The Leadership Pause - Masterclass

Key Takeaways

that. Excellent. Excellent. Excellent. It's April 30th. Is anybody else as chagrined as I am that in fact we're at the end of the first month of the second quarter? Like how did that happen? I'm delighted that you're here. I know everybody is feeling the weight of uh busyiness and intensity out in the world and that you would take two hours for yourself. I hope it was because of the subject we're talking about. Leadership pause is so important right now and I'm delighted to have an opportunity to give you this space to do some exploring for yourselves. And that would really be my my key call to action to you this morning. Please make this relevant and useful to you. Be specific as you reflect on either I'm a leader and I have a team and I'm living inside of an organization or I'm a coach who works with leaders or works with teams. It doesn't matter whether you are maybe an educator or you're a mentor or you're a parent. You will find there is something here for you. and to allow what I'm sharing both in the research and in some practical skills are going to be useful no matter what your context is. We will have uh um some remarks from me first. I have a couple of activities for you to do. There'll be reflections on your own. We'll then have um an interview. Uh one of our generative wholeness practitioners will talk about the application of the micro skills we're going to introduce today. So, you'll hear what it's like living and breathing inside of a coaching session, either from the leader side or the coach side. And then, um, I'm going to do a little bit of a meditation with you and give you a way to sink into your own leadership pause before we exit today. You're also going to get to meet a couple of people on team before we bid you ad do and send you on your way into May uh on time at the top of 2:00 Pacific, 5:00 Eastern. I can't translate any more than that. All right. Well, I'm still letting people in. Here we go. That's not too bad. Welcome. Welcome. All right. I'm going to go grab some slides and get us on our way. I know our marketing team always likes to know what it was that you found compelling. Uh so since you've already told us where you hail from, you might put in there, what was it about leadership pause that brought you here today? Oh, Karen, do you know my good friend Carol Macintosh? I bet you do. Welcome from Trinidad, Tobago. That's very fun. What had you say yes to the leadership pause? Oh, that's wonderful. I need a pause myself indeed, Frederica. And I find actually the more intense the environment becomes, the more difficult it is to say yes to pause. And it's exactly what we need. Ah, the space that pause offers. You know, I've been hearing in coaching communities for a while this phrase, hold space, and I've decided it's my latest prickly pair because when I say that to leaders, they have no idea what that means. So, part of what I want to offer uh Oh, that's great, Sarah. The pause saved my marriage and career more than once. Yes. So what is it when we pause that gets activated and I think this is inherently the reason why it becomes so difficult to do. I was um I was reading I was doing some reading on this idea of patience which I think is kind of related to pause. It's maybe a value. It could be um a belief. Um, I think I believed about myself for a very long time that I did not have any patience, that my lifelong challenge was to develop patience. And I've decided that's actually not quite right. I'm very patient when I allow myself to be human and stop being the striving, driving renegade innovator that I am. that patience is actually quite accessible for me when I'm in a cadence in myself that allows for some recharge time. That might be another way of describing the pause and it does describe holding space for myself. Those words don't mean much to me. So, you'll find me challenging some alternative language for you. Yes, a challenge and an opportunity, Christine, for sure. And yes, Melissa, what does it mean for us to get silent? I was with a client earlier this morning and we were doing some work around the the many parts of his uh thought process. Very complex M&A activity going on for him. And he realized that he can't hear all the different points of view if he doesn't pull himself out of his environment. And he always had this belief that that many had needed a day away or a half day away or he needed to leave the office where he didn't have a phone or an email bugging him. But the truth is he can just pull his chair back. He can silence his phone. He can close the screen and soften his eyes a little bit and he can listen to those different points of view. Five minutes, 6 minutes, 7 minutes. It doesn't have to be a long thing. So, if you have a point of view going on in your head that pause means time that I don't have, let's see if we can challenge those assumptions a little bit together today. And one of the things that showed up in my research was some work from something called the how institute for society. Has anybody come upon that? No. Is that new information for you? All right. I am going to see if I can figure out how to put something. It's not going to let me. Ah, all right. Before it's done, we'll be sure that you get this. I have something that I can give you. Um, that is a report from them and it's on moral leadership. And the reason that became important for me was because the first step in their structure of moral leadership is pause. The first of their six steps is pause. And what they have shown in this study which is 2500 respondents they are um examining what is the impact when the CEO and every layer of management is identified as having moral leadership. They have higher resilience, higher customer service, higher loyalty, lower turnover as a result, which is of course a very important piece. And what they've begun to recognize is that as you look intergenerationally and we understand what it is to work in a purpose-driven organization, the premium on human centered orientation is even higher. Well, when we're busy being driven, we forget uh that we're not robots. uh we have you know feelings and impact and influence in our environment and it's often quite invisible. We don't always speak about it. So that's what's inspired thinking about pause. And one of the things that I wanted to share this one quote with you here only 9% of CEOs and 11% of managers ranked in the highest tier of moral leadership in this year's study. That's really scary. 95% of those respondents reported that the need for moral leadership in business is more urgent than ever. Their founder and chairman uh Dev Seidman said, "Everyone wants a deeper sense of connection. People want to be inspired and treated fairly, but what he's been seeing is that people in high places doing harmful things with impunity and business." Well, that might be a little stronger judgment than we're willing to admit, but I can definitely see the places where when I fail to pause and I fail to notice that I'm failing to pause is when I always get in trouble. So I think there's there's something in here for us to realize the connection between the act of pausing and the opportunity that we have to restore a sense of our own grounded center and humanity. So the most dangerous habit in leadership, this is your chance to work in chat again. What do you think the most dangerous habit is in leadership? You had to think about this one, didn't you? Oh, that's lovely, Brian. I agree. So, where you feel your presence lives is in the pause. Assumptions, autopilots, unconsciousness, assuming instead of being curious, reactivity, react immediately, close-minded, multitasking. Yes, ready, fire, aim. Guilty is charged. I know that one. Keep moving without enough research. Yes. And there's a consequence, right? We we we end up getting very tunnel visioned. Well, the answer that I'm giving you here on the slide um encompasses most of those. And here's what I would say. Always acting. You know, the the leaders that people find they want to follow are the ones who earn deep trust. They are um they are the ones who are calm in the midst of chaos. um they're they're able to articulate now and tomorrow. So, they're always thinking about what do we create that's lasting and they aren't the ones who move the fastest. I I think that um maybe they learned something about pause and it's it's useful for us to learn from those kinds of leaders and that's a lot of what we get the great privilege to do as coaches, right? So here's our road map just so you get a sense of where we're headed. I'm going to talk for just a little bit more. Then we're going to move into what are the three micro skills. So those are good takeaways for you. Um beginning to look at how do you apply those mic micro skills both to construct an environment where you give yourself permission to pause, reflect, and access internal wisdom as well as how do you get yourself out of a mess? something that just didn't work out right and do the reflection to be curious and listen for learning and then ultimately how does this apply to leading and what we here at invite change bring out into the world which we call embodying the state of generative wholeness here's one more thing from dev that I um wanted to share as we launch into our work together here when you hit the pause button on a machine it stops thoughts. When you press the pause button on a human, they start they start to reflect, to rethink their assumptions, to reconnect with their most deeply held beliefs, and to reimagine a better path. I wonder if any of you I'm going to turn this off for a second so I can look at those of you that are on screen. Did any of you catch the Gallup global um flourishing survey event this morning? It was quite something. All of the data of this 5-year longitudinal study is available. Um, nature, uh, which is a, uh, periodical put out by Springer, has put all of the first 200 papers that have come out of this 5-year study out in the public domain. Everything is available. But there were some interesting findings. There's 200,000 participants, 140 languages on 27 countries. And here are the six factors to flourishing. Really important we make definitions clear. Happiness and life satisfaction, meaning and purpose. Three is uh mental and physical health. Four is character and virtue. Five is close social relationships. And six is material and financial stability. Now, if any of you have been studying happiness for a while, you know, I mean, at least the last decade, it's been reported that there is a tipping point where more material and financial security actually reduces one's sense of well-being and happiness. 10 years ago, the number was somewhere around 70 to 75,000 USD. And the number has stayed pretty steady. And in fact, this data is showing two interesting things. one that the financial security in the mid-range no matter what country we're looking at on the planet uh is the first indicator of higher well-being. This might surprise you. The number one country in well-being scored 8.1. It was Indonesia. America's down in the middle of the pack, folks. 7.11. And the second very alarming piece of information is that younger generations are less happy now and urgently so less happy. In previous studies, it's been a U shape. Youth have been happy and aging has been happiest. But that's not what we're seeing. We're not seeing a U. Now we're seeing this line like this. Like you're not happy until you're old. Well, that's a darn shame. Don't we want to be happy all the time? Come on. Well, what does it take? What does it take to actually generate that in our lives? Three themes came out. Inner cultivation. So, those of you that are working in the coaching space, this is a really important part of developing your professional practice. It is also true for leaders. How do we come to know ourselves well? The inner cultivation of our own sense of well-being, center, groundedness. The second is relational. Are we relational or are we isolated? Do we do we tend to walk alone, independent being um my mother used to call it a one-armed paper hanger? That's a visual hanging wallpaper with on hand. Anyway, relationships are absolutely essential. And then the third is engaged action. So even just taking those three things and looking at your own life right now, how are you at the percentage of time you spend in inner cultivation? What percentage of a time do you spend cultivating relationships? And are you acting out of reaction? Are you acting out of expectation? Or do you act out of intention? because you've reflected and said what most matters to me at the level of my value system and my principles is to give my life force in this way. All three of these are not possible without having time for pause. All right. Oh, thank you, Frederica. I'm glad really glad to hear that. All right. I want to frame the problem a little bit for us. Um, here we go. Who did we do this for? So, if you're a coach, think about the leaders that you're working with. If you're a leader, then this is for you. The ones who make fast decisions because you have to. You carry the weight of your team, your mission, and your outcomes. You crave space to think, but you don't know where to find it. You coach others to pause, but rarely do it yourself. Oh yes, many a team leader says that to me, and you lead well, yet you sense there's there's something deeper, a more authentic way to show up. These are often the presenting issues that we hear when somebody wants to engage with a coach. I hope that sounds familiar to you. If it does, then this moment, this time we're having together is for you. Here's how we see the the problem. Urgency is not leadership. even the you know the Eisenhower method method that ended up being um in CVY's method you know pay attention to the important not the urgent uh it it really isn't about time it is that the human body is predisposed to look at how do we stay safe and survive and that's the oldest part of the brain that does that by the way um so perfectly normal however we have advanced a bit it's not the only thing We're really not meant to live in reaction mode. So, those of you that have done your work around neuroscience, you understand the the movement between the sympathetic system where we're in reaction mode and the nervous system gets overloaded and we get fatigued and there are all kinds of negative ripple effects and then we learn, oh gosh, it's up to us to learn to regulate to bring it back down into the parasympathetic system where when we've reeregulated, our body is able to use our executive functioning. Think about that leader who is calm in the midst of chaos. The world rewards speed until it burns you out and then often times you're let go. So this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. I'm chasing um effort and results in order to have financial security, but I get tunnel visioned and I miss the opportunity to recognize that if I keep going down this path, I'm actually going to have less and less and less and less success until I'm actually burned out so much I can't produce anything and I'm let go. So, in that state of overdrive, we begin to confuse motion and progress. motion with progress and noise with influence and activity with impact, which is not true until one day the cost of all that speed just becomes too visible to ignore. Here's the untold truth. You know, no matter how brilliant your strategy or the hours that you grind or how flawlessly you execute, if you're not rooted in your authentic self, in that presence that you bring from the essence of who you are, your leadership becomes noise. One more thing, this is the employee who's on the other side of teams, close off the camera, and rolls their eyes. I cannot believe we've got one more project getting put on our plate. People prefer to follow presence. people who are genuine and authentic and able to be transparent about what they're experiencing. We trust clarity and we crave calm. And you can't offer it. Coaches, you can't offer it if you're not pausing long enough to fit it in yourself first so that you are embodying in an authentic way the very thing you're encouraging leaders to do. This is why this work is for humans. no matter what professional role you might be in. I did want to give you just a little bit more data. I think this research uh is compelling for why we want to look at this. So, this just came out. Uh this is the 2025 Gallup report on engagement. That's a big number there. $438 billion lost in productivity due to this. And uh the big decline from 23 to 24 is in the middle manager. Some of you might have seen that we were writing about this last week and that's a pretty big drop 30 to 27 about being directionalists like the the teams that are reporting to managers that are feeling the squeeze as organizations are contracting right now. Don't. I've had some people who have said, "I haven't done a one-on-one with my team members now for almost five months." It doesn't work. That's that connection that gets compromised. Um, in case you're not familiar with the Gallup data, not engaged is psychologically unattached to their work and company. They come to work every day without energy or passion for their work, contributing the minimum required to keep their job. Well, if we have 21 engaged, what's the number of not engaged? It's a big number. I think we want to do something about that. And that's on us as managers, as leaders, as folks involved with people. Um, we have a responsibility to manage the shift. Great leaders, the ones who have mastered the art of pause, they are not reactive. They allow space in their thinking process and in their conversation to respond. They pause, they get skill, and then they lead. They don't rush decisions to feel in control. That's another one of those ironies, right? We think if we can just stay out ahead of things, we'll be in control and there won't be chaos. Well, I think life has another thing in in mind. I I think chaos is around us all the time. And if we think we're ever going to tame the tiger, Christine, that was for your benefit. I don't think we're ever going to tame the tiger. Then we're going to find ourselves burnt out. How do we coexist with the chaos and find our space to walk? creating the space so that the right answers can emerge. Now, right's a question, a word I don't often use. I don't I don't really live in my worlds um in right and wrong thinking. I think when we get very dealistic, dualistic and either or, we're just setting ourselves up for disappointment because someone will judge our either or our or the truth is they're coexisting all the time. So what is the way in which I'm relating to this person, this project, this situation, this opportunity, this challenge? What will I bring to it that could create some better outcomes than what we are experiencing right now? So the right answer is the one that allows me to bring all of my authenticity and to give consideration to how others see the landscape. So pausing is not passive. It's deliberate. It's strategic and it's highly potent. So I want you to do a personal reflection here. There are four points on the slide. These are all aspects of what gets produced in the moment of pausing. So the first is clarity. And I think what that means is that we get to see what's true beneath the noise. How many times have you been asked to call interference between two people on your team that are having a little bit of a tiff? And the noise can has us have us wanting to just get everybody to calm down. However, when we listen to the noise to see what's the truth underneath it, what's the evidence? What was happening in the system that caused this to emerge? They both have a right to the feeling that they have. We just don't want them to stay there. We need to get to the bottom of actually whatever caused it to erupt in the first place. The second is trust and this is about giving people room to rise and shine. This means that we respect that everybody has something to contribute. We wouldn't have them on team otherwise we wouldn't have hired them and invested in them and given them opportunities to contribute to the organization. When did we forget that? So part of pause is that we allow ourselves to give these people on our team room to rise and shine in our mind's eye and begin to remember what is excellent about them, their resource, capability and creativity. The third is innovation. And in that pause moment, we begin to move beyond the obvious answers, the things we've always done, our best practices. Oh, don't get me started on best practice. I'll just say this. Why do I think somebody's best practice in a completely different industry is going to have any relevance to what my company is doing? Unless you can abstract it, it's not actually going to be a best practice. Might be something that gives you an idea. And yet the seed of the best practice is already in your organization because you have people who are doing the work. they're delivering to customers, drawing out from them what their experience is is going to give you the seed of innovation. But that means that you're pausing to let go of attachments and preferences and biases to certain ways you've historically done it. And of course, the last then is growth. the kind that sticks and scales in the longer term because its roots are in the workplace climate and ultimately the cultural norms that you've come to value and have produced a healthy workplace. All right. So, has everybody picked one? Why don't you go ahead and do that in chat? Let's see how many ones, how many twos, how many threes, and how many fours do we have? One is clarity, two is trust, three is innovation, and four is growth. Pick the top one for you and hold on to it because we're going to use it for this next activity. All right, two clarities, one innovation, there's a couple of trusts, there's a growth. Go Chrissy Chris. Clarity, [Music] innovation, growth. Okay, take a moment and maybe add anything you'd like to the reason you selected this one. That pausing for you, the payoff for it is this clarity, trust, innovation, or growth. All right. All right. I'm going to now take you through the micro skills. very very useful if you could bring into your mind's eye a situation you have right now. Maybe it's an employee, maybe it's a whole team, maybe it's a peer or a superior who's got a new initiative coming and it's caught you a little bit in turmoil. Maybe it's um something going on in the industry. Maybe it's something in your family. It doesn't matter. But bring a situation where you feel like if I just had a little more pause then I would get what I want in terms of growth, trust, clarity or innovation whatever that is for you. Maybe Christine for you clarity is the foundation of the rest. Fun to explore. All right. So the first micro skill is to see the value of pause. This is the reason I had you just do that exercise. Looking at the four payoffs of pause, picking one that is high priority for you and allowing that to start to be in your habit space that when you're challenged with fill in the blank, a clarity, a a trust, an innovation, a growth situation, that's your cue that you value pause. Now, what are you doing there? The first thing is to recognize that if you rush the decision, it could backfire. Now, intellectually, you understand that would happen because you don't get all the information you need. Yeah, I know. We train leaders and managers to, you know, make the best decision you can with the information you have and we make time the priority. Only here's the problem with that. when it backfires and the cost we have of unwinding that decision and making a new decision and implementing the fix was never accounted for. And that's part of what creates all the stress. Your job isn't to move faster, it's to see further. And this is the point of the my previous story because the ability to anticipate the ripple effect of the decisions we're making is how we make a decision that's less likely to backfire. Doesn't mean it won't. We used to do this really cool thing when I was at Charles Schwabin company um particularly when I was working in IT. I used to call it the worst nightmare meeting and it was something we did one week before we launched a new product. Everybody got in the room, everybody that had been working on the initiative and we had three hours to figure out all the ways in which the thing could fail. It was always a lot of fun, very funny, but very serious because we would always find one or two things. You know what? We didn't double check that. we haven't looked at that user case study well enough. Maybe that communication wasn't clear. We found things that could help us anticipate and mitigate what the change impact was going to be on the user community. That's what this kind of pausing pays off with. We hit the pause button on our rollout schedule to give priority to thinking through had we really considered everything that was important. And then the last resist the pressure to solve fast so you can understand what's actually needed. You know, I don't know if you guys read the book from Amy Edmonson called Extreme Teaming, but it's the story of how people from around the world who weren't even in Chile were instrumental in figuring out how to get those miners out of that collapsed mine. Well, if they had um given in to the pressure of they only have so much oxygen to breathe, they would have made mistakes. They would have missed information. essential. They needed to stay in their executive thinking function and to trust each other. That means they took time to pause, collaborate, set their agreements, lay out who was going to do what, figure out what their communication channels were. It's really putting all three of these together. You need to see the value of pause to invest in what it delivers to you. Okay. Have you got something written down on your example? I'm counting to 10. And here's micro skill two. Sit in the tension. Let go of the need to fix it. Now, I'm very famously for saying I'm very famous for saying in our organization, if nobody's died, it's all okay. Right? How are we holding what's actually going on? This is that first step. Let go of the need to fix it now. Which ought to stimulate your curiosity to say truly by when does it really need to be fixed? So often times what we see is that growth hides the discomfort that you're resisting. And when we stop and look at the discomfort a little more carefully, we realize it's been around a little longer than we thought. We just didn't notice it. Wow. And if I rewind the tapes and I look at what decision did we make six weeks ago and now it's unfolding and I knew six weeks ago when we made the decision there was a risk with it but I kept my mouth shut. I didn't say anything and now it's coming home to roost. And that's not a I told you so. That's on me. that if I had a sense of resistance about it and I didn't raise it for us to at least discuss it, then I'm part causer agent of the fact that we're having trouble right now. Tension is a resource. It is an invitation and it's often the seed of the answer. Why? Because tension comes up when we are experiencing a distraction, a disruption, a breakdown in the way we've always done things. Well gosh, that operation always works like that. But it's not in that moment. We need to look a little more carefully at the environment and say, "What has changed?" And I can't do that if I won't pause. So that means staying present long enough to let something new arise for us in that pause moment. Not weeks and days. Sometimes this is really only a few moments from the time I left my office till I walked down the hall and got a cup of coffee and I went, "Oh my god, there it is. That's the thing we missed." And now I can convene a conversation that isn't about blame and shame, but it is about discovery. And to say, "And what do we do with that?" because that gives us an idea. All right, jot a couple of notes before I go to micro skill three. Pull back for perspective. I know as coaches this is the thing we always allow ourselves uh to ask clients to do particularly when they're completely in the content and they're telling us a long story and the long story isn't going to help them get what they want which is resolution of some kind and to feel better about it. Well, what do we say? We say can we just pull back for perspective for a moment? This is this is the engaged action point. Widen your view. What you're looking for is the pattern. What things are patterns? Our values which are always at the seat of decision-m even when it's unconscious there. We can hear it in the language that people use what they care about and it begins to signal what the value is that's getting honored or dishonored. That's pattern recognition. Or maybe there's a cultural norm that they've adopted as a personal belief. Oh, we couldn't possibly touch the systems associated with that product. That's the pet product. It's the it's the one we always lead with. We can't we can't monkey with that. Only we're seeing a decline in people buying that product. We're seeing complaints coming up about that product. We have all the evidence necessary, but no, no, sorry. That's that's sacred. Seeing those kinds of beliefs at the pattern level will give us some insight. And you can't always see the system when you're inside the struggle. So in the pause moment where we're not feeling the struggle, where we've given ourselves some time to breathe and to relax into it, now we open our eyes and we realize, oh, when I look left, look at these three teams over here and what they're working on. that's actually got some relevance to what we're trying to solve here. And as a result, it gives us the altitude. Um, some of you leaders have probably had a coach say to you, "Hey, let's go up on the balcony and look down on the situation." That's what we do in that pause moment, the clarity to lead from vision instead of from urgency. So, three micro skills for you. See the value of pause. one of the four uh that are the payoffs of pause, getting connected to it, making it relevant to your situation. Sit in the tension so that you can um reflect and see more of the territory and add in pulling back for perspective beyond the boundary of what you normally think about. Those three micro skills are how you begin to integrate pause into your day-to-day work. All right, before I go to the next thing, which is a tool I want to give you, let me just pause and check in. How are you guys doing? I'm seeing nods and some smiles. Anybody got a question? You're welcome to come off a mute or a comment. You're all waiting for each other, aren't [Laughter] you? Sarah, how about for you? One thing I always think about when that second tip about tension and being able to sit in the tension is thinking of how long that tension, let's say it's in a conversation really lasts. So I have in my head that it's this big mountain to climb and the reality is that the tension or the discomfort or even the pain is anywhere from sort of one to five minutes before I get to the other side. And you know, um, especially when I was close to having my daughter years ago, it was the time of a contraction, which is really about 2 minutes. And if I could deal with that, I could deal with anything. But I over the years, how many conversations would I avoid or even uh meeting someone for a two to five minute window? And yet when I called upon the courage to be in that tension, feel it fully and act anyway, I got what I wanted. And so the more that I did that, the less the the tension or the pain uh you know ruled my life. Beautiful. And and so you can see that the first micro skill is essential. So, it might be clarity, Christine, but I think it's seeing the value in the pause. Regardless of which of the payoffs you're going after, we have to first make the connection that it's okay to feel uncomfortable for a little bit. And the pause is what helps me recognize and remember when I take action, it will resolve the tension rather than avoiding the tension which only has it stick around longer. Why would we do that? Yeah. Good. Anybody else? Thanks, Sarah. I wonder if anyone here has been saying to themselves, I know these three things. I know it's important to value pause. I know it's important to sit in tension. I know it's important to pull back for perspective. I'm not doing it. Anybody got that going on? Ah, thank you Hideo for your honesty. Yeah, that's what I'm trying to uh ask a question about that. So, um yeah. Yeah, I understand those items are quite important but uh yeah, how to uh do and then practice is quite uh difficult for me right now. Yeah. So practice practice practice or how can we you know activate that kind of things in my daily operation at the what uh my organization I hope you wrote that question down for yourself how do I activate that in my daily operation because that's the key right um and there's always a what question before you get to the how because somewhere in you the current daily operation is getting priority. It's being seen as more valuable. It is recognized as a higher priority than what you cognitively understand might be different if you pulled back for a little perspective and sat with the tension longer. And I'm not only personalizing to Hideo, we're all guilty of this, right? Whatever environment we have found ourselves in, we've we've belonged in our environment and we're doing a good job and we love our people and we love the purpose of our organization. And then one day we go, I don't love it. Like this isn't working. This feels uncomfortable to me. Then it could be a project or it could be your whole career. I don't know. anything in between. Until we reflect, and this is really the key, until we pause and reflect on what brought me to this experience, and I'm saying experience on purpose. We are absolutely the agency that produced the experience. We can say it was our boss who had a stupid timeline. Or we could say it was our team member who um decided to take a vacation in the middle of our biggest launch. Or we could say it was a peer who decided to say some promise something different to the customer than what we're able to operationally deliver. Those are just circumstances. Where were we in the process of those circumstances occurring? If we haven't stopped to ask ourselves that question, we will make a new decision. And if our daily operation is continuing to produce that, then the question is, what's the payoff? You know, I've had some leaders who have said to me, well, the payoff for me is that my boss leaves me alone. I said, okay. Um, for how long having your boss leave you alone, is that a good thing? Well, when it comes to review time, not I said, exactly. No visibility in the organization to your work. So, um, you know, you hired me as your coach because you want to get a new job someplace else that is a promotion. And do you imagine that might follow you? If you don't address what has you not prioritized being able to spend time with colleagues, the network, your boss, their peers, and demonstrating what your competency is and your growing capacity as a leader. So the key here hideo really is in the reflection to say what's motivating how I am operating now and how anybody in the organization is operating, right? the the evidence of what we prioritize. Because you can't change if you can't see what's motivating, what's creating the experience you're having, which might then lead to, as you all know, deeper things like beliefs, other identity factors, values, and the story we're making up about what we think we can tolerate or live with. And Chrissy, what a wonderful way to frame that because if you are um always the one people come to for answers, it's really hard to unwind that. It feels so good to be able to give an answer to somebody. But the minute we do that, we've just potentially created three more problems. one, that person knows you know the answer and they don't need to know it, which means you've just created a bottleneck on your team and they're underperforming to their potential. Secondly, because you never asked what they were thinking and what was bringing the question forward in the first place, you've disrespected their competency, which is the first step of not belonging. And third, you've just made yourself uh irreplaceable sort of till your team can't scale for the growth that is the new strategy of the organization and now you have become the bottleneck. So um while it's wonderful to get expertise and be the one that everybody comes to feels really good in the moment, long term it's not a strategy. It loses its potency. It ultimately burns out. And so the antidote to that is to be generative, to let yourself take a pause, sit in the tension of the problem. And I often say to leaders, your first question to ask is this is, is this mine to do? And if it's not, who's the first person that comes to mind on your team that this is for? And who's the second person that could get developed if they had an opportunity to work on this? That's the leader who's anticipating and thinking about the future and the responsibility to be developing their team. None of that thinking process happens without pause. All right. Anybody else? I got time for a little bit more before I give you this next one. I can see they're all thinking, Steve, those wheels are turning in there. All right, let's play with something. This is called uh the vehicle for generative change. And if I can find my button, I will show it to you. Here we go. Okay. Thank you, Hammad, for the beautiful new branded colors and this graphic. Just love it. Um so on the right hand side you see action and results and this is what organizations are looking for. They want everyone to be achieving sustainable excellence all the time. Do it. Do more. Do better. Do faster. We want results. And what we've seen over time is that uh the very best leaders are the ones who pause to identify what is it that has us producing those sustainable excellence results and how do we stay alert for what's changing in the environment that would alter what we're choosing as the way would produce those sustainable results. So you can do this one of two ways with the situation that you wrote down. You could look at something that didn't work. So you could start on the right hand side where it says results and you have just jot a note or two down. This is the result that was unsatisfactory or in some way it didn't meet your expectation. The next step in this process then would be to say and what actions am I aware of that we took that produced that result. Now we go to the other wheel and this is really the secret sauce which is in reflection I can realize that the policy that we aligned our decision for those actions on doesn't fit the circumstance. Uh, for example, I I have a client who is um working on an acquisition right now and um some of the conditions that have been put forward by the company that is doing the acquisition just don't fit. They aren't they're they're kind of a non-starter. They got through somehow on the letter of intent, but now they're, you know, down to the wire and how are they going to resolve this? And everybody is in chaos. So then the next step was that and I asked him I said okay so what is it in the strategy or in the board direction or something in the belief system which might be cultural norms that um has that policy be so deeply rooted where there's no room to maneuver and actually puts this acquisition at risk which is a huge financial impact for you. And the more that we walk through some examples, he started to see that there were two really core beliefs that he said, you know, we haven't had any discussion about these things, but I can see how they are absolutely motivating the actions that we're taking and the reason we didn't even see it in the letter of intent that this policy we have was going to be a deal breakaker. All right. So now awareness has emerged and our next set of questions was which conversations with which people will help bring this to light so that you can start to consider what an alternative approach might be assuming you still want to do the acquisition and the answer was yes I do. Now we went the other direction. So with that awareness he said these two beliefs need to be transformed in this way. We need to believe this in order to behave like X and ultimately this policy is probably something we need to replace, but we're going to need board sign off on that. All right. Well, what does that mean in your timeline? What do you need to negotiate? And now he's into planning actions and what are to produce? We're going to get signed all around on this deal, but we're going to need an extension for two weeks. So, we went from ringing his hands, chaos, I can't believe this is happening. Everybody's mad at each other. And in the space of about 20 minutes, uh, he had clarity about what was driving those actions that produced the result he didn't want. So, I'm just going to give you about five minutes of quiet here, and I'll leave the display up for you so that you have an opportunity to think about your project. either work from results backwards or if you've got something brand new, what are you aware of about the opportunity? What would you have to believe for it to work? Where would you ground that in the system that you're living in? What actions might that inspire to produce what you want? It's a thinking frame. I give you about five minutes to work on that. Oh, I'm writing to the waiting room. Sorry. Let me do it. I'm writing away and you can't see it. Okay. So, consider the situation you examined when we reviewed the benefits of pause. What results occurred? And it could be you liked it or you didn't like it. It doesn't matter. What actions produced that result? What was the basis of the choice for those actions? What then must the organization organization believe about this product process um uh people doesn't matter what what we're looking at um that holds that policy or basis for decision making in place from that. What new awareness emerges that was not considered or maybe was dismissed when the um actions were set in motion and didn't create or did the result you want. So that's the edit going backwards. You could do it the other way. You could start with what's new thing I'm doing. What do we believe about that thing? What's going to be the policy or basis of our decision? What actions would that inspire? What result would it create? That got it. Yuki, this nod. It's fine. Good. So before we leave and go to Steve's uh uh storytelling for us with the clients about applying generative wholeness work, let me see if there are any questions that came up for you. This is a practice you can use it anywhere, anytime, with anybody. I'm very happy to have you pay it forward. Um, and practicing with yourself with decisions you're making is a good way to get it in your bones. So, what came up for you? Anyone? One or two people to share. just so not used to coaches being so quiet. You know, they're practicing the pause. Oh, Steve, you you you help them out. Goodness gracious. Now, come off pause. I think first a small pose to start. Uh so Hideo is my supervisor. So then I remember we were talking something both are uh aware of those coaching conversation. So then he start to close the eyes which is his thinking moment and that is a cue. Okay, I'm going to pace same pace and we're going to pause as well. So if you have the one those successful posing experience both of us to subconsciously agreed upon for me was very lucky to have those pose moment. So this is the same thing of like a sports. So if you practice better then you getting better. So if you that concept then find some first pose intentional pose experience might be helpful I guess. Yeah that's good. So you you had an opportunity to pull the memory forward. Oh so now you build value for the pause and then you did something else which is you started to read the clues in relationship. We all have a tell, right? So it's like we talk about this in in card games. We see this in movies all the time. It's like, "Oh, I've got to tell and how he's going to," right? Well, we do this all day long. We're we're always picking up cues and they help us then to recognize that's the moment to slow down a little bit. Thank you. Yeah. Good. Thank you. Anybody else? Ah, great Barbara, that's wonderful. Oh my gosh. And particularly now there are a lot any of you that are working in the career coaching space, people are feeling really desperate. Um particularly if you're on in a city somewhere in the United States where you've had a lot of people let go and folks are feeling a little bit um desperate about finding employment and understandably so that's not the place they want to show up from, right? So, you know, creating the environment where they can exhale and uh check inside to see what is really wanted now. And sometimes what's wanted is a break to recover and work through whatever the impact of something that's happened that feels so out of control, out of their control, out of their influence and restore a certain center and then put themselves back in the seat and say, "All right, what are the things that are important to me?" Awareness. What must I believe in order to prepare myself to be in a different kind of role? and so on and move their way forward. Yeah. Great. All right, Mr. Thorson. Yes, Mrs. Harvey. So, Steve Thorson is a generative wholeness practitioner uh for Invite Change. He also is a PCC coach. He is a certified mentor coach. He's an accredited coaching supervisor and he also happens to be our chief operating officer. Um, but his first love really is being a coach. But that wasn't your first love. Before you knew coaching, what were you doing? Oh. Oh, take me in the wayback machine. And what was my first love? My first love was sports and in particular basketball. Yeah. What do you know from basketball about leadership? Pause. That right there that occurred before every foul shot. No matter what the crowd was doing, no matter what this what no matter what was happening around me, come home. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. And I suspect as a fellow athlete, trust the body memory you have that your body knows exactly how much pressure, how much flick of the wrist, how much push will make sure that that ball goes into the hoop. There was a there was a three-word mantra, you know, backspin, follow through, be smooth. Wow, that's great. that is part of that exhale that activated that memory. Yeah. Goodness, wouldn't that be great as leaders if we had our own mantra to remember what will allow us to let go of the distractions and bring ourselves fully present. That's another really good use of pause by the way. Cool beans. All right, I have some questions for you. You ready? Okay. And I know you have a particular client in mind. Uh uh so you know please uh amplify with the question in that relevant way. Um uh so what role does trust both selfrust and trust in others play in being able to pause effectively? What role does trust? I'll put it in chat for you too. you might give a thumbnail sketch on the client. It's okay. So, yeah. So, my my particular client [Music] um for for him to step into the leadership pause was like not going to happen. Um, and so he he needed to first develop trust of himself that that coming out the other end was going to be something a worth the investment. So where's the value in it? Um, and so to to uh to build that trust in himself and in the pause, that's what we started doing at the beginning of our coaching sessions. Let's pause 30 seconds. Now, that's not very long. And yet, during that 30 seconds, my invitation is for you to notice what's currently happening with you [Music] mentally, physically. What's what's going on in your in your brain, in your heart, in your gut? tapping into those three places. And what are you feeling physically? Take 30 seconds. And then we we did the bring forth your development plan and consider that as you continue to pause. That was another 30 seconds. So, we spent an entire minute, right? That's forever. Not really. It's a minute. And another 30 seconds considering today's session. And now that you've you've noticed yourself and you've related that to the plan, what's up for us for today? That whole process created client trust in the pause. Yeah, that's brilliant. Why aren't we teaching that in the classes? Michelle Coven picked that up, too. That's a tremendous uh way to enter into a session. Really nice, Steve. Thank you. And that and that just emerged like things do having paused myself. Yeah. So, so that was role of your own selfrust, your trust in your client, giving him an opportunity to grow his selfrust to trust the partnership of your coaching work. Ultimately, I think he's rolled it out, right? So, I'm going to write the next question here so everybody can have that, too. What have you witnessed for leaders who patiently open up space for innovation? Sorry guys, my fingers wanted to go faster for innovation or growth in the organizations you've worked with. Yeah. What have you witnessed for leaders who patiently open up space as as you were going through the um the opportunity for um for clarity, for trust, for innovation, for growth, that all happens. Um and and I think there's also um well fundamentally there's when the when the leader makes the choice to pause intentionally is curious. This isn't an accident. This is I'm going to be curious now. Okay. because I notice this tension. There's tension in the in the in the in the place that we're at. I notice this tension and I'm going to use that tension as the stimulus for curiosity. And what's the question that I want to ask now and then wait for and just like any good coach wait for the question to be answered. Another use of pause. Another use of pause. Right. And for the coaches that skill five six six Okay. And so and and from that comes more people are heard. The people that were quiet now have an opportunity to to bring forth. you end up with this better than we thought possible and certainly better than I could more than what I could have thought on my own says the leader and those stats on engagement that's the antidote to that right notice as the leader your internal tension notice it pause. Choose to be curious. What do you notice with the client that you're working with at the moment? Um, so this is a um a production plant situation. Uh, besides being the head of HR, he's also in a production manager kind of capacity. This is for everybody else's benefit. Um, how long did it take for him to start to see the influence of a new way of showing up? One that was sitting in the tension and um getting curious to create connection. Um, for him to notice the difference was almost immediate once he started to do it. There were um I think it was like a couple months of him considering it and pondering it and almost going and then pulling. So there's this there's this trust in self that no matter how much we did in the session, there was there there had to be that that moment of of um there's a breakthrough moment of um of finally accepting trust for himself to go do it. And my gosh, once he did it, it it just it exploded in a very good way. I really want everybody to get this. There is a pause for him, this leader, as he's gaining awareness of what his resistance is. Is it okay for me to can I give myself permission? Will will will there be consequences I can put up with? Will it you know all the worst case scenario thinking until he could work his way through that which is the pause in implementing the learning from the coaching experience at some point he makes a choice and says I'm going to go try it and when he does he has a good result so to not be disturbed by the length of time it takes for people to find their way it's just their pause time to process and um the opportunity we give them is how they build that selfrust because it's probably the only place where they have permission to be still, to be quiet, to consider, to to have somebody be non-judgmental about um some belief they have that it's not okay when everything is. Showing up showing up in this way and and behaving in this manner as a leader was totally contrary to what was normal. and to build that internal resource to take that step. So Gretchen is asking is that something that were you work some of those questions I was asking u were those some of the things you worked through with him until he started to implement? Absolutely. Yes. Yeah. So we um Yeah. Um we we played multiple visionaries. Uh Imagine You've done it. Ah act as if right put him in a liinal state now now what's happening yeah good so that he could get a a sense of the value in the in the result and and each and every one of those was not a was was never ever a I would say a negative from my perspective there was it was always it always ended up his imagination was that this was going to be good And yet there's there's [Music] um a lifetime of culture for him himself, not only with the organization, right? That was being asked to um to go counter to Yeah. Yeah. That's a really important piece you're bringing in there. Um you know the west has this insatiable demand for speed and not all cultures do and in some cultures if there is not connection time then there's no business to be done just as an example. So causes the opportunity to notice some of those differences and to lean into them. Right? And this was a tough looking back on the relationship those meas opportunity for me to be with someone who's op who's very much different from me and my upbringing and um so yeah what do I what am I noticing inside of me as the coach while we're having this exchange? You know, that's that's a really interesting question you're bringing up that I get a lot from coaches, but I want to pick up um Gretchen's uh thread here. You know, was the act as if enough to diminish the power of the critic? It it's never one thing. And what was the influence of helping him through the liinal space of act as if to see what would emerge? What happened for him? Um, I I think he he became significantly more comfortable with and and looking forward to the outcome that he had imagined. H well that sounds to me like it wasn't so much doubt as uh he wasn't doubting the outcome. He said it was positive for him. He could imagine it being positive. What was really in his way? So I at the at the root of everything was the was um my my take um his his culture which would which would say um you're the boss, you have the answer. Yeah. And to create a space where you pause and you ask a question instead of giving an answer. Yeah. That's so contrary to what normal would be. Yeah. And it's at the heart of it. I want you all to get this. This is what the data that I was showing at the very beginning of our discussion is talking about is that we're so ingrained to follow the rules, to follow the hierarchy. Um, if somebody has stature that's higher than mine, they must know something I don't know. And if I step out of line, this is often what I hear. If I step out of line, I'll get in trouble. I'll get, you know, I'll get my knuckles wrapped for having too much initiative. Oh yes, I've heard about this, too. guilty is charged. And it was really useful for me to learn that, oh, there's things called swim lanes and scope of responsibility and independence isn't always a good thing. And you know, culturally, if you have that on top of a system that's deeply hierarchical, trying to get initiative is hard. And that means it only happens through relationship, creating connection. And you taught him how to ask questions instead. Yeah, that's beautiful. Steve, um I have a thought here about um you gave us the one ritual at the beginning. I'm wondering what you did to help him really integrate into his worldview. 8.1 for the coaches integrate into his worldview this um priority to pause and be curious so that he could be learning from his team and build relationship through that like a ritual or a you know a reset or you know when he felt felt like he was dropping back into old habits. How did what did you do to help him have something to bring himself back? Well, the one that was that comes first is one that I use myself, which um as part of that pause, it's who said yes to this. I love that question. As I as I begin to go, oh, there's too much and oh, they don't want and they can't and they won't and they what and wo is me going to that uh wait a minute who said I said yes and that worked for him as well that there's some sovereignty in that there's some ownership in that there's some I asked for this I said yes to this takes that whole thing off the shoulders and it did for him too that was Um and and then the other piece is um is I asked him to consider what's the what's the inspired experience you're wanting to have in your role. the power of [Laughter] intention. Let me inspire. And as you get stuck or as you wander or as you go, I wish I would have pause and remember what what is the experience you're desiring to have? And wow, with that inspired experience that he desires to have, that kept him that got him back on I think sometimes we underestimate how deeply rooted um 10 20 30 40 years of experience this gentleman has been in RO for a very long time. um unwinding that can can happen instantly in a thought and it requires um diligence and consistent attention and um um I think even an availability to not do it right all the time or not not not so much right wrong but matching to what we're intending immediately can we be patient and have a bit of a pause to allow the process to unfold. Well, and and you brought up my life as an athlete. Um yeah, that's right. I'm not an athlete anymore. Um was um out once won, always won. Uhuh. Always. I I I remember, okay, we're going to go learn something new. We're going to go practice this. We're going to practice, practice, practice. Well, if you didn't practice it correctly, what did you learn? So, there's this there's this um Yeah. Um being coupled with not knowing is the other place to be, Janet, of um of I don't know that yet. and have that actually be inspirational rather than um uh something that's a critique. It's like yes, I'm not there yet. [Music] I think the other thing you're reminding me of, I love both of those that you brought is if I go back to the one the person I was talking about who's in the midst of an acquisition. He was in a conversation with um outside counsel, inside counsel and the head of the board. And when he got out of that meeting, he realized that he picked up on something in the moments, but he didn't say anything. And um it was his it was something he said that there was a reaction, not in words, but energy. He could feel the energy. He saw something. He saw an exchange of looks between two of the players. And he trusted his gut, took a deep breath, and he said, "I owe them an apology. I there's something here that I've done that that set them off." And it's important I get to the bottom of it before um the next meeting. So to Sarah's story, he picked up the phone and fessed up to what he was experiencing and didn't say anything about and what if that was true, what do we need to clear the air about? And it turned out to be one of the lynchins. It had to do with the policy that needed to be changed. and if he hadn't called the conversation, they wouldn't have had allies uh with the internal counsel around what to do. So this this process of noticing is so essential uh in developing a leader's ability to be generative gamecher along with accepting that you are already whole. You have everything necessary to solve this. You're just not listening to it. Yeah. Okay. Any last word of advice that you would give a leader who feels like pausing but he's falling behind? Any last advice? I would say that I would give this advice to the the leader is the same of the advice that I give to someone who's learning to be a coach. No matter how much time there is, there is always time to do something. Do pause. Through pause. Yes, there is always time. We made it up anyway. It's just a construct. It's it's a human con. Yes. Yes. We need to sense an order and something that we could Yeah. measure ourselves against or whatever. And whether it's five minutes or 10 minutes or 20 minutes or an hour, there's always 30 seconds. Yeah. There's always enough time to do. Yeah. Question is, how shall you be? That's a quotable. We used to say tweetable. We don't say that anymore, do we? Could I could I throw something out here? I just want to acknowledge something that you said, Steve, about well, Janet had mentioned that this man had been in his role for 30 years and even their CEO with a group of people that were getting coaching wanted to sort of move and not include that person. So it's it's a wonderful testament to your as coach being his champion, cheerleader and challenger and uh I as account manager and for you uh people who are coaches and have businesses to challenge the CEO's thinking this person actually is thriving under this or with this partnership of coaching. So what will be the results if you move that aside and just go with this other group and um allowed the pause the silence u for him to fill and say okay you're right. So, I say that to say also you've helped me rebust my bias about the older employees that aren't moving along as as the younger ones, which I love to work with. And when they move, it's like, you know, the platelets of the earth move, everything moves because they're going to wait, wait, wait, and then they go and it's profound. So, thank you. Thanks, Sarah. Yeah. Beautiful. All right, I'm going to take the next 10 minutes to give you some time to go inside. Uh, so just a quick trip back down memory lane. We started talking about the problem, all the things that are the reason why we want to pause. Gave you some research data to support it. So that we'll call that brain candy. Then we spent a little time looking at what's the payoff. What what would be the upside of challenging my habit to go go go and not incorporating pause yet? And I asked you to put that together with some situation that you're currently experiencing. And we looked at the micro skills, an opportunity for you to say, "Oh, I could have done this. I could have done that." And then we did the vehicle for generative change as a thinking frame to say, "All right, what else is going on here that in this moment of pause, using this thinking frame, I start to see or it's a new opportunity. Oh, this is another way for me to think about how I might frame that opportunity." Doesn't matter. Either one works. What we're going to do in this 10 minutes is to begin to look at who do you talk to internally. Now, I don't mean your civil. I'm not saying that. But we all have different points of view inside of us. Um, this comes out of uh family constellations work and then constellations work applied to organizations. Some of you might be familiar with um parts work or voice dialogue or internal family systems. We recognize that um we we have a way in which we check in with ourselves and they have different points of view. I have the part of me that's an athlete that says well if you are just consistent enough you are going to achieve what you want. And then they have the part of me that says, "Oh, come on. Do I really have to be in that discipline my entire life?" That's the one who wants to go out and pull weeds in the garden instead of going to the gym. And then there's the one of me that loves doing research, reading, and digesting. And and I let my alchemist out and I start to think about um oh, we could do this really cool thing in this class. And I actually I did this over the weekend. I built a whole new survey which was really fun. But those are all three very different perspectives inside of me. And there's the leader self, there's the coach self, there's the um the one who loves to go dancing, the one who loves to be in the kitchen. I have many selves inside of me. I call that your inner counsel. So I want to give you an opportunity. I'm going to do a very brief guided meditation and then leave it quiet for 5 minutes and then give you another five minutes to write. This purpose is to anchor what we've been talking about today. So using the three um micro skills, using the vehicle for generative change and ask inside what is it in this time that I have to pause here that is valuable and useful and important for me to claim and declare so that as I leave this session today I have a sense of what else I could contribute to whatever that initiative is that you organized. Everybody got it? Okay. All right. Why don't you go off camera? Go away. Let this be your time and uh let yourself get comfortable. Some of you may know this technique from uh HeartMath Institute. If you don't uh and you're not aware of the HeartMath Institute, it's a lovely place to go find some wonderful things. Um yes, Frederri, I can post the question. Um it it's quite simple. Uh asking your inner counsel um what is important and valuable and useful for you to consider with the situation that you've been working with this entire time. Now that you have this moment to pause, um you're evaluating it by being here uh in this activity. Um sit in the tension that might arise and you're pulling back for perspective by asking your inner counsel. I'm going to type it now. is important, valuable and useful for me to consider the situation I am exploring. There you go. Okay. The HeartMath Institute has um a tremendous number of resources that are free um to help with what's considered coherence. Um, one that I love very much is called square breathing. So, I'm going to start with that and then I'll do a little bit of a guided visualization for you and then you'll be on your own. Okay. Um, it's called square breathing because there's four parts to it and it's done on a four count. Four being a sacred number of uh completion often seen four quadrants in a circle for example. And it begins by uh letting yourself have a nice soft belly. And you're going to take and let me give you the instructions first before you start. Um a four count to fill um your belly, your chest, all the way to the top of your head with breath. And then four count to hold your breath there. and then a 4 count slow exhale out allowing your belly to completely relax and hold the empty belly for 4 seconds and then repeat. So I will count with you the first time and then do it a couple more times. Whatever is helpful for you to let your attention go internal. All right. So, first the inhale. One 2 3 hold. 2 3 Exhale. 2 3 Empty. 2 3 and again if you wish and bringing your attention inward with the breath. Having relaxed your body, there's any place of tension left, put your focus there. You need to turn your ankles or your wrists. Settle your seat in the chair. Allowing the breath to sustain your attention internally. Wherever you know your heart to be, every human being has an inner counsel. They are always there available for you to consult when you come with a genuine question. And so now imagine that you are uh with your breath creating a a wonderful bubble around you. You could even just lift your arms up over your head and you'll know the boundaries of that bubble goes above your head, out to the side, underneath. And as you breathe, you start to realize that with your breath, you can move your bubble. We're going on a journey. And allow your breath to lift you up. and ask to see where your inner council is sitting in circle. This may take a moment or two. Just keep allowing the breath to move your bubble. Some of you may find your counsel right where you are. Others may journey to something that looks like a forest glenn, someone else, a meadow. Maybe you're in outer space. Wherever you are, let that be. And with a large exhale, let yourself land your bubble where you can see your council is seated in front of you and ask your question. What is important, valuable and useful for me to consider with the situation I am exploring and then relax into the quiet and let them each answer. You'll have some time to write when you come back. So, let yourself stay in the experience. And now, as the time arrives for you to return, there's one more request. Ask the inner council what they would give you as a symbol. Maybe it's a color, a sound, uh an image, something that they would gift to you to remember the wisdom they've shared with you today. So as you come back to current reality that comes with you and if you stand up you'll see you can go towards the council and put your hands out and they'll place it there in your hands. and then look each member in the eye and say thank you, expressing your gratitude for this time together and feeling the love in return from each of them to you. And as you go back to where you were sitting once again inside your [Music] bubble. One last look to say goodbye for now. and use your breath to bring yourself back to this reality. Back into the place where we've been together for the last hour and a half or so. If you can, putting your feet on the ground and again with your arms going up overhead. Now push down the edges of your bubble knowing you can bring that back anytime you want. Maybe rolling your shoulders and a couple of deep breaths to bring you present to yourself. And for the next bit of time, find your paper, whatever you're taking notes on. capture the wisdom you got and the symbol in whatever form it might be. And if you didn't get one, that's all right. Sometimes the void is the symbol. And I'll be with you in two or three or four minutes somewhere in there while you have a chance to capture your experience. and finishing up in whatever way is useful for you so that you can keep going with it later. If there's more and bring this step of it to close. And if you want to come back on camera, that's fine, too. Yes, everybody's energy is a little different. What wants to be shared, if anything? Gretchen, were you looking to say something? Yeah. I can't figure out how to raise my hand. Oh, it's okay. I saw it. Well, um this was one of those like kind of um a mini profound experience. Um I think uh what I discovered is that um years ago I used to do processes like this. Um, I learned, you know, I I went through quite a lot of training with IFS and other modalities. And then at some point I experienced [Music] um some very difficult I had some very difficult experiences and I just slammed the door shut on all of that. And [Music] um so I feel like I [Music] um found my way back to my own way of being with an inner counsel that doesn't look like somebody else's way. Um, and realizing I've got a client who I've worked with for quite some time and oh my god, she is a chatty Kathy. She just talks. None of us have anybody like that. Yeah. And I've been trying to I've been, you know, working, you know, knowing that it's there's a piece of me in it. But I I think that this helped me to see that probably my own I got a piece of another piece of what's mine that's showing up in my coaching with her that gives me another possibility or other possibilities of how I can be a better coach in working with her. Um and then I'll say one more thing which is that uh it's possible that this lesson of reclaiming being in this way uh I' I've been through a year of accidents and falling and injuries and whatnot which has made me have to just sit or lie down quite a lot where you can't do stuff. So I've been doing a lot of being with with the experiences embedded in all that and and knowing that you know there is there are there are accidents and there are no accidents both at the same time. So, [Music] um, this little practice helped me get more clarity about, uh, what for me in all of that. So, thank you. Yeah, you're very welcome and thanks for sharing your experience. You know, we didn't talk much about it this time, but but you really just demonstrated sovereignty that you have self-ruling, which is the meaning of that word and you're choosing now on your terms, in your way, in your rhythm, and listening. Yeah. Yeah. takes a bit to let go of the um anger and hurt and betrayal and all of that that gets in the way of sort of saying yeah to all that but now what I don't want to keep carrying that around now what so thank you you're very welcome I'm so glad you joined us Okay, go ahead, Carol. It was helpful for me to do the visualization because sometimes you're so busy and even though I know Yes, you can visualize. Um, it is a practice that allows me to also quiet all the different voices in my head and all the different things I have to do and all the different, you know, projects and so on. And it allowed me to feel I feel calmer after doing it. And it also helped me to realize that in the midst of the pause, I'm one of those people who I like to pause, but I also have a sort of relationship with pause and spontaneity where I'll say, "Okay, I veered off the path, but oh, I found something." That justifies, you know, just being distracted and being all over the place. But just stopping for a minute or two and really committing to the act of I like the bubble. You know the bubble is wherever the the parameter of where the the hand the circumference of where the hands go. And the more you commit to it, the more you start to feel where your inner wisdom is coming from. So that was helpful for me. Um and I also want to acknowledge I have some leaders. I'm based in Trinidad for those who don't know me who also took two hours this I know a twoour pause was a lot. So kudos to you for taking that twoour pause this afternoon and joining us. Look what just came on screen. Hi Ruth and Carol is there and Jazelle is there. I know Karen had to leave but yeah. So committing to being quiet, breathing, imagining a bubble, it does something psychologically and physiologically for you. Yeah. Yes. Thank you all. Thank you all for giving yourselves permission to um Yes, Lori. Um be in the question of what is enough and answer it for ourselves. Nobody else can do that. That's another value of the pause is really hearing what is it that at our deepest soul level we want and to what degree are we choosing that and if not there's another choice to be made as one of our good colleagues always says you always have the power of choice right darn it why can't I remember it when I most need it all if Victor if Victor Frankle and tell us that then we can certainly try to work with it ourselves. Absolutely. That's exactly right. And you know, even in bringing Victor forward, I I think this is true. We can become a little polyianish about choice and forget that no matter what our conditions are, the human body has a choice to breathe or not. And the next thing we have as a human among all the species on this planet is the capacity for empathy and to connect into that sense of breathing with the earth. And if we do that and we're alive, then we have another choice and another choice. And this is how we survive. So don't underestimate the power of being human. It's pretty special. All right, Miss Sarah. I'm going to be your slide runner. Well, and here we are at the top of the hour. So, this is what we call uh short and sweet. And I think that entire exercise was incredibly sweet. If we think of all of the things that we do during our day for work or preparation or meetings to take 10 minutes and have that kind of deep uh experience bringing that to our daily lives and this is why what we do matters. It matters so much now because we're moving faster and we need to slow down. tap into our inner wisdom and collective wisdom. And this third bullet point, your leadership becomes your legacy. You can't wait until you're ready to retire or, you know, two to three years before you take off to create a legacy. What are you bringing? How are you partnering with your own leadership that is going to leave a legacy that is not something you've manufactured, but something that you're authentically living? And today we spent some time in the pause and realizing that turning point. So, I just saw a um a truck today that their title of the company was pushing performance and my heart just it was like a stab. And so as we look at these sweet little green saplings um here little starters uh and we know this coaches out there leaders when you're working with people I think Jim Penrod you had a piece there about how rewarding it is to mentor and watch that growth and while there might be a spurt it's generally incremental and to really um lean into that. So, uh, next slide, Janet. Um, and just we want to give you the invitation to act. So, if you are leaders on this call, uh, there are so many ways that we could partner with you for that coaching culture. Um, Steve talked about capability. If that leader had just stayed small, that company is looking to double their size in the next six years. They needed him to step up and step beyond and really give more of his potential. That's what we do. That's how we work with organizations and our programs. For those of you that know um invite generative conversation, we're moving that forward into conversations made better. And it's a a framework for communication for time uh respecting each other's time and uh differences curiosity. It is a to me it's a superpower. People who've done uh conversations made better are different leaders and it's a way of working in the coaching world um and then into management. And for those of you because I'm getting the feeling we have a lot of coaches here today. Um it's easy to get, you know, in your practice and thinking it's all working. And I know that we know in our heart of hearts that we're always learning. We're always uh at the choice point of what might be next. I know sometimes when Janet volunteers me for things, I think, "Oh my god." And then once I'm inside, oh, I'm so glad I'm here. And so think about what's next for you and maybe spend some time with your counsel and see what does your counsel think for your business, for your coaching, for your management team. And I hope that you come and play with us. Um, and Janet, you've got the slide for calling and emailing. So, I hope that was short enough indeed. You did well. Thank you. And I I love Hamad's punchline here. You don't need to do more. Be more present. Leadership thrives in the past and the future you want. It starts here. So, you can scan this. You'll also get the slides and you'll get uh the recording. And we say thank you. Thanks for being here. and really being such wonderful active participants. Appreciate it very much. And we will do this again. What's our date in Ahmad? Help me. What's our date in the next month? Oh my god, it's May. How does that happen? Well, uh, let me grab the date for the next month. I believe we're going to be aiming for about um 27 28 28 28 28. There it is. After the Memorial Day holiday, get back in the swing for a good summer. All right, we'll see you in May. Um you know where to find us. It'll be in the slides. Thanks again for coming. Take good care. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.