Tips for Slowing Down to Foster Leadership Growth

The Leadership Power of the Pause. At the end of every keynote the last few weeks, I've asked the audience to make one commitment—something they’ll start doing today or tomorrow based on what they’ve learned. And as we’ve rolled out the PASTA Model, the #1 response has been the same: Pause. In a world that glorifies speed, the idea of pausing feels counterintuitive. But the best leaders, the most resilient teams, and the most connected organizations know that pausing isn’t about doing less—it’s about thinking more. It’s about shifting from reaction to intention. That’s why when we teach the Pause pillar of the PASTA Model, we focus on three key ways to bring it to life: 1. Personal Pause – How do you create space in your own day to reflect before you act? Maybe it’s taking 10 minutes before a meeting to clear your mind, going for a walk, or simply stopping to think before making a decision. The best insights don’t come from running faster—they come from making space to process. 2. Collective Pause – How does your team pause together? Research shows that companies that never stop to reflect actually underperform compared to those that take time to align before implementing change. Whether it’s a structured debrief, cross-functional check-ins, or building moments of shared reflection (micro moments after an off-site), the best teams know that slowing down together accelerates progress. 3. Helping Others Pause – Everyone you interact with (customers, prospects, partners, teams) is likely moving at full speed, battling their own version of chaos. One of the greatest gifts you can offer is your presence. Whether it’s truly listening in a conversation, giving someone space to reflect, or simply acknowledging them in a meaningful way, helping others pause creates deeper human connection. Before any meaningful transformation—whether personal, cultural, or organizational—we must first create space for it to happen. What’s one way you can commit to pausing today?

“If I move too slowly, I could loose momentum. If I move too quickly, I could make mistakes.” This is a sentiment I’ve heard from more than one CEO in coaching sessions. And it captures one of the hardest disciplines in leadership: strategic patience. We live in a world that prizes speed—quarterly results, instant feedback, immediate impact. The pressure to act quickly, to “do something,” can feel overwhelming. Yet, the most effective leaders often know that the real power lies not in speed, but in timing. Strategic patience is not inaction. It is the discipline of holding steady, resisting the temptation for premature moves, and waiting for the moment when action will have its greatest effect. It is the art of slowing down in order to go faster and have more impact later. Through my work with CEOs, here are some lessons I’ve observed: 1. Timing is strategy. A brilliant idea launched too early can fail just as easily as a weak idea. Strategic patience is about sensing when the market, the culture, or the organization is ready. 2. The long game matters more than quick wins. Leaders face enormous pressure for immediate results, but sustainable value comes from playing the long game. Patience allows a leader to invest in compounding growth rather than chasing applause. 3. Slowing down creates speed later. Taking time to align teams, clarify purpose, and build trust may feel slow at first—but it leads to faster execution and fewer setbacks in the long run. 4. Emotional steadiness is a strategy. Strategic patience requires leaders to manage their own anxiety, investor demands, and team restlessness. Calm leadership creates confidence, especially in uncertain times. 5. Some things can’t be rushed. Culture change, leadership transitions, and trust-building don’t happen overnight. The leader’s role is to create the right conditions and then let things unfold. 6. Patience is not procrastination. There’s a fine line between waiting wisely and avoiding tough calls. The most self-aware CEOs learn to distinguish between the two. 7. Patience builds resilience. The more a leader practices holding steady through uncertainty, the more confidence they build in themselves—and in their teams. At its heart, strategic patience is about trust & wisdom. It’s easy to mistake patience for passivity. But in truth, it is an active form of leadership. It demands courage—the courage to hold the line when others push for haste, the courage to let go of control, and the courage to believe in the long-term vision even when the short-term is noisy. In CEO coaching, I often see leaders discover that their biggest breakthroughs come not from doing more, but from learning when not to act. Strategic patience, practiced well, becomes a quiet but powerful advantage. Where in your leadership are you being invited to practice patience—not as a delay, but as a strategy? Because sometimes, the boldest move a leader can make is to wait.

Wanting to be the answer is slowing your team down.  How to step back without losing influence:  I used to think being “always on” was leadership.  But truthfully: - I was creating bottlenecks, - Not breakthroughs.  The more I solved for them, the less they trusted themselves.  That’s when I realized: growth means letting go.  7 shifts that helped me move from rescuer to real leader ✨  1) Swap speed for silence   ↳ Pause before answering. Let their thinking catch up.  2) Turn mistakes into case studies   ↳ “What did we learn?” > “Why did this happen?”   Keeps curiosity alive instead of fear.  3) Let them own the stage   ↳ Step back in meetings. Invite their voice first.   Confidence is built in public, not private.  4) Model recovery, not just hustle   ↳ Show when you unplug. Normalizes balance and presence.  5) Celebrate effort before outcome   ↳ “I admire how you approached it.”   Shifts focus from fear of failing to pride in progress.  6) Share your *why*, not just your *what*   ↳ Decisions make more sense when rooted in purpose.   Teaches strategic alignment, not blind obedience.  7) Practice radical patience   ↳ Progress feels slow at first. But independence compounds.  Your role isn’t to be irreplaceable.    It’s to make others unstoppable. ✨  Which of these shifts do you want to try first?  ♻️ Please reshare to promote healthier, more independent teams.   🙂 Follow Marco Franzoni for more.  

My team staged an intervention about my leadership style. "We need to talk about how you dump and run." They'd finally said it out loud. I'd been moving so fast—dropping a great idea on them, asking if they had everything they needed before they could even process what I'd said, then racing off to the next thing. They were left spinning, unsure what I was actually looking for while I was already three projects ahead. The truth they shared: I move really fast. And while speed felt like my superpower, it was leaving them behind. That conversation stung. And it needed to. My "dump and run" style was destroying their effectiveness. They'd spend hours trying to interpret what I wanted. They'd build something, only to find out they'd misunderstood. They'd redo work because we weren't aligned from the start. My speed wasn't making us faster. It was making us slower. So I learned to adapt. I actually paused after sharing ideas, even though it pains me. I gave them time to process before asking what they needed. I checked back in after they'd had time to think. I made sure we were aligned before I raced ahead. The result? They were far more effective. They wasted less time guessing. They delivered better work because they actually understood the target. And ironically? We moved faster as a team when I slowed down as a leader. Does adapting my style go against every instinct I have? Absolutely. But my team had the courage to tell me that my greatest strength was sabotaging their effectiveness. You can be the fastest hiker in the group. But if the goal is to get everyone to the summit and you leave the rest of the group down the mountain, you'll never get the fulfillment of reaching the top together. Being aware of your style—and adapting it to maximize your team's effectiveness—that's the real work of leadership. What's your natural style that might be undermining your team's ability to do their best work?

Is slowing down weak in a world addicted to speed? No. When you slow down… You notice more. Tone. Timing. The other person. Details that speed blurs come back into focus. Your nervous system settles. Breathing deepens. Thinking sharpens. You respond instead of react. You listen instead of waiting to talk. People feel it immediately. Conversations soften. Resistance drops. You make fewer mistakes. Not because you’re trying harder. Because attention isn’t split. So what does slowing down look like in practice? 1. Talk slower. On cold calls, confusion often sounds like: “Wait… who is this?” That’s not resistance. It’s overload. Nerves speed you up. Adrenaline takes the wheel. Slower speech gives the mind somewhere to land. Yours and theirs. Aim for a TED Talk. Not a CrossFit coach counting reps. 2. Send a letter. In an ugly green envelope. Email is crowded because it’s effortless. Direct mail is quiet because it isn’t. An odd envelope becomes a pause in someone’s day. A pistachio scoop in a sea of vanilla. 3. Leave space between meetings. Back-to-back calls feel efficient. They aren’t. Focus needs air. 4. Do one thing. Not four. Multitasking fractures attention. Unitasking finishes faster. 5. Eat without looking at a screen. Notice texture. Smell. Taste. Presence turns fuel into nourishment. 6. Drive in the slow lane. You still arrive. Calmer. 7. Pause two beats before speaking. One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. You interrupt less. Listen more. People feel felt. Trust follows. 8. Do nothing. Real nothing. Lying on the couch. Wandering without a destination. Letting the mind stretch its legs. 9. Take breaks. Thirty minutes. No tech. No input. Slowing down isn’t falling behind. It’s how you stop missing what matters.

Most leaders I work with are busy. Genuinely, relentlessly busy. And because they are busy, they move fast. From one decision to the next, one meeting to the next, one crisis to the next. There is rarely time to stop and ask the question that would actually make them better: what just happened, and what can I learn from it? This is not a character flaw; in fact it's a systemic problem. Organizations reward action much more than they reward reflection. And so reflection, the thing that turns experience into learning, so often gets squeezed out. For that reason, when working with leaders, I am a strong advocate for both reflection and journaling as practical development tools. One of my favourite tools to help that process is Gibbs Reflective Cycle. Graham Gibbs developed his Reflective Cycle in 1988 as a structured way to slow that process down. It's simple. Six stages: describe what happened, examine what you were thinking and feeling, evaluate what went well and what didn't, analyze what sense you can make of it, conclude what you could have done differently, and plan what you will do next time. It takes less time than most leaders think (less than 5 minutes). And it produces something that moving fast never can: genuine learning from experience rather than just accumulation of it. This is especially true if you get into a consistent practice of doing the reflection as you’ll start to see patterns and signals so subtle that they often go unnoticed. I use it with coaching clients working through 360 feedback. I reference it in my book. And I come back to it constantly in my own practice — because experience without reflection is just time passing. If you lead people and you are not building some kind of reflective practice into your week, you are leaving development on the table. Not because you lack the capability. Because you haven't created the conditions for it. The leaders who grow fastest are not the ones who have the most experiences. They are the ones who learn the most from the experiences they have. #leadership #leadershipdevelopment #reflection #coachingtools #executivecoaching

In my former role, my instinct was to jump in with answers. It’s how I was trained—solve the problem, keep the job moving. But one conversation with a younger leader had a different impact on me. He paused after I asked, “What’s the real issue?” My personal room (the one in my head) went quiet. Ten seconds felt like two minutes. Then he told me what he’d been afraid to say in front of the team. That silence didn’t slow us down—it opened a door. We identified the real issue, not what seemed obvious to all of us! Silence isn’t the absence of leadership. It’s the presence of trust. First, within ourselves. Do you trust your own leadership? When leaders make room for a breath (a short pause)—three seconds after a question, five seconds after a tough comment—people step forward. Answers get effing smarter! 💡 Tensions drop to the floor. Ownership rises and seeks solutions, not finger-pointing. It’s not magic; it’s discipline, and yes, it's also counterintuitive. 💡 If you lead people (or plan to), practice the pause this week: Ask one clear question. Count “one-Mississippi, two-Mississippi, three-Mississippi.” Let the silence do its work. Then listen for what you’d have missed. Slow the eff down! Better teams aren’t built by the loudest voice in the room, tough guy! 📣 They’re built by the leader who knows when not to speak. If you don't believe me, check out the supportive data below: 1️⃣ When people feel heard, they’re 4.6× more likely to feel empowered to do their best work. Listening—and the silence that makes listening possible—directly fuels performance. https://lnkd.in/grsMXXpC 2️⃣ In classrooms, extending “wait time” after a question from ~1 second to 3+ seconds improves the quality of responses and thinking—a principle that translates to meetings and debriefs. Try it in your next stand-up. https://lnkd.in/gpQdmEQR 3️⃣ Teams thrive when psychological safety is high—people speak up, admit mistakes, and share ideas. It’s the #1 factor behind effective teams (Google’s Project Aristotle), and silence that makes room for others helps create it. https://lnkd.in/gNPViMx7 4️⃣ Leaders who practice active-empathetic listening see higher work engagement among employees—silence is a tool within that skillset. https://lnkd.in/gFjByr8B 5️⃣ In negotiations and high-stakes conversations, brief pauses can improve impressions of the speaker and lead to better outcomes—clarity rises when we resist the urge to fill the gap. https://lnkd.in/gKqMXBQW Share this with a leader who could use the reminder. #Leadership #Listening #PsychologicalSafety #TeamCulture #RespectForPeople #Communication

I start every day by reading a sticky note on my laptop: "Slow down to go far." In Q1, I needed that reminder more than ever! Things are moving incredibly fast – in our industry and at HubSpot. So in Q2, how can you execute with urgency without losing sight of the bigger picture? First, a confession: slowing down doesn’t come naturally to me. (That’s why I have needed a daily reminder for years 🙂) When I first moved from individual contributor to manager, the feedback from my team was clear: I was moving too fast. They felt like they were always playing catch-up and didn't have the context they needed. I’m still working on this years later (just ask my team – they’ll tell you my favorite phrase is "let’s go faster!"). But here are some things that have worked for me: 1. Prioritize conversations with customers and partners: Every Wednesday, I block my calendar, cut back on internal meetings, and snooze notifications to focus on conversations with customers and partners. When you’re moving fast, it’s easy to lose touch with what matters most – your customers. Protect regular time every week to reconnect directly with them. It helps you stay grounded in your mission and keeps the bigger picture clear. 2. Create space for constructive dialogue with your team: Don’t let every team meeting become a status update. Set aside dedicated time to discuss bigger topics like product strategy, go-to-market plans, and pricing decisions. Your team needs space to debate and align on the big issues. 3. Ask more questions: When something is on fire, it’s natural to jump straight into solutions or quick decisions. But I’ve learned the power of pausing. Remember to ask clarifying questions first: “What assumptions are we making?” “Who hasn’t weighed in yet?” “Is there context we’re missing?” You’ll get better alignment and save time in the long run. Slowing down isn’t natural for many leaders. You’re wired to move quickly, solve problems, and set the pace for your team. But during times of huge change, the most effective leaders I know don’t just execute with intensity, they bring people along. The best way to go far is to be intentional about slowing down – sticky notes optional 😉

I've fallen into this trap too many times to count. Raised by two high-achieving Stanford grads, "constant hustle" was practically our family motto—a badge of honor worn with pride. But what if I told you that constant hustle could actually be stifling your creativity and innovation? It's time we stop glorifying being hustle and start celebrating the power of pause. Here's why: Creativity Thrives in Quiet Moments: Breakthrough ideas rarely emerge amidst chaos. When you're racing from task to task, your mind has no room to wander or explore new possibilities. Carving out quiet moments allows your creativity to flourish, bringing fresh insights and innovative solutions. Burnout Isn’t a Badge of Honor: Constant activity without rest isn't sustainable—it’s a direct path to burnout. Giving yourself permission to recharge is essential, not just for your health, but to sustain enthusiasm and productivity over the long term. Reflection Drives Innovation: Innovation doesn't emerge spontaneously from relentless hustle; it grows from thoughtful reflection. Stepping back to evaluate what's working and what's not gives you clarity and inspires forward-thinking ideas. Growth Requires Breathing Room: Personal and professional growth don't happen in perpetual motion. They require time for learning, exploration, and experimentation. Allowing yourself moments to slow down and reflect ensures you're continually developing and evolving. Work hard yes! But shift away from the glorification of constant hustle. Embrace moments of stillness, give your creativity space, and watch how your life and work transform for the better. Your future self—and your mental health—will thank you.