The Pause: How will you create and use these as a leader?

This is an excerpt from my book: TRUTH AT THE HEART: How honesty, trust, and teamwork can transform your business . I am sharing it because building trust with your team is everything in leadership, and once you see the opportunities and the benefits, it becomes easier. Here are some practical tips. I hope it is thought provoking . . .

I would offer the definition of a true Pause as: An extended time together where movement stops and there is a focused and true conversation among two or more people; where relationships are deepened, transparency to all the real problems is achieved, and alignment is created.

Let me restate the three criteria of a true conversation:

1. Equal parts listening and talking
2. Valuable information for each person which they did no have before the conversation
3. At least one shared outcome is created

Lets have an honest conversation - how well do we Pause in our key relationships?

Understanding the Pause first starts with a quick look at how much time we spend together in key relationships and what we do with that time. Let's take a quick look at leadership teams and married couples - two important relationships that most of use have experienced.

Leadership teams spend, on average, about 250 hours together per year. This is the conclusion that author Michael Mankins reached in a study he conducted of top management teams, outlined in Stop Wasting Valuable Time (Harvard Business Review, Sept 2004). This equates to about 5 hours per week.

A study by the Office for National Statistics found that, on average, married couples spend 2.5 hours per day together. (Guardian, June 9, 2007)

Let me make a personal observation: just looking at the quantity of time spent together, the state of these two relationships seems to be pretty strong. But looking at how the time is spent gives us a different picture, one focused on the quality of the time spent together:

For top management teams charged with leading an organization through a variety of strategic challenges, 85% of that time together was spent on non-strategic items. Rather than focusing on strategic issues, this time is spent dealing with operating performance reviews, the latest crisis, admin issues/policies, and workforce issues. Only about 37 hours was left for strategy development and approval. Is that enough? That is a subjective call, but as a person who helps leadership teams create and manage this through the EOS process, I would say no. In EOS we establish a baseline of 115 hours per year together focused on strategy development, review, and reset. I can assure you that once teams have this habit, the overwhelming feedback is this is the most important time we spend together as a team.

1. For married couples, of the 2.5 hours together: one-third (50 minutes) was spent watching TV together, 30 minutes was eating, and housework was 24 minutes. Altogether, this passive time (when little interaction is happening) eats up about 70% of the total time. The upside? We have 45 minutes of high-quality Pause time where we can be focused with a spouse - listening and really connecting.

A great Pause is difficult, and the data points to us not doing it very effectively in these two situations.

Here's an analogy I use with my EOS clients: imagine your team is cutting a path through the dense forest. They are working really hard and making great progress. As a leader, your job is to climb a tall tree and review your progress toward your goal so that the team's great work stays focused on the shortest path to the target. Without doing that frequently, the path would look like a line wandering away from the target. With that done fairly frequently, it would show corrections that keep the teams effort moving the team towards the target. Effective leadership maximizes ROE (return on effort) by helping the team find the shortest path.

The four parts to an effective Pause

Mastering the Pause is about being intentional and making Conversations Matter. Here are the four parts to an effective Pause:

Part 1: An agenda

Before I send spouses all over the world running to their partner with an agenda in hand, let me explain. An agenda is simple a commitment to a common time and place to meet, a start and end time, some simple objectives for what will be accomplished in the time, and some structure for the conversation. Here are some examples:

Pause: Couch time for couples

Start: 9:30pm (when kids in bed) to 10:00pm. Location: Couch (a drink is optional depending on the day)

Agenda:

1. How was your day? (highs and lows)
2. Headlines - news from friends, family, kids
3. What decisions do we have to make together?
4. Looking forward, what does tomorrow / the weekend look like?
5. What else do we need to talk about?
6. End with a kiss and a hug

Pause: leadership team weekly meeting: In EOS we call this a Level 10 meeting. Here is a video explaining it.

Part 2: Personal commitment from everyone to 90%+ vulnerability, 90%+ honesty, and 95%+ listening

Healthy relationships are built on the ability of the participants to be vulnerable, honest, and to authentically listen to each other. It might sound kind of hokey - but imaging starting every meeting with a shared commitment to be vulnerable, honest, and really seek to understand the other people in the room? I have never been in a Pause where this was done, but it is a critical part of an effective environment that is safe so this can happen and we can watch for any indication that it is not happening (non-verbals). When I facilitate, I also make this my expectation of the group.

NOTE: Why don't you put 100% here? (this explanation is in the book )

Part 3: Clear understanding of progress to target and/or what has to change

The agenda helps take care of this, but it is worth calling out because lots of little Conversations have happened since we set your Clear Target. A Pause has to revisit that target.

• For leadership teams: This could be taking out the yearly goals every 90 days and reviewing them.
• For a married couple: This could be putting out a financial plan every year to update it or reviewing spending/budget every month. It could also mean pulling out the family calendar and reviewing it.

The key things that are accomplished in this part are: we review the progress to a target (which is generally something positive to talk about) and discuss anything that has to change, either in our behavior or the target that we set.

Part 4: Clear action plans and list of issues not solved - yet

A great conversation creates a shared understanding of next steps. I talk a lot about how to have great meetings with leaders because in EOS we have them implement the Level 10 Meeting. One of the things leaders tell me is how much they value having clear actions leaving every meeting and how real issues get solved based on their priorities. This part is simple but having coached dozens of teams I know it is not easy. Ending every meeting by taking a few minutes to review all the next steps and owners of that work will have the biggest impact on making your Pause effective.

Note: The remainder of the chapter is focused on developing Pause Mastery for leaders by focusing on how to have: 1) Effective team meetings, 2) Effective one-on-ones with team mambers 3) Effective Pause using technology (audio/video conference). There are extra sessions around meals and taking individual time to reflect/think.

About the Author: Scott Patchin is an Expert EOS Implementer, and has a passion for 'maximizing growth and minimizing pain, to help leaders and teams move to and past the tipping point of success.' His book, TRUTH AT THE HEART: How honesty, trust, and teamwork can transform your business , was born out of his passionate pursuit to meet people in those places where he could serve. Learn more about Scott on his website , or his YouTube channel , where he is always adding to his library of 60+ videos.