Author and executive coach Kevin Cashman says true leaders know how to take a break and allow ideas and energy to percolate.

Everyone would probably agree it’s a good idea to step back for reflection every now and then. As you do so, ponder this: what will allow new perspectives and innovative ideas to emerge in your organization? Are you and your organization managing what is or leading by going beyond what is? Or are you perhaps running on a familiar track, moving faster and faster but losing ground in your pursuit of performance?

For most leaders, the idea of stepping back as a way of elevating performance seems counter-intuitive. We insist, “We don’t need to pause more, we need to do more.” While it is true that leaders continually need to achieve, contribute, and add more value to move toward greatness, we also need to step back—pause—and ask ourselves, “Where will our continued achievement, contribution, and value come from? Where is all this doing taking us? What are the underlying dynamics that support breakthrough ideas, deeper purpose, more effective interpersonal connection, and sustainable results?”

I came up against this issue some years ago when coaching a CEO of a fast-growth consumer products company. He and his firm had achieved four years of record sales and market share growth. The organization was the global leader in its industry. Yet I sensed the energy of the CEO and his team declining—a red flag that could result in serious implications for ongoing success.

When I suggested he pause to build energy and resilience, as well as to envision a more comprehensive long-term strategy, he resisted. I backed off. But when he returned for a coaching session several days later, he looked puzzled and said, “I got into the swimming pool last night with problems, and I got out of the pool with solutions. What happened?”

Despite his resistance to pausing, he had done just that. During his swim, his mind settled down, expanding his ability to connect seemingly disparate issues. He had paused, and had a breakthrough (what I like to call a pausethrough).

Einstein and Mozart
Pausing to move beyond our current state is a universal creative principle. In physics, it has been codified as in the Third Law of Thermodynamics. It’s not a theory, but a cause-and-effect law of nature: as activity lessens, order increases. When we pause, we can correlate what seemed, up to that point, disconnected.

As Einstein said, “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” We must go to another level to see things from a new perspective. It is through the power of pause we reach other levels. Consider Mozart’s reflection on his creative prowess: “I rarely can sit down and write music. Music comes to me in a carriage ride or during a walk after dinner.”

Pause often precedes significant growth. Whether we view it on the macro level of cycles of rest and activity in nature or we observe our micro need to pause and insert an alternative behavior as we are about to react to a colleague, it’s the prerequisite for new possibility. It is in this gap that our insight, ideas and innovation are available to us, our team, our organization, or our family.

How often do we pause at the end of a stressful day to connect meaningfully with loved ones? How often do we as leaders take time to consider how we can get to the next level? As teams, do we use off-site sessions to report business updates, or do we use this opportunity to get into the tougher issues and to have the important conversations required to elevate team and the organizational performance?

Consider a distinction that can be made between managers and leaders. Managers improve, enhance and move forward what is. Leaders go beyond what is. And pause is a technique that positions us to do that. Ask yourself: what new vision, strategy, or innovation has happened without significant individual or collective reflection? Very few.

Indeed, nearly every significant academic, social, behavioral, strategic, spiritual, systemic and commercial breakthrough is preceded by a pause. The Pause Principle, therefore, is a core cause-and-effect relationship supporting most leadership breakthroughs.

Ironically, today’s manic pace of leadership and life is perfectly designed to avoid any measure of reflection. This epidemic lack of pause has an array of symptoms: lack of inspiring vision, declining innovation, reduced sense of meaning, burnout, interpersonal disconnection, and (ultimately) less sustainable success.

Style counts
Like a great athlete with natural talent who still needs intense practice to bring out greatness, we need training to master our inherent gift of pausing. The February 2006 issue of Harvard Business Review published a leadership article by Brouseau, Hourihan, and others of Korn/Ferry International sharing results of assessment research on more than 200,000 executives, managers, and business professionals in an array of industries.

The study demonstrated that if people don’t change their decisionmaking style from a primary focus on content to a broader focus on context, they don’t advance. One of the reasons the business coaching industry is growing so rapidly worldwide is the need for executives to pause more to see the broader context.

Not long ago, two executives were referred to us for leadership coaching. Both had about the same level of compensation, about 20 years of uninterrupted success with Fortune 500 companies, and each needed to work on their leadership and interpersonal effectiveness if they wanted to continue advancing in the organization. However, each approached their development in dramatically different ways. One person was open to learning and willing to commit to the growth process. The other felt he already “had it all figured out.”

After exhibiting reasonable willingness initially for coaching, one lost enthusiasm as he got closer to real feedback on his style and personality. He started seeing the process as “lots of work” and began to miss appointments. As he pulled back, he started fulfilling his prophecy and rationalizing his lack of benefit.

The other person stayed with the program, throwing himself into every coaching session. He paused deeply and stayed the course, never losing sight of his bigger purpose and always believing he could and would go beyond his limits. He became an effective, powerful leader. Within a year, in fact, he was promoted to a division CEO role.

What happened to the first leader? He was outplaced six months later and continued the same pattern of not taking responsibility and projecting his limitations externally. He probably still blames his former company for his misfortunes.

In this increasingly complex world of incessant change, technological advancement, globalization, and heightened concern for our safety and security, the need to focus on the importance and meaningfulness of where we are headed as individuals, teams, organizations and as a world has never been more critical. Today, survival and its rewards go not to the fittest, but to the most purposeful and visionary.

Kevin Cashman is founder and CEO of LeaderSource, a global executive coaching, senior team effectiveness and leadership development firm based in Minneapolis, Minn. He is the author of four books, including the business best seller Leadership from the Inside Out (Executive Excellence Publishing, 1999), which will be enhanced and re-released later this year.