I had a manager once who had two phrases which he used in the same context.
“Let’s put our foot on the ball a minute” which of course was a nod to the act of slowing the pace of the football game down to look up and survey the situation.
He also said “Let’s press pause for a minute“. Again, he used this as a device to slow down what otherwise was a fast-paced environment to take stock of where we were.
It’s a real skill to be able to notice that NOW is a good time to slow the pace down, especially given how busy we all are.
I find myself using the pause phrase a fair bit in coaching and specifically when I want to shine a light on something that’s really good. Only the other day a client was updating me on progress of 4 or 5 big things happening in the business and on each occasion I had to say “Let’s pause for a minute and review just what’s good about what you’ve just done“. I wanted to catch him doing things right and I wanted to ensure that he didn’t just take for granted what had been achieved otherwise some valuable lessons would have been missed.
People have a deep need to be admired and to be understood (even though they might shrug off a compliment). It matters. So press PAUSE today with someone.
