CHAPTER TWO

PAUSE TO GROW
PERSONAL LEADERSHIP

GROW THE WHOLE PERSON TO
GROW THE WHOLE LEADER

AN ANCIENT STORY FROM THE TALMUD illustrates our essential life journey. The story goes something like this: “Every blade of grass in all of creation has an angel standing over it, whispering three words of encouragement: Grow … Grow … Grow.” Regardless of our individual belief systems—religious, scientific, or humanistic—most of us can relate to this core impulse in life: Grow more, be more, contribute more, become more, serve more. This is the essence of leadership … the implicit drive to grow, contribute, and create enduring value. Helping ourselves and others to pause to align with this primal growth impulse is the purpose of The Pause Principle.

Organizations tend to rise and fall in proportion to the personal growth and personal decline of its leaders. As the leader grows, so the enterprise goes. Personal leadership, growing as a whole person to grow as a whole leader, is fundamental to enduring leadership effectiveness and is essential to enduring organizational performance. We see this in our leadership development work, and research bears it out. “Self-awareness combined with interpersonal skills are convincing indicators of driving results and managing talent.” One study showed:

“results-at-all-costs” executives actually diminish the bottom line, especially over time, while self-aware leaders with strong interpersonal skills deliver better financial performance. … Conversely, an executive who is self-aware and good with staff will be better at working with clients and business partners, better at grasping and executing strategy, and better at delivering bottom line results. These mostly lower ego, trust-inspiring executives still hold the bar very high and demand strong performance. . . .

In the absence of our continuous growth as leaders, our chances of effectively dealing with complexity, and cultivating both innovation and sustainable growth are reduced. Our risk of hitting the VUCA wall individually and collectively greatly increases. Leaders expand or limit their enterprise and strategic growth in direct proportion to their personal leadership growth. As true as this may be, it is equally difficult for us as leaders to recognize the need in ourselves. When we are most frustrated with our teams or organizations, that is the time for us to step back to see how we could show up in new and different ways to optimize performance.

In a conversation with Daniel Vasella, M.D., chairman of Novartis, I asked him which competencies are most important to leadership. His response was, “While there are several business-relevant competencies including conceptual abilities, strategic agility, and results drive, self-reflection is the most important personality related aspect of leadership. Self-reflection helps you to discern precisely when to pause and when to act, as well as the underlying functional or dysfunctional reasons for doing so. Self-reflection gives you a self-regulating, self-monitoring process to understand how to lead and where your leadership is coming from.” Effective managers drive to results; leaders consciously and continuously reflect to gain new personal and strategic perspectives, then drive to value-creating contribution.

James was the named CEO successor for a multibillion-dollar global manufacturing organization. He was strategic, quick, and innovative. But, the more he pushed his teams and colleagues to collaborate with him, the more they passively resisted. Without realizing it, he had taught them well to count on him for new strategies and innovative ideas. They knew their input wasn’t really needed. James wanted collaboration, but his behavior modeled single-minded, unyielding, do-it-yourself brilliance. Who wanted to fight that battle? Fortunately, with coaching assistance, James paused. He stepped back to see his situation more clearly and to view his behavior and his position of power through the eyes of others. James also courageously paused to reflect on early life patterns that were counterproductive. Believe me, he was initially surprised by his discoveries. From this new perspective, he saw the incongruence of his behavior and what he said he wanted. He put himself in his teams’ and colleagues’ shoes and understood the natural hesitation of many people on his teams. To his credit, James became the change he wanted to see in his organization. James paused, and learned to become more self-aware through self-reflection, which began to unlock his potential, and many of the doorways of his team flew open, as well.

James wisely paused and took a new leadership approach. Research by Green Peak Partners in conjunction with Cornell University showed that strong people skills and self-awareness drive better strategic and financial results. In another study by Allan Church, W. Warner Burke Associates, researchers looked at managerial self-awareness, congruence between their own assessment of self and the assessments of others, and its connection to performance. “High Performers in this study were significantly more self-aware compared to Average Performers. … High Performers had a greater level of self-awareness and of assessing their own behavior in their workplace.”

PAUSE POINT:
PAUSE TO UNLOCK LEADERSHIP POTENTIAL

Take a break. Sit down in your favorite spot. Turn on some light music if you like. Begin to reflect on your team highlights and lowlights. Think about the energizing and energy-draining aspects of your team. Consider how you show up with the team. Then, consider:

What frustrates you most about your team?

What would you like their new behaviors or outcomes to look like?

What changes would need to happen to achieve this?

What changes would need to happen in you to achieve this?

 

A global consumer products firm has an ambitious strategy to grow from $10 billion to $20 billion during the next five years. Growing principally through acquisitions over the past ten years, they have masterfully integrated numerous cultures to create a formidable organization. Realizing they needed to grow and invest in internal talent to get to their next growth goal, they did not just roll out a canned leadership development program for the masses. First, the top five executives, who were potential CEO successors, engaged in their own leadership development through our Chief Executive Institute. They completed comprehensive assessments. They worked intensely for three days with a team of our coaches and consultants. Then, they regularly received coaching over eighteen months. The organization saw how hard they dedicated themselves to the process. It became okay, even in their hard-charging, results-focused organization, to step back to understand themselves and step forward into leadership in new ways. The leaders of the organization paused, embodied the growth they wanted to see in others and in the organization. Subsequent leadership programs for the top people flowed easily. Leadership development was undeniably valued at the company. It was a clear, integral part of their success from a strategic and personal context. One of the top fifty executives commented, “If our most senior leaders are so personally engaged in their own development, I’m completely invested, too. We all need to grow, to build leadership capacity to meet the business growth that is coming.”

OPENING UP THE
LEADER WITHIN

Pausing for self-awareness is like unlocking the doors to a series of rooms. While reflective pause is the key to unlocking self-awareness, self-awareness in turn opens the doorways to authenticity, character, and purpose. Personal leadership growth is the ongoing process of being and becoming a more authentic leader. As leaders, we lead by virtue of who we are, so knowing who we are is the key to elevating our capacities and performance. In Leadership from the Inside Out, we explored extensively the principle of growing self-awareness and authenticity to foster leadership effectiveness. Since that initial writing, the research by Daniel Goleman, Jim Collins, Jack Zenger, and Joe Folkman and many others validates the pivotal relationship between self-awareness and leadership contribution.

Self-awareness is the most crucial developmental breakthrough for accelerating personal leadership growth and authenticity. Learning to pause to build self-awareness is a lifelong, evolving process. Why is pausing for self-awareness so critical to leaders? It is extremely valuable to know ourselves in order to leverage our potentialities:

We need to know our strengths to assert them in the appropriate circumstances.

We need to know our vulnerabilities, weaknesses, and distressing emotions, to check them and to prevent asserting them inappropriately and in non-value-creating ways.

When we are not self-aware, people around us have a better sense of our strengths and weaknesses than we do, and we lose credibility.

When we are self-aware, we are more in touch with reality; people trust and respect us more.

When we are not fully aware of our strengths, we lose confidence, never really understanding or asserting our value.

When we are not aware of our vulnerabilities, we rarely know when to step back and rely on others to fill or complete our gaps.

When we are not self-aware, we are not listening. We have not listened to ourselves from the inside-out. We have not listened to the feedback of others from the outside-in. We are isolated and out of touch, inside and out.

When we are self-aware, we can more fully and appropriately connect with others.

Throughout the ages, the phrase nosce teipsum, “Know thyself,” is a classic theme. We discover it in the writings of Socrates, Ovid, Cicero, in the sayings of the Seven Sages of Greece, on the entrance to the Temple of Apollo, and in the early Christian texts. Nosce teipsum threads its way through history as one of the preeminent precepts in life. Contemporary thought leader Warren Bennis writes, “Letting the self emerge is the essential task of leaders.” From Daniel Goleman we learned that self-awareness, self-management, and empathy are three abilities “that distinguish the best leaders from average.” He asserts, “You put all those together in every act of leadership.”

Why is self-awareness so tough to practice? As Bill George, former Medtronic CEO and bestselling author of True North explains,

Discovering our authentic leadership requires us to test ourselves, our values, and our beliefs through real-world experiences. This is not an easy process as we are constantly buffeted by the demands of the external world, the model of success that others hold for us, and our search to discover our truth. Because there is no map or direct path between where you are now and where you will go on your leadership journey, you need a compass to keep you focused on your True North and get back on track when you are pulled off by external forces or are at risk of being derailed.

St. Augustine reflected, “People travel to wonder at the height of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars; and they pass by themselves without wondering.” Knowing others is one indicator of emotional intelligence, but knowing ourselves is possibly the principal sign of wisdom. I think it is fair to say that leaders are somewhat obsessed with understanding and changing the world or the marketplace in which they operate, but only a few great leaders take the time to pause to understand and change themselves.

All real change begins with self-change; pause
is a catalyst of self-change.

Self-awareness nourishes authenticity, that irresistible quality of leaders who have more fully examined themselves and, as a result, more clearly see their gifts as well as their gaps. As Warren Bennis sees it, “To be authentic is literally to be your own author … to discover your own native energies and desires, and then to find your own way of acting on them.” Vas Narasimhan, former president of Novartis Vaccines and now global head of development, told me, “When I am more aware, things slow down. In meetings, I hear more, think more, can observe and make better choices. It is a state of high performance, much like an athlete, who slows down the game and has a performance edge.” Lao-Tzu fully captured the principle of self-awareness with the following: “He who knows others is wise. He who knows himself is enlightened.”

PAUSE POINT:
SELF-AWARENESS 101

Take a pause. No rush. No hurry. Consider each question with as much objectivity and observation as possible. As you ponder each question, ask yourself, “How do I see this? How do others perceive this? How do I reconcile or integrate these views?”

What are your strengths and gifts that create the most value?

What are your vulnerabilities or development challenges?

What insights have 360° assessments and other assessments given you regarding your strengths, gifts, and vulnerabilities?

Where do these strengths come from? Who has influenced you the most? What situations have influenced you the most?

What have the traumas and privileges of your life taught you?

Recall the key peaks and valleys of your career and your life. What have you learned from them?

Do people trust you? If they do, why? If they don’t, why not?

What would your dearest, most trusted friend or colleague say are your greatest strengths and your greatest weaknesses?

 

EXPANDING THE LIGHT
FOR A BROADER VIEW

In The Social Animal, David Brooks brilliantly synthesizes recent research in various scientific disciplines to explore how human beings understand themselves and see their world. He says, “We’re able to function in a social world because we partially permeate each other’s minds and understand—some people more and some people less.” He notes, “Human beings understand others in themselves. . . .” He relates Alison Gopnik’s insight that “adults have searchlight consciousness,” while young children have “lantern consciousness” that “illuminates outward in all directions—a vivid panorama of awareness of everything.”

What if we extended the circumference, the reach of light to expand our awareness? For self-awareness to be real, authentic, and grounded, it must be gained from both the inside-out and the outside-in. That is why it is important to pause to reflect intently on values, beliefs, patterns, characteristics, and personal history for an inside-out view, and just as important to pause to gain feedback, perspective, and insight from others for an outside-in view. This continuous, infinite, self-regulating loop of self-awareness from both the “I” (inside-out) and the “We” (outside-in) perspective helps us to come closer to authentic self-awareness. Since we can rarely fully govern external events, as leaders we are left principally to govern ourselves; pausing for self-awareness is authentic governance.

The Continuous Loop of Authentic Self-Awareness

WHAT IS THIS THING CALLED
CHARACTER?

Managers require competency to drive
results; leaders embody character to build a
compelling, sustainable future.

Competencies get us to the doorway of leadership, but character is the key to unlocking the door of leadership. So what is this thing we call “character”? It is our most authentic, unvarnished, non-spin-doctored self. It is the person and the leader who shows up—for better or worse—when no one is looking. Many leaders’ characters would barely recognize their reputations if they met on the street! Character is the person others trust or mistrust from watching us in many, many situations. Character, in its highest state, is the leader who serves; in its lowest state, it is the leader who self-serves.

Character is that small, still voice that
sometimes is too loud for comfort in the
middle of the night, and sometimes is too faint
for influence in the heat of daily leadership.

Influenced by Emerson’s essay, “Character,” I define character as the quiet, reserved, value-creating force of the person, untouched by circumstances or external pressures. Character when aligned with action adds energy, value, service, and contribution to all it touches. Emerson goes on to say, “Character is higher than intellect.” Einstein agreed. He pointed out, “Most people say intellect makes a great scientist. They are wrong, it is character.”

Terry Bacon, a colleague and expert on power and influence, has conducted extensive research on the personal sources of power. His findings identify five personal power sources: knowledge, expressiveness, history, attractiveness, and character. Significant in his research, “character is the only source of power that can add to or subtract from every other source. You can be very knowledgeable, eloquent, attractive and have existing relationships with the people you are trying to influence, but if they perceive that your character is flawed, your power to lead and influence them will be greatly diminished.” On the positive side of character, Bacon writes, “Being recognized as a person of character enhances your capacity to lead and influence others because they trust your intentions, are more confident in your leadership, and see you as a person worth emulating.”

The Study of Character

One of the most comprehensive studies of character appears in Character Strengths and Virtues by Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman. The research, done in coordination with the American Psychological Association and promoted by the Values in Action (VIA) Institute on Character, identifies twenty-four characteristic strengths in six factor areas. Terry Bacon includes results of this study in The Elements of Power. They are listed with some minor adaptations.

 

CHARACTER STRENGTHS FROM VALUES IN ACTION INSTITUTE

I. Wisdom and Knowledge

—Creativity

—Curiosity

—Judgment and Open-Mindedness

—Love of Learning

—Perspective

II. Courage

—Bravery

—Perseverance

—Honesty

—Zest/Vitality

III. Humanity

—Capacity to Love and Be Loved

—Kindness

—Social Intelligence

IV. Justice/Civic Strengths

—Teamwork

—Fairness

—Leadership

V. Temperance

—Forgiveness and Mercy

—Modesty and Humility

—Prudence

—Self-Control

VI. Transcendence

—Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence

—Gratitude

—Hope

—Humor

—Spirituality, Faith, Purpose

PAUSE POINT:
YOUR CHARACTER PATTERN

Pause for a moment on the list of twenty-four character strengths.

Which aspects of character are your top three strengths, the ones that others clearly see and appreciate?

Which aspects of character are your bottom three?

What do these aspects of character tell you about your current leadership development challenges?

What might you do more of, less of, or differently to elevate your character-driven leadership to the next level?

 

Too often, we idealize or vilify the character of others, which distracts us from facing our own character development. Pausing to get a clearer picture of our own character, strengths, and weaknesses is a crucial aspect of self-awareness and authenticity.

Two tools can help you measure your character profile:

1. The Values in Action Survey of Character provided by the Values in Action Institute (VIA) with its twenty-four character strengths in six factor areas as described previously.

2. The Character Foundation Assessment^™ (CFA) from The Peirce Group, which measures twenty-two virtues along the five core values of Integrity, Vision/Creativity, Drive/Change, Responsibility and Influencing others. CFA was created based on the expertise of professionals in a variety of occupations to identify those virtues that are critical to success in business. Built into the CFA is a process that allows professionals to pause and reflect on these business critical virtues and to map a path forward for growing them to achieve their leadership development goals.

In The Elements of Power, Terry Bacon teamed up with Kim Ruyle and Evelyn Orr of Korn/Ferry International to map the VIA’s classification of character with Korn/Ferry’s Leadership Architect^®. They estimated the degree of developmental difficulty for the six factors and twenty-four items. For the VIA factors, they found that the most difficult factors to develop were Humanity and Transcendence. Temperance, Wisdom and Knowledge, and Courage were easier factors to develop, and Justice/Civic Strengths was the easiest of all. On the VIA item level, the researchers identified Social Intelligence, Humor, Spirituality, and Perspective as the most difficult character strengths to develop, and Love of Learning, Perseverance, Modesty/Humility, and Zest/Vitality as the easiest.

While most of us wholeheartedly endorse character as critical to leadership, and most of us require it in the leaders we work for and seek out, few leaders consciously evaluate and seek to develop their own character. In the course of my career, I cannot recall a single leader asking, “Kevin, I have been struggling with my character. I think I need some work.” We tend to complain about our eyesight and memory more than we criticize our own ethics and character. We acknowledge it as important, but we rarely, if ever, pause to genuinely examine it. Character and authenticity are very slippery subjects. We tend to expect these character qualities in others, require them in leaders, but rarely do we hold ourselves to the same standard.

Managers create processes and control
mechanisms to regulate and enforce ethical
behavior; leaders embody character to inspire
ethical behavior in others.

Being Your Talk

Authenticity is the continual process of building self-awareness of our whole person—strengths and limitations. As a result of this more fully developed awareness, more often than not, the authentic person’s beliefs, values, principles, and behaviors tend to line up. Commonly referred to as walking the talk, authenticity also means “being our talk” at a very deep level.

While we may be true and authentic to our current state of development, we are nearly always inauthentic to our potential state of development. As Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet, “We know what we are, but not what we may be.” We appear to have an infinite ability to grow, to be, and to become more. If there is an endpoint to growing in authenticity, I certainly have not seen it. Growth is the ongoing process of stretching from our current state of authenticity to our next stage of authenticity.

A while ago, I was working with a senior team and CEO in the middle of a major crisis. Although the CEO needed to work on a few crucial growth areas, authenticity was not one of them. The COO, however, unknowingly was caught up in his image. He needed to stretch to a new level of authenticity. At a critical point in one of their interactions as the COO was placing an overly positive spin on mistakes made in an important decision, the CEO calmly and compassionately asked, “Bill, do you want to look good, or do you want to make a difference?” Bill fell silent. Of course he wanted to make a difference. He needed someone to shock him into a deeper state of authenticity and character. The character of the CEO penetrated the coping mechanism of the COO to reveal how he had to show up and serve in a new, more authentic way.

The Master and the Servant

A CEO of a major company told us that pausing helped her to see decision-making processes from a new perspective. She learned that pausing “strengthened her muscle of intention, instead of leaving choices and their impact to happenstance.” This made her more conscious of the impact leaders have. Pausing to understand where her leadership is coming from—character or coping—has been a most valuable awareness. “It helps me to be clearer, to feel more confident in my choices and not feel unseated by other people’s choices.”

Character is the essence or core of the leader. Character is deeper and broader than any action or achievement; it springs from the essential nature of the person. Reflecting on this principle, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “This is what we call character, a reserved force which acts directly as presence, and without means.” Character works to transform and open up possibilities and potential. When we are leading from our character, we exude qualities of authenticity, purpose, openness, trust, courage, congruence, and compassion. We have the ability to transform circumstances, open up possibilities and create lasting value for ourselves and for others.

Coping, on the other hand, protects us and helps us get through challenging circumstances. In this sense, it has value, and if used sparingly and appropriately, will serve our needs. Coping works like a muscle. We need to use it at times, but if we overuse it, the muscle will collapse. Qualities of Coping include concern for image, safety, security, comfort, or control. The Coping leader may get results but also may exhibit undue defensiveness, fear, withdrawal, or a desire to win at all costs. He or she may exclude certain people and perceive mainly win/lose scenarios.

Both approaches to leadership—leading with Character and leading by Coping—can get results. Coping, in itself, is not bad and may be needed in certain situations. However, Character is a much better master, and Coping is a much better servant for leadership. For example, image may be a component of leadership, which can create influence and value when it is aligned with messages delivered from the leader’s deeper values. Image may be used to manipulate messages in an attempt to compensate for a leader’s insecurity, or lack of authenticity, and this may lead to devastating results.

Both Character and Coping are present in most leadership situations. However, we need to step back and ask ourselves, “Which one is my master and which one is my servant?” When we pause to consciously make Character the master of our leadership and Coping the servant, we lead forward with more value creation.

The Tiger, the Pig, the Ass, and the Nightingale

Is there anything more important than leaders leading in character, serving the needs of the broader enterprise and the communities in which they operate? We need leaders and want to develop leaders who place service to the enterprise and society above self-service, and there are many of them. Unfortunately, our society also is littered with the damage done by leaders with positional and competency power who lacked character power. Daily we read about another fallen leader in government, politics, business, and the nonprofit arena. We do not merely suffer from a global financial crisis; we suffer from a global character crisis, which is fueling a global financial crisis because of self-focused decisions that are personal surrenders of character. Leaders do not suddenly become bad people. It evolves over a “thousand tiny surrenders of self-respect to self-interest.” Character is at the core of authenticity and emotional intelligence. The less self-aware the person, the less they feel remorse for what they have done or empathy for those they have hurt, and the more damage they are capable of perpetrating. On the one hand, we can get angry and self-righteous and say, “Those damn, unethical leaders, how could they do that?” Or, on the other, we can pause … recognize that we all have that potential to self-serve and engage our own commitment to making sure that we are acting in character. As Confucius advised, “When you meet a virtuous person, try to equal him. When you meet a person without virtue, look at your own shortcomings.”

The battle between being self-serving and serving others is a continual human struggle. Ambrose Bierce wrote, “In each human heart are a tiger, a pig, an ass, and a nightingale. Diversity of character is due to their unequal activity!” So, the key question is, “How do we move from the ass to the nightingale more often?” If power indeed corrupts, how can we build character immunity before we face even more expanded power? The greatest threats are within us. Why worry about the fallen leaders we read about in the news feed? Let’s focus on what threatens our souls. Blaming others for lack of ethics and character may distract us from taking the time to pause about the tough character-driven choices in our own lives. Become the character you want to see in others. George Bernard Shaw penned it this way, “Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world.” Channel the energy that could be lost in disgust, blame, and self-righteousness into “cleaning your window” through a continuous practice of pausing for character self-observation.

Where Is My Leadership Coming From?

Over the years, we have evolved and refined a way of observing our behavior using two modes to characterize our leading behavior: Leading in Character and Leading by Coping. Learning to self-observe, discern at any moment of leadership, and answer this question, “Where is my leadership coming from?” is crucial to moving into Character mode more often. The Character mode creates enduring energy, service, and value for others. The Coping mode tends to get results, but is focused more on self-service, self-survival, and rarely is a sustainable leadership approach. “Character is much easier kept than recovered,” Thomas Paine advised us. It is crucial to understand in the heat of leadership how our actions or inactions are motivated by character or by coping.

 

LEADING BY COPING OR LEADING IN CHARACTER

Leading by Coping	Leading in Character
Self-serving	Other-serving
Depletes energy	Multiplies energy
Control	Trust
Image	Authenticity
Reactive	Proactive
Short term	Long term
Fear	Courage
Anger	Compassion
Winning at all costs	Serving at all costs
Silo-focused	System/Enterprise-focused
Destructive conflict	Constructive conflict
Distracted	Present
Uncomfortable demeanor	Calm demeanor
Overwhelmed by circumstances	Above the circumstances
Entrenched viewpoint	Humility, openness, learning
Closed-minded	Fair-minded
Critical/Judgmental	Humane/Tolerant
Dogmatic expertise	Wisdom
Rigidity	Transcendence

PAUSE POINT:
LEADING BY COPING

Imagine yourself in a stressed state. Too much to do, and way too little time. You feel the pressure building mentally, physically, and relationally. Now, one more major demand comes along, and you go into your coping mode.

Which of the coping behaviors listed in the table do you tend to go to? (Narrow it down to your two or three most common ones.)

How do you feel physically? What pressures or pains surface in your body? (Be specific.)

What related behaviors come up?

How does this impact self, relationships, and your work?

 

PAUSE POINT:
LEADING IN CHARACTER

Imagine yourself in a situation where you are at the top of your game, adding energy and contribution to everyone around you. Your values are present. Your strengths are operating, and even in a very challenging situation, you are calm and centered.

Which of the previous Character behaviors in the table tend to show up? (Again, choose two or three that are most common.)

How do you feel physically? How does your body feel differently from when you are in Coping mode? (Again, be specific.)

How does this impact self, relationships, and your work?

Can you discern the difference between the Coping and Character ways of leading?

How could you shift from Coping to Character more often?

 

Building self-awareness to move from coping to character in your leadership can be transformative for you and others. Practice it at home and migrate it to the office. Involve others in your practice. Leverage their outside-in feedback to keep yourself on track. Notice the energy benefit of character. Notice the energy depletion of coping. See your health improve, as well as your relationships at home and at work. See your leadership strengthen.

Character is power … the power to create
rather than destroy; the power to energize
rather than deflate; the power to serve others
rather than merely serving self.

Leveraging the power of character is a practice we can consciously choose. The choice is ours in every moment of life and leadership. As Charles de Gaulle said, “Faced with crisis, the man of character falls back upon himself.” Possibly the most character-driven U.S. President, Abraham Lincoln, understood the leadership challenge well. “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” Pause to practice character; ready yourself for the next moment of personal or professional power.

WAITING FOR OUR SPIRITS
TO CATCH UP

My good friend, consultant, and bestselling author, Richard Leider, spends a month each year with a group of leaders trekking with the Hadza, a hunter-gatherer tribe, in the Lake Eyasi region south of the famed Serengeti Plains of Tanzania, East Africa. After he returned from one of these experiences, he told me a wonderful story:

The African sun had sucked most of the oxygen out of the air with its all-consuming fire. Everything was a combination of heat, dust, and sweat. Focused on our goal, we needed to get to the next landmark by sunset. This was achievable but a challenge. Suddenly and unexpectedly our Hadza guides sat down, unwilling to move. A bit surprised and upset, I went to the group and asked, “What are you doing? We have to go.” Unfazed, the group leader spoke with calm reserve, “Sir, we have to stay here so our spirits can catch up to our bodies. We have been going too fast. Now, we have to pause and wait.”

How often are we going too fast? Our pace outstripping the slower tempo of the deepest, most important part of ourselves—our values, beliefs, principles, and deepest character—from joining us or “keeping up”?

PAUSE FOR OUR
DEEPEST VALUES

A while ago, I was coaching one of the most brilliant, driven, and creative global CEOs I have ever worked with. He was exceptional on nearly every level. He was strategic, innovative, and passionate. He was also one of the fiercest leaders I have ever encountered. Without notice, he could grow impatient and take people apart. As a result, people were careful and hesitant around him. But carefulness and hesitation made him more impatient, increasing his tension and frustration, as well as the likelihood of his acting even more fiercely. He needed a pause to unravel this knot. Working together over several months, we were able to see a clearer, more complete picture. In one very poignant session, I pressed him for about an hour on, “What is he really about? Is getting results and driving people his real thing? What does he want to be remembered for? Where is all this passion and drive coming from? What does he care about most?” He got very quiet, took a deep, deep pause … and said, “What I care most deeply about is love. It is the one thing I most want my life to be about. Love.” I nearly fell out of my chair. Love! This was the last thing I expected to hear. To challenge him, I responded, “Love? Would people describe you as loving?” He thought for a moment and said, “Probably not at work, but my family would say that I am very loving, and passionately committed to them.” He had fallen into a classic leadership trap. In his drive forward, he had left behind one of his greatest, most essential values: deep human connection. To his credit, over time, he courageously stepped back to retrieve and integrate this powerful attribute into his fuller, more human, leadership repertoire.

Deborah Dunsire, M.D., CEO of Millennium Pharmaceutical: The Takeda Oncology Company, is very clear about the importance of pausing with her teams, especially in crises situations. She told us, “It’s important to make sure that your organization’s values are on the table early on. That way you don’t waste time.” To illustrate, she told us about a situation in which a single-digit number of vials of a drug outside the United States were found to have single, scarcely visible particles in them. She and her team were going to have to determine whether or not this was a voluntary recall situation within the United States, where there had been no complaints. She told me, “Our values are clear: Patient safety is number one. Quality and Compliance are number two. Corporate reputation is number three. The cost or amount of money lost is not a consideration on product safety issues. Our job is to keep the patient safe and continue their access to effective therapies. There is no compromising on that. These values drive how we make these decisions.” From that position, everyone gathered around the table, and they took their time walking through the situation together, asking questions, listening, pausing to seek information, and not rushing to judgment. She probed, “What is your expert opinion? Help me understand how you got there. Tell me how you came to this concern.” Deborah said, “Stepping through it is grounding. Everyone has the same fact base. It encourages synthesis and establishes priorities.” Managers pride themselves on rapid decision making, while leaders know the value of slowing down to incorporate values and purpose into more grounded and thoughtful decision making.

Pausing to find our deepest values and bringing them to all our domains of leadership may be the most crucial aspect of our development as whole leaders. Warren Bennis counsels us that “leaders remind people what is important.” However, to remind people, we have to know what is important in our hearts and guts. What do we stand for as leaders? What do we know for sure? What has our particular life with all its privileges and traumas taught us about what is important? To gain self-awareness, we need to pause and ground ourselves in the deepest value-creating regions within our character. Albert Einstein had it right when he said, “Try not to become a man of success, become a man of value.”

 

PAUSE POINT:
CLARIFY VALUES

Step back now. Take a deep breath. Set aside a moment to pause and consider these questions. Remember, questions are the language of pause. Consider your ideals and your aspirations … what you hold most important:

What do you care most about?

What energizes you most?

What cause would you dedicate yourself to? Why?

Where and when do you need to slow down to let your values catch up?

What losses in life have impacted you the most? What did you learn about what is most precious?

What bothers you in the world that you would most like to change? Why?

PURPOSE: THE TRANSFORMATIVE FORCE
OF LEADERSHIP

Pausing for Purpose is the essential transformational force of leadership. Purpose elevates leaders to go from self to service and compels leaders to move from success to significance. Purpose nourishes the heart and the soul of leadership.

The art of leadership involves elevating souls
beyond the dust of daily living; purpose
shakes the dust off of the everyday fabric
of management, revealing the interwoven
patterns of leadership meaning and service.

Pausing for Purpose is one of the leader’s most important practices to prepare for value-creating, enduring performance.

Steve Jobs is deservedly regarded as the business and cultural icon of innovation. I view him as an icon of purpose. What drove his innovation? What was the originating force from which he created? His interviews with his biographer Walter Isaacson and reports by others who knew him reveal how much he was driven by beauty and aesthetics. His Zen-inspired drive for the profoundly simple and the profoundly elegant were ever-present. He was an artist at heart, sculpting a bridge between technology and humanity. Each creation—product, service, or innovation—had an intimate human connection that created a passionately committed user experience. Who else but an artist could create devices that were so human-centric and human serving? Although Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak may be a kinder, gentler, more technologically talented human being, he didn’t have the same passion for aesthetics. Jobs was a much tougher person with less technological strength, but his innovations embodied an aesthetic value that translated to an emotional connection for the customer that very few understood and believed was possible. Steve Jobs expected everything and everyone (for better or worse) to measure up to his extreme, sometimes impossible standards. His purposeful drive to “put a dent in the universe” was fueled by the “artist’s ideal” for beauty, elegance, and essence. Jobs operated at the intersection of humanity and technology, art and science. His vision, expectations, discrimination, and sense of beauty leveraged technology to serve humanity. He changed the world through his passion and purpose.

Jobs’s purpose endured throughout great personal trauma. In the intensive care unit toward the end of his life, he asked for a notepad. He drew devices to hold the iPad on a hospital bed; he redesigned fluid monitors and X-ray equipment. Jobs’s purpose, his drive to make a value-creating difference, was breaking through, seeking expression to the very end.

While we all die to some degree in the middle
of our story, the underlying meaning and plot
of our life story—our purpose—lives on.

Getting to the Heart of Purpose

Laura Karet recently became CEO of Giant Eagle, a four-generation $10-billion grocery retailer in the northeastern United States. Giant Eagle has a long, successful history, a well-developed values system that includes a strong sense of community, and its previous CEO, David Shapira, was renowned for his creative, innovative, and visionary prowess. The company has a very rich, multigeneration family legacy. Laura had planned a career outside the family business but eventually agreed to return home after successful opportunities with Procter & Gamble and Sara Lee Corporation.

Laura wants to take the organization to the next level, leveraging her marketing, branding, and consumer products background from her pre–Giant Eagle career. She astutely realized that this transition was a great opportunity to pause and reflect to gain some insight on what is working well and what isn’t. She realized that those qualities that make her different from her father are perhaps most valuable. She thought, “What do we want to hold onto that is part of the legacy, and what can I bring that is new, that will help grow the company, and make a contribution?” She said, “You can’t afford to use only old lenses; you have to look with a fresh lens.”

Laura explained that the nature of the grocery business can be very reactionary. People are accustomed to dealing with a wide range of incidents that can happen at any given moment. This works well in many aspects of the business, but Laura was determined to bring more disciplined strategizing, teaming, and talent development processes to Giant Eagle. She wanted to develop more long-term thinking and planning. It took a strong resolve, patience, and tenacity, but she used the discipline of pausing to ask probing questions when she took her senior team off-site to confront important issues, to become more open and collaborative, to get them thinking long range … to deal with what is important. During our coaching, Laura learned to pause to listen more deeply and to absorb information, to not react, but to be more thoughtful and responsive. She is working toward integrating this dynamic into the culture of the 35,000 Team Member (employee) organization.

However, what Laura became most inspired to do was to invigorate the purpose and mission of the organization and herself with “a living value” that was inspired by her yoga practice. Laura, like many other yoga practitioners, ends each yoga session with the word Namaste. When used like this, it is an expression of honor and respect for yourself, your teachers, and your community. This struck a chord for Laura. She believes in her heart that all human beings deserve respect. Laura has made the connection to “the gift of leadership as an avenue to change the world in sometimes small and sometimes big ways.” She has embodied this value, “respect for all people” in the culture of the company and extends it to everyone it serves—employees, customers, suppliers, the extended communities of all its stores. This meaningful intersection has given Laura a stronger, even more authentic connection to a place from which to lead that is energizing for Team Members, customers, and herself.

Through her dedication, self-inquiry, and pause, Laura now has a place to carry on the family legacy and to make her own mark. Taking the time to clarify purpose, stepping back to step forward with renewed strength and conviction is one of the most crucial things we can do as leaders of our organizations … and as leaders in life.

The pathway to purpose is charted with the compass of pause. Having a sense of purpose is having a sense of self, “a course to plot, a destination to hope for,” Bryant McGill wrote. Just as explorers need to stop, pause, and establish their bearing periodically to stay on track, leaders need to step back on a regular basis, not just in crisis situations, to recalibrate their direction via mission and purpose.

Stepping back to clarify organizational mission, although challenging, is often easier than clarifying personal mission and personal core purpose. To get to the heart of our individual core purpose takes regular doses of pause. Accessing and maintaining a clear core purpose benefits the leader and the enterprise. Clarifying purpose:

Strengthens self-awareness and the core contribution we bring

Bolsters the power of our passionate voice; people see what we stand for

Reinforces that service is the key to purposeful leadership; allows us to see our value-creating, value-serving influence

Allows us to understand when to step into situations with full force and when to step back for others to show up

Provides a frame of reference for when we need to assert, without inhibition, our strengths in service of purpose, and when a leader needs to pause to clarify purpose, impact, and learning

Helping leaders to define and clarify core purpose may be both the most overlooked and important process for accelerating leadership development. Without purpose, leaders are merely a sophisticated combination of competencies, like a pile of beautiful dry wood awaiting a spark to ignite its latent energy.

What Is This Thing Called Core Purpose?

Leaders rarely fail due to lack of talent; success or failure is mainly the domain of character, values, and purpose. Core Purpose is the high-performance intersection of a leader’s core strengths in service of his or her core values. Core Purpose is the sweet spot of leadership, where the whole person is present, self-aware, and bringing his or her talents to bear by serving what is most important. Imagine the times in your life when you were using the best parts of yourself. You were engaged in and contributing to what you are most passionate about. This is Core Purpose. Take a moment to remember the times your energy was high, your sense of contribution clear, and your value-creating impact was great. This is Core Purpose. Core Purpose is the soul on fire impacting positive change. It is the ultimate convergence of the best of “I” and the best of “We” leadership. The strengths of the “I” are actively engaged in serving the needs of something greater—the larger “We.” We contribute to something bigger than ourselves through our unique combination of strengths, knowledge, expertise, and competencies. Purpose inspires a leader’s passion, awakens a leader’s energy, and that force of energy impacts the world. Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks and author of Onward, says that at the core for him is his deep love for the company and a sense of responsibility to its people. “People want to be part of something larger than themselves if they believe in it. There has to be an emotional connection that is based on truth and authenticity, and, obviously, trust.”

IS THIS ALL
THERE IS?

The classic midlife crisis is the gut-wrenching realization that well-earned achievement and competence in the absence of meaningful contribution is not enough. It is the anxiety-provoking realization that our strengths have not been in service of something bigger. As a result, we wonder, “Is this it? Is this all there is?” Our deepest heart’s desire, our greatest happiness comes from fully spending ourselves and our gifts in service to something bigger and more important.

Most leaders understand the value of connecting a group of people to a bigger, external aspiration—a project, strategy, or goal. However, our ability to inspire others to a higher purpose begins somewhere within us. To inspire others, we must self-inspire first; we must ignite and crystallize our own purpose by clarifying our core talents, core values, and core contribution.

Core Purpose is a lifelong journey of pausing, reflecting, and fostering clarity. While the core remains the same, the clarity and usefulness of it grows through practice. For years, I have been crafting my Core Purpose statement. In the beginning, it was a long, complex statement of mission, aspiration, and contribution. It held a lot of principles, a lot of passion, but it was cumbersome and wordy. It read more like words on a plaque than a living, breathing guide. I wanted to breathe some life into it. Over time, with sufficient reflection, I distilled it from several words—“Using presence, passion, and purpose to catalyze growth”—to two words, “Catalyze growth,” to one essential word . . . “Growth.” Growth is the defining theme, the thing that I aspire to in myself and for others. Growth is why I write books. It influences whom I select as friends and colleagues, what I read, where I vacation, and certainly my life’s work, from which I have no desire to retire. It is concurrently the aspiration and underlying plot of my story, my life. What is yours?

 

PAUSE POINT:
DISTILLING YOUR PURPOSE

Go to your favorite spot. Find your best way to get relaxed. Reflect on the most energizing, fulfilling times of your life. Then, ask yourself:

Which of your strengths are showing up? What are you contributing?

What impact is this having on others? What are you serving?

What are others saying about your strengths, values, and contributions?

What is the passionate contribution you are making?

What themes do you observe threading through your life? What are the themes of your strengths? What are the themes of your values?

If you were the main character in a novel, what is the plot of your story, and what is the underlying theme that drives you? What value are you adding to the story? How are your talents and strengths and your contributions impacting others?

What is the one thing—the thing that you must contribute or that you aspire to contribute—from which you do not want to retire?

Return to this Pause Point many times. Make it your practice to clearly distill the themes of Core Purpose.

 

Since the recurring theme or organizing principle of my passion and my life is growth, when my competencies are contributing to growth, then my energies are high and my talents are connected to something much more important and larger than myself. This thread of purpose, as I think of it, can be traced back throughout our lives to connect all the relevant experiences and contributions into a tapestry of meaning. In my case, my family history, spiritual practices, educational choices, key relationships, life crises, and my leadership development career are all organized around this consistent, enduring theme of growth. When I wander away from this theme, not attending to my growth or the growth of others in personal or professional domains, my energy falls, struggle increases, and contribution diminishes. If we are paying attention, our alignment or lack of alignment with Core Purpose can give us moment-to-moment, breath-to-breath, realtime feedback on our authentic leadership performance.

 

PAUSE POINT:
CHECKING YOUR ALIGNMENT TO CORE PURPOSE

Some pause practices to align with Core Purpose and to strengthen our leadership impact include:

Pause to observe when your energy is high or when you are increasing energy in others. During these times, pause to witness the strengths and values that are operating.

Pause to observe when your energy or the energy of others drops to signal that you are out of synch with Core Purpose. Notice if your strengths are being overused or your values are not being expressed and embodied in your actions.

Once you have identified your key themes of Core Purpose, pause to evaluate your congruence with it on a scale of 1 to 10.

Alignment with current position = ________

Alignment with current team = ________

Alignment with previous positions = ________

Alignment with family or spouse = ________

Alignment with friends = ________

Alignment with community = ________

Alignment with self * = ________

Pause to notice when your leadership voice is stronger and more compelling. Pay attention to those value-creating moments when your talents and passion are supporting your leadership conviction, when your full person is behind the act of leadership.

Step back periodically to edit, refine, and update your Core Purpose statement as you deepen your understanding and your own growth.

Pause during meetings to ask yourself, “Am I in alignment or out of alignment with Core Purpose at this moment?”

Take the time to step back to get to know your purpose; doing so will expand leadership possibilities. Alfred Whitehead put it this way: “Our minds are finite, and yet even in these circumstances of finitude we are surrounded by possibilities that are infinite, and the purpose of life is to grasp as much as we can out of that infinitude.”

* This is the toughest one to face objectively. Reflect on this question: “How much am I applying this Core Purpose to myself?”

 

RESTORATIVE PAUSE:
POWER NAP ANYONE?

As leaders, we do too much and rest too little. Restorative pause through meditation, exercise, power naps, and enough sleep are crucial. With 24/7 connectivity, global travel, jet lag, inadequate diet, irregular exercise, and insufficient vacations, it is a wonder that leaders survive. Behind the scenes, outside of the boardroom, the view is not so pretty. Health issues, relationship stress, and exhaustion are common. What do you do to restore yourself daily? Weekly? Quarterly?

Even walking 30 minutes a day, five times a week can be transformative, stimulating brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a molecule that nurtures the creation of new neurons and synapses that support learning. Scientists at the University of Illinois-Champaign, have shown that exercise increases the gray matter in the brain that processes new information and sends it to permanent storage in the prefrontal cortex. Pausing to exercise can literally improve your learning and brain function.

Power naps can be amazing restorative pauses for many. Nike and a host of Silicon Valley companies, like Google, provide “nap rooms” for employees. In our office, we call it a “health room.” I go there, turn off the lights, and return a new person in 15 to 20 minutes. In a 2010 study, Mathew Walker and colleagues at University of California–Berkeley found that a nap not only restored brain power but raised it. “In people who stayed awake, there was a deterioration in their memory capacity, but a nap restored that capacity to levels even higher than before the nap.”

If you took some time each day to work in more restorative pause, what would you do? When will you begin?

TRANSCENDENTAL PAUSE:
GETTING TO ESSENCE

A large business school asked me to facilitate their collaborative process of crafting a consolidated viewpoint on leadership. Flattered, I accepted eagerly. But, after being in the room for only an hour with seventy professors and almost as many dueling egos asserting their “I have the best research” attitudes, I was ready to call it a day and fly home. I didn’t. My curiosity won out, and surprisingly, after a couple of hours, we had agreed on a pretty solid, comprehensive model. There was a feeling of satisfaction and resolve in the room. I thought we were done, when a quiet professor stood up and said, “This leadership model with all its competencies—vision, strategy, learning, collaboration, team effectiveness, character, emotional intelligence—is all well and good, but we have ignored the essence of leadership.” As you can imagine after working for a few hours and feeling like they were done, many of his cohorts were a little annoyed. A collection of groans and glares zeroed in on him. I was curious, as were others, and I said, “What did we leave out? And, from your colleagues’ reactions, this had better be good.” He said, “The essence of leadership is transcendence.” More groans, glares, and a muttering fluttered through the room in response. “Transcendence. What is he thinking?” Our rebel was unshaken, and he continued, “Managers improve what is. Managers enhance what is. Managers move forward what is. Leaders, on the other hand, move beyond or transcend what is. So, where is transcendence in our model?” The room went quiet as everyone absorbed his insight, which captured the essence of leadership. Managers build credibility through efficient, productive transaction; whereas leaders create the future through game-changing transcendence.

Leadership, by its very nature transcends what is. To lead a great strategy, we must go beyond what is. To foster innovation, we must transcend current reality. To go to the next level of personal leadership, we need to go beyond our current state of growth.

The nature of leadership is constant boundary-breaking,
ever-changing, mind-bending,
heart-expanding, character-stretching,
purpose-aspiring transcendence.

For many, transcendence may seem a lofty, other-worldly, rarely attainable goal. To me, transcendence is everywhere; it is ever-present and ever-pragmatic, too. As leaders of organizations and as leaders in life, we are continually challenged to see strategy, relationships, and life in new and different ways. How often have you had an unexpected breakthrough while in the shower, during a run, or while taking a walk? This is the experience of transcendence. When have you been so deep in thought that external noise and distractions fade totally into the background? Transcendence. When have you stepped back to see new dimensions of yourself—strengths and limitations—from a new perspective? Transcendence. When have you had an innovative breakthrough with the corresponding Aha! moment? That is transcendence.

That moment, that flash of insight usually arises from a deeper, longer process of incubating ideas. Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity had an incubation period of ten years. The beautiful array of fonts that accompanied the first Macintosh, which we take for granted on our computers today emerged from Steve Jobs’s incubation of what he learned from studying calligraphy at Reed College. As scientists across disciplines have discovered, we have different ways of thinking, different cognitive processes going on in different areas of our mind, and some of them, or more accurately most of them, are currently hidden in our unconscious, waiting for a deep enough pause to make them accessible, to put together patterns based on what we have stored in our memory.

Change or Be Changed

Imagine a leader or an organization that somehow manages to maintain the status quo over many years. . . . It is only a matter of time before the tsunami of change washes over the firm. As leaders we must be tsunamis of purposeful change, be the accelerators of continual transcendence. If we do not, if we are not the initiators of change, the initiators of transcendence, the marketplace will force change upon us.

The one constant in leadership is,
change or be changed; transcend or be
forced to transcend.

In the last chapter of this book, “Pause to Grow Cultures of Innovation,” we discuss organizational transcendence. This final chapter provides tools and resources to let the future emerge, to transcend the present, and to innovate value-creating contributions.

Deep Transcendental Pause—Pause with a Big P

In this chapter we have been exploring personal transcendence. This is a pause in itself. We have been pausing to grow to the next level of leadership through self-awareness, character, and purpose. These are crucial and fundamental pause practices to “go beyond,” to transcend, and to pause with a small p. However, there is another state of transcendence, another state of pause, a more powerful one: Pause with a big P.

This capital Pause is a state of life that goes to our deepest essence, our innermost reality as a human being and as a leader. The sages throughout history have had many names for this: transcendental consciousness, pure consciousness, the absolute, the still point, silence itself, the soul, or essence. Physicists have speculated about it as part of the unified field theory, a unifying web of life connecting everything and existing everywhere. Practitioners of meditation call it consciousness with no thought, a state of being, mindfulness, or deep peace. Researchers have described it as a unique mind-body state where brain activity is very coherent and the body is metabolically more than two times as rested as when in deep sleep. To date, more than 600 research studies have been conducted on one meditation technique, Transcendental Meditation (TM), at more than 250 universities and medical schools in thirty-three countries. Findings range from improved brain functioning to improved health, reduced blood pressure, increased creativity, improved learning ability, and higher levels of self-actualization. Other meditative practices have produced noteworthy research as well. Many meditators around the world practice mindfulness meditation to manage stress, high blood pressure, chronic pain, insomnia, anxiety, and depression as well as to increase focus.

Jon Kabat-Zinn, scientist and founder of the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School as well as the renowned Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program, has pioneered the integration of mindfulness in our culture for more than three decades. In conversation with Bill Moyers about meditation during the PBS Healing of the Mind series, Kabat-Zinn said:

We do know that human beings have a capacity for awareness and self-observation. People have learned how to step back from their own thought processes to the point where they’re no longer making strong unconscious identifications with “I, me, and mine.” When something comes up and you can say, “Wow, I haven’t seen this one before,” it’s an example of becoming the scientist of one’s own mind/body connection. Being a scientist of your own mind/body connection doesn’t mean you have to control it.… What it means is that you’ll live more intelligently. You’ll make decisions that are more apt to bring you in touch with the way things work for you in the world.

Abraham Maslow referred to transcendent pause as our “peak experiences,” characterized by deep peace and fulfillment. Athletes call it “the zone,” mind fully awake and at peace, body dynamically at a peak performance with the event witnessed, as if in slow motion. Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls this optimal experience “flow.” Otto Scharmer, Peter Senge, and others call this deep Pause “presencing.” It is the bottom of the U in Scharmer’s Theory U, the source of innovation, incubating, and giving rise to future possibilities.

But, what do leaders call it? Where is this deepest state of Pause in the leadership lexicon? For leaders the nomenclature may be less important than the more important knowledge that it is accessible and available to enhance the quality of our leadership performance. As leaders, this state of transcendence can refresh us, bring us to a deeper state of synthesis and creativity by crystalizing our thinking, building our resilience, increasing our presence, bringing peace to chaos and understanding to unpredictability. This state also brings us a deeper state of identity than our external, successful selves, and guides us to a more essential level of wisdom-led eldership. Jon Kabat-Zinn offers this perspective on transcendence, the “interior landscape”:

to explore the interior landscape of the mind and body, the realm of what Chinese Taoism and Chan masters called non-doing, the domain of true meditation, in which it looks as though nothing or nothing much is happening or being done, but at the same time, nothing important is being left undone, and as a consequence, that mysterious energy of an open, aware non-doing can manifest in the world of doing in remarkable ways.

Too often, managers are Human Doers using energy and action to spend themselves in the pursuit of goals, whereas leaders aspire to be full Human Beings seeking the renewal of transcendence to re-create themselves and others in pursuit of service-fueled purpose.

It was Roger Sperry, Nobel Prize winner in 1981, whose research demonstrated that our divided brain with two hemispheres was more creative, artistic and intuitive on the right and more analytical and logical on the left. However, more modern cross-disciplinary science shows that we do not have a split brain, but a whole brain with “intelligent memory” that works in concert, intuition and analysis together. Dr. Erik Kandel contributed to a breakthrough article along with Brenda Milner and Larry Squire, “Cognitive Neuroscience and the Study of Memory,” in the journal Neuron, which explained this new model, and Kandel won the Nobel Prize in 2000 for his contribution. In “How Aha! Really Happens,” William Duggan references this groundbreaking work and explains, “Whether it’s working on a familiar formula or a new idea, intelligent memory combines analysis and intuition as learning and recall.” The flash of insight or “Aha!” experience we sometimes feel is a result of the “combining of different pieces into a new pattern.”

With awareness of this new model, research with functional MRIs, and cross-disciplinary approaches to studying the brain and the mind, we are learning about the conscious mind and the unconscious mind. In fact, Timothy Wilson, professor of psychology at University of Virginia, researcher, and author of Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious, said on the “Consciousness” episode of the Charlie Rose Brain Series in 2011 that we learn much about the unconscious by studying the conscious mind, and the reverse is true, too. He, Erik Kandel, Daniel Gilbert, Patricia Churchland, and others participating in the discussion agreed that when one part of the brain quiets or is less active, the other part can become more active. In his book, A Whole New Mind, Dan Pink points out that Betty Edwards, the Harvard University art instructor famous for her course and book, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, insisted that the difficulty for many people when trying to draw is “Seeing . . . and the secret to seeing—really seeing—was quieting the bossy know-it-all left brain so the mellower right brain could do its magic.” In Strangers to Ourselves, Wilson says, “The mind operates most efficiently by relegating a good deal of high-level, sophisticated thinking to the unconscious, just as a modern jumbo jetliner is able to fly on automatic pilot with little or no input from the human, ‘conscious,’ pilot.” Deep pause is the activating mechanism to make the entire range of consciousness useful; it allows more of the organizing, pattern detecting, and creative power of the brain to be activated.

We see this state of transcendence in great leaders, such as Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi. When they are so deeply established in this state, no external event can shake them. Where do you go when times get really tough for you as a leader? Do you go to a loved one, a trusted advisor or friend? Do you try to work it out while you exercise? These options are helpful, but where do you go when you need the deepest counsel and solace? Prayer? Meditation? Music? Learning to go deeper and deeper into our Pause to counter balance our everything-coming-at-us-at-once life has never been more critical. Chunyi Lin, international qigong master, creator of Spring Forest Qigong, and one of the most enlightened people I know, shared with me, “It is in the deepest silence that we have the greatest power. Deep silence connects us to universal power, knowledge and creative potential. Go to the deepest level of self to access transformation in all parts of your life. Lead your self, lead others and lead your life from the depths of silence.” As the British poet Lord Byron wrote, “The soul must pause to breathe.”

 

PAUSE POINT:
DEEP PAUSE

Go to your favorite quiet place. Turn on some soft music, if you like. Or, say a prayer if that fits your beliefs and practice. Notice your breathing, in and out. Let your mind be easy and relaxed. You have nowhere to go, nothing to do. Breathe . . . in and out. Observe your thoughts like clouds passing in the sky. Watch them come and watch them go. Breathe . . . in and out. Let your mind sink deeper into itself, relaxed and expanded with no expectations, no time commitment, and nowhere to be but here. Relax and be. If you feel some anxiety or fears, watch them like a scene in a movie. See them come; see them go. If big worries enter, notice the related tension in your body and sit with it until it releases and your mind and emotions settle again. Breathe in and out. Relax and observe. Experience the profound rest, silence, and peace. Be. Doing comes later. For now, just be. After 10 to 20 minutes . . . take your time . . . very slowly open your eyes.

Move your fingers, turn your head, pull your shoulders back and down, maybe stretch a bit. Take some deep breaths.

What did you notice?

Were you able to observe the cycles of thoughts, anxiety, depth, rest?

How do you feel now?

Did you have some very deep, restful moments?

Would it be possible to pause more often like this to relax and reconnect more deeply?

What would be the benefits to you to learn to take deep pause? Would it strengthen you as a person? Would it strengthen you as a leader?

 

Turning this kind of deep pause into a practice is key for gathering its generative impact. The more often and regularly you practice, the more you will experience the benefit. When something knocks you off center, you will return to your centered, grounded place more quickly. Although meditation is a great way to connect deeply, there are many other ways: inspirational reading; listening to or playing music; walking in nature; practicing tai chi, qigong, or yoga; praying. The idea is to pay attention, tune in, or be aware in the present moment. The key is finding your own best ways to pause deeply and to practice them regularly to strengthen your personal leadership. Pause deeply to lead powerfully.

 

Step Back to Lead Forward: Seven Pause Practices to Grow Personal Leadership

Pause to Grow Personal Leadership Practice 1: Be On-Purpose

Purpose is the high-performing, value-creating intersection of core talents and core values. Pausing to be on-purpose gives context, meaning, and clear aspiration to our personal leadership growth. Take the time to sort out your core talents, core values, and the meaningful difference you want to make. Managers control systems and processes to produce results; leaders foster meaning and purpose to achieve transformative growth.

Pause to Grow Personal Leadership Practice 2: Question and Listen

Use powerful questions and deep listening to accelerate self-awareness and self-knowledge. Deep questions and deep listening are the two primary tools for reflection, insight, growth, and powerful action. Take some time daily to consider deeper, penetrating questions about your life and desired future. Then, step back and listen to your inner dialogue, resistance, and insight. As things become clear, consider another round of questions, listening, and insight. Learn ways to slow down to listen deeply to the quiet stirrings in your soul, accessed through profound questions and deep pause.

Pause to Grow Personal Leadership Practice 3: Risk Experimentation

Risk “trying on” new behaviors. Consider showing more appreciation, celebrating successes, or acknowledging contributions you previously took for granted. What do you notice in yourself? In others? Risk showing a deeper, more authentic side of yourself. Experiment . . . learn . . . adjust . . . experiment again. Find new ways of being and behaving that serve others, create value, and align with your purpose. Stretch yourself into new behaviors and new assignments, extracting the continuous learning along the way.

Pause to Grow Personal Leadership Practice 4: Reflect and Synthesize

Take 10 to 15 minutes daily at the beginning or end of the day to sort through events and issues, your feelings and concerns of the day. What happened? What went well? What did not go well? What have you learned? When facing very complex or difficult situations, take more time. Get input from others. Sort out different ways of looking at the challenge. “If the person I admire the most were faced with this situation, what would he or she do? If I completely lived my purpose, what would I do?” Challenge yourself daily to reflect and synthesize to foster heightened clarity.

Pause to Grow Personal Leadership Practice 5: Consider Inside-Out and Outside-In Dynamics

The most complete picture of our deepest selves is revealed in both the outer connection and community we achieve with others as well as in the inner communion we achieve through introspection. Step back to consider the gaps and overlaps between how you perceive yourself and how others perceive you. Do you see strengths they do not? Do they see weaknesses in you that you do not? Pause to reconcile the similarities and differences between your self-awareness and the perceptions of others. Self-awareness, the keystone of authentic leadership, requires being open to sorting out these perceptions. Get an annual 360° and genuinely own your strengths and development challenges. Pause to create a comprehensive development plan.

Pause to Grow Personal Leadership Practice 6: Foster Generativity

Usually generativity is a concept reserved for preparing the next generation. However, it also applies to us. How are you being generative to yourself? Helping yourself to get ready for a new future, for the “next generation” of you? Reflect generatively by asking yourself, What is the next stage of my career contribution? What is the next stage of my personal and family life? What do I want to be remembered for? If it were your eightieth birthday, what do you hope people are thanking you for? Be generative to yourself; it can inspire personal transformation and personal reinvention.

Pause to Grow Personal Leadership Practice 7: Be Authentic

There is no better measure of personal leadership than authenticity. A leader who is real, genuine, and transparent creates a high-performing environment that is open, trusting, and collaborative. In today’s business world, the marketplace is littered with leaders and organizations that lack authenticity. With the instantaneous flow of information, the only way a leader stays credible is to be as authentic as possible. Take time to challenge the authenticity of your behavior: Did I really show up today, expressing what I needed to get across? Did I really live my values and purpose? Did I hold back too much? Did I risk my vulnerability enough? Also, take time to challenge your authentic self-awareness: Do I really understand my strengths and use them fully? Do I really comprehend my weaknesses? Do I have the courage to be real with myself and others about these strengths and vulnerabilities? As you pause to stretch and deepen your authenticity, your credibility and leadership voice will be strengthened.

 

 

PAUSE POINT:
VISIONING PERSONAL LEADERSHIP GROWTH

Imagine yourself fully on-purpose, living your mission with optimal passion, influence, and character. See yourself fully aware and fearless about your strengths and vulnerabilities. You are standing firmly on your two feet, rooted in a deep awareness of who you are. You are determined to grow to the next level, fully aware and accepting of who you are. You know the difference you want to make in the world and possess a role that allows you to do so. You are clear about your character attributes and embody them most of the time. Pause and reflect on these questions:

How does this vision feel?

How close are you to this vision?

What actions do you need to take to get there?

What is something you can begin doing today to move towards this vision?