice the urge to solve someone else's problem, try these steps instead:
1) Validate and breathe: Create space for yourself to get out of your System 1, problem-solving brain with a go-to phrase and your breath. My favorite? "That sounds hard/challenging/difficult/etc."
Then, try to take one inhale through the nose and an exhale through the mouth. Time, I assure you, is going much more slowly than you think it is.
2) Empower others: One of our biggest faults as leaders is thinking we need an answer for everything. Instead, empower the people you lead to solve their own problems.
You'll build their capacity to solve similar problems in the future help and create space for you to access your System 2 thinking for creative solutions. Use go-to phrases like, "Tell me more," and questions like, "What do you think is the best approach to solving this?"
3) Support, only if necessary: You'll be surprised at how capable your people are of solving their own problems when you create the space for them to do so.
They'll refine their thinking and the eventual solution will be significantly better than either you or them would have come up with on your own.
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As the writer Pico Iyer explains, "In many a piece of music, it's the pause or the rest that gives the piece its beauty and its shape. And I know I, as a writer, will often try to include a lot of empty space on the page so that the reader can complete my thoughts and sentences and so that her imagination has room to breathe."
Pause, observe, and unlock your team's imagination by doing so. They, and you, will appreciate the result.
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