Ep. 6 - The Power of the Pause

Ever wish you could un-send that email or take back a hasty answer in a high-stakes meeting? In this episode of Shelley on Your Shoulder, I’ll reveal a deceptively simple yet powerful leadership tool—the pause. Learn how to transform reactive moments into deliberate choices that increase clarity, composure, and confidence under pressure.

Key Takeaways:

•  Why quick reactions sabotage clarity, relationships, and outcomes
• How fight-flight-freeze shows up in leadership moments
• The three-step Pause–Assess–Choose method for responding instead of reacting
• How naming feelings interrupts knee-jerk responses
• Rewriting the story in your head with facts, not assumptions
• Reframing “urgent” emails and senior leader asks
• A real-world COVID HR case study showing how a pause improved performance reviews
• Practical prompts, scripts, and micro-routines to use right away
• How long a pause should last—and how to know when it’s enough

I’ll walks through how your body signals urgency, and how a 30-second pause can reset your thinking. You’ll learn to name what you feel, separate fact from story, and choose the next smallest effective action. From handling tough questions to crafting calm, effective replies to “need this now” emails, these skills help you lead with steadiness when stakes are high.

If you’re ready to trade reactivity for clarity and confidence, this episode delivers actionable tools for mindful leadership, psychological safety, and practical stress management.

If you found today’s episode helpful, don’t forget to like, follow/subscribe, and share!

Ready to begin your own leadership journey or have questions? Visit 7bigconsulting.com to schedule your complimentary discovery call today. Begin transforming your leadership journey with the clarity to lead and the confidence to succeed.

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:03

Welcome to Shelley on Your Shoulder with Shelley Sager, founder of 7Big Coaching and Consulting. Shelley on Your Shoulder is the leadership podcast that delivers practical tips, empowering affirmations, and real-world advice to help you lead with clarity, confidence, and purpose because leadership is a choice and how you choose to show up matters. And now, here's Shelley on Your Shoulder. Hello, Shelley. How are you?

Speaker 0:30

Hi, Drew. I'm great. How are you?

Speaker 1 0:32

Good. What are we talking about today?

The Power of the Pause and when to use it

Speaker 0:35

Uh, Drew, today we're talking about the power of the pause.

Speaker 1 0:38

Okay.

Speaker 0:39

So we've been talking about things like vision and intentionality and choices and a lot about self-awareness. And I want us to get into a tool, a technique to help people be more intentional in the moment and reclaim their choices. And so that is where the power of the pause comes in.

Speaker 1 1:00

Talk to me about when I might need to pull this tool out of my quiver.

Speaker 1:06

Yeah. Well, let me ask you this, Drew.

Speaker 1 1:09

Yeah.

Speaker 1:09

Can you think of a time? Has there ever in your life been a time where you reacted to something? You answered a question, whatever it is, you did something, and an hour later you had a palm slap moment of, oh, I wish I wouldn't have done that.

Speaker 1 1:28

Never.

Speaker 1:29

Never. Never.

Speaker 1 1:31

Um, of course. I think we all have been there, whether it's at work, at home, wherever.

Speaker 1:37

Yeah. So it we're getting into it's those moments. So why know this? When would when is this relevant in those moments when we're reacting very quickly to things that come right in front of us, and then recognizing downstream that we wish we would have just taken a hot second. Um, like this this happens with a lot of my clients, where one of the classic examples is they are having a conversation with their boss's boss or just their boss, and they get the question that they can't answer. And they freeze and the and things happen, and they do one of two things typically. They say something that's not the right answer because they feel like they need to say it, or they freeze and they don't know how to respond. Like this is one of those classic situations. So the power of the pause is one of those techniques to help you better manage situations like that.

Speaker 1 2:39

Aside from being asked a question, you know, that you you maybe don't know the answer to, but you think you need to, and you get feel you feel the pressure to say something, and then you say the wrong thing, or or you know, then things spiral from there. So it's also for situations that happen between people where tensions rise.

Speaker 3:02

It can, absolutely. And this can happen. I mean, any time that you're in a situation where you're not at your most confident and most comfortable, you run the risk of reacting. And this goes back to, I think I've said this a couple of times in other sessions. I find that leaders are trying so hard to be proactive, more proactive, and less reactive. But our world forces us in so many ways to feel the need to be reactive. You and I have talked about the these concepts of sometimes you need to slow, you need to go slow to go fast.

Speaker 1 3:37

Right.

The digital impact of how we make decsions

Speaker 3:38

This is one of those spaces. So whether it's a conversation dealing with a difficult interaction with somebody, you're in a situation where you need to make a decision and you don't have all of the information, or there's a tough, tough decision to be made, and we feel like we need to make a decision instantly. This is a tool to help you make the best decision possible.

Speaker 1 4:03

Do you think that things that contribute to this feeling of, boy, I gotta do something now, um, is related to the world that we're in and the the digital overflow of messages and information coming at us so fast that we feel like we got to respond just as fast to stay on top of it.

Speaker 4:26

Oh, for sure. You know, it's funny because a lot of the not funny ha ha, but it's interesting that a lot of what triggers this, it's just its natural brain functioning. And it's the way that our brain has been wired to function for as long as humans have been walking, right? It's this idea that our brain is designed to protect us. It's designed to interpret information. And so when our brain is pulling in information, if it senses fear, if it senses a threat, then it triggers in our brain our fight, flight, freeze response.

unknown 5:05

Okay.

The Pause-Assess-Choose Method

Speaker 5:05

So you think about in any of those situations, it's an uncomfortable, you have fear of not having the information. It's a high pressure decision, it's a high pressure, high-stakes relationship. Your body is already feeling the pressure of the moment. Your brain is taking in all of those signals that you're feeling tension and you're feeling the fear, and this information is coming at you. And your brain often makes a knee-jerk reaction, that fight or flight. I'm gonna say something and answer the question, I'm gonna ignore it and I'm gonna run. It's my my flight, or I might just freeze in that moment. And so it's really more like a brain hack. How do I shortchange that process? How do I work around that process and get my brain to not react so quickly out of this sense of fear?

Speaker 1 5:59

Shelley, how do we get to the point where we we we aren't pulling that trigger or hitting the send button, you know, all the time?

Speaker 6:08

Yeah. So that process of how do you break that? It it's a really simple process. You you take a couple of steps, pause, assess, and again, this concept of choice, choose.

Speaker 1 6:21

Right.

Rewrite The Story In Your Head

Speaker 6:22

The best thing that you can do in that moment when you start to sense your uh shoulders are climbing up to your ears, your stomach is clenching up, you feel the sweat and the perspiration triggering the fear reactions, the anxiety reactions in that moment is to recognize that you're feeling those things. And the brain hack is to pause when you feel that. And essentially it's like asking yourself, wait a minute, what am I feeling in this moment? And as soon as you can pause and name the thing, I'm feeling stress, I'm feeling um pressure to make this decision, you stop that flow, that knee-jerk reaction, the fight-flight response. And you can basically pull that thought almost out of your head. And so it's more of a problem that you can solve in the moment versus something that you must react to immediately. So pause. Once you pause and you recognize, oh, I'm having a feeling, I'm feeling some pressure. Ask yourself a simple question. What is happening here? What am I reacting to? And it's almost unpacking the story that your brain is telling you.

Speaker 1 7:37

So what do you mean by that? The unpacking the story. I mean, I'm sitting here thinking about what you're saying, is like I get an email, I somebody needs something, and I gotta what's the story that my brain is probably creating?

Speaker 7:52

It's a story that your brain has created that you may not even be aware of until you stop and you ask yourself. So let's use your example, Drew, of there's an email coming through. It might be from my boss's boss and they're looking for a status update. I immediately drop everything that I'm doing because now my boss's boss is reaching out to me with a question that I should know the answer to. Oh, I start immediately furiously typing, right? Because I have to sense of urgency. I need to respond right away. No, pause, stop for a second, deep breath. Okay. So I can feel the stress. What am I telling myself? I am feeling an immediate sense of urgency. My boss's boss is asking for information about a project that I'm on. I'm and what I'm telling myself is there's a problem. They're not happy with the work that I'm doing, there's information missing. Maybe I made a mistake. And so I'm reacting to this need to show that I'm responsive, I've got it, and I'm a high performer. And once you can identify, ooh, those are the those are the things that I'm telling myself, that's what I'm reacting to. I'm in a position to change that story. So, what do I actually know about the situation? I know that my boss's boss is really passionate about this project. Oh, I also know my boss's boss missed the last update meeting and so didn't hear the update and may not have gotten the information. I also need to do a gut check. Where am I with this project? We're on time. I feel great about it. I'm gonna choose to see this as an opportunity to bring my boss's boss along on this journey and tell them the things that are going well and demonstrate that I've I've got this. I know what's going on, and use this as an opportunity to create maybe a little bit of a relationship with them.

COVID HR Pivot Case Study

Speaker 1 9:59

What if the only thing standing between you and the leader you're meant to be is clarity and confidence? The last thing you need is cookie-cutter leadership advice. That's why you need Shelley Sager of 7 Big Coaching and Consulting in your corner. Shelley helps real people, executives, entrepreneurs, and ambitious professionals get unstuck, get aligned, and lead with purpose. Through personalized coaching and powerful workshops, Shelley helps you quiet the noise, define what matters, and take bold intentional action. With Shelley on your side, it's not about doing more, it's about doing what matters with purpose and with confidence. So if you're tired of spinning your wheels and ready to lead from a place of clarity and confidence, visit 7bigconsulting.com and schedule your free discovery call today. You were built for this. Make it happen with 7Big Coaching and Consulting. In our last episode, we we touched on your experience during COVID. And, you know, we didn't share the whole story in that episode, but I think there's something good in the story that you shared with me about your own situation during COVID and what happened there that just kind of put you right into this cycle, right?

Speaker 11:17

So we made a significant change to an HR system at the start of COVID. So at the organization I was at, we did mid-year performance reviews. We did them standard the same way that most people have done them. It takes a long time. There's multiple questions, multiple process steps. And we were two weeks away from launching that for the entire organization, global organization. And somebody came to me at the start of COVID, an HR business partner, and said to me, I'm really worried about launching this process because the entire world is shutting down. And now we have people, we have leaders who aren't feeling comfortable that they understand what their employees are doing, what they're, what their teams are doing. You have teams who are feeling the stress of they are they're working in a place they're not familiar with, they don't have their equipment, we're not sure what expectations are. And we're going to put them into this process that feels very um processy. And the question was, is now the right time? Should we not do the process? Should we do something different? And in that moment, I mean, you have to imagine, two weeks away, I'd already started all of the communication to the organization, the system was built, we were ready to go, we have all of this stress. And I had this um tension of, oh my gosh, what do we do? Do I go against this HR business partner who's voicing a concern? Do I go and change the whole process and throw it all up in the air? Do we just cancel everything? These are really big major decisions. And it forced me in that moment to recognize I don't have to make a decision right this minute. I clearly needed to make a decision very soon, but I didn't need to make it within five minutes of getting that email. So I recognized that it wasn't my decision to make alone and had to really think about that pause. What am I reacting to? I don't need to respond immediately. The story that I was telling myself was this was an amazing opportunity to do something better for the organization. But also this was a really big potential change, and the tension of everything was creating the need to do it right. And what I ended up doing was choosing to be very thoughtful and responsive. And so used that time to get additional pieces of feedback, come up with some ideas, bounce them off of uh a handful of people, making sure they all knew the sense of urgency and the timeline that we were up against. We ended up changing the process. And that process is still the process that's used. It's more efficient, it drove better conversations, it made people feel seen and heard in a really challenging time in that organization's history.

Speaker 1 14:16

I think one of the other byproducts of that reaction, you know, that that panic reaction is it's going to lead to all kinds of other things falling through the cracks.

Speaker 14:29

Absolutely.

Speaker 1 14:29

Absolutely. You were doing something, you get that message, and now you throw that stuff aside and you go and you're doing this other thing. I think about it and in a metaphor of cooking, right? You got a recipe and you got all the things, and one of the th greatest things I've ever learned about cooking is a concept called me in place, which is before you start cooking, dole out all of your ingredients, take the time to breathe, and then you get your, you know, all your spices set up, cut your meat up, and then once everything is there and ready to go, it's just a smooth process. Because you're just going to put the thing in that when you need it, and the meat when you need it, and the, you know, and I think it's kind of that same idea take your time first before you turn the heat on and start cooking.

Speaker 15:22

Yeah, it's an interesting example because when you're cooking, like you're planning, you have the time and you know what you're doing. This I think is similar to let's use that example, and you've started and you have all of your stuff. This has happened to me before. You have all of your stuff laid out, and you realize once you've started mixing things, you've got things, you you don't have the eggs that you need.

Speaker 1 15:44

Yeah.

Speaker 15:45

And so you run into this. Oh, I've got stuff being mixed, and the oven is already preheating. And I thought I had the eggs, the curtain was empty when I went in the refrigerator, and now what do I do? Do I throw everything away? Do I like do I pause that moment of when things aren't going exactly the way that you think they should? Like that just take a deep breath. Pause. I don't have the eggs. What are my options? Can everything just pause and I can run to the store? Can I do the old school thing and walk across to my neighbor and ask them if they have eggs? I could do a Google search and see what's a replacement for eggs in a recipe. So that sense of you're not gonna react and make it without the eggs because then it's not gonna be any good. You have options. What are your options? And then choose.

Speaker 1 16:47

What's the real takeaway here for people?

Speaker 16:49

The real takeaway, and what I want people to take from this, it's um it's interesting. I'm gonna side note for a second. When I've talked about this to leaders in the past, oftentimes I see leaders do the thing where their shoulders creep up to their ears, and I can see that they're stressed about this concept. And the question they always ask is, or statement is, we don't have time to make a pause. How much time are you talking about? How much time does this pause that you're talking about actually take? And my response is always the pause takes as long as the pause needs to take. But I'm not talking about a two-week delay. I'm not talking about analysis paralysis and halt everything while you go and launch this deep research project. This can literally be a 30-second pause of noticing what it is that you're feeling and sensing. Stop, don't react. Take a deep breath, feel your fingertips, whatever kind of mindfulness thing you need to do in that moment to pause, stop that reaction to your brain, ask yourself what's going on, what are you reacting to? And then decide how much time does this pause need to be before you move forward? So that I'm asking leaders to really be intentional in being aware of the feelings, being aware of your immediate need to react and challenging that. Is there a better way? And trying it.

Speaker 1 18:13

Any other final thoughts on this one?

Speaker 18:15

I wish I had something funny to say about the power of the pause, but gosh, I I am the biggest fan of this in any situation. So I can't tell leaders enough to just try it. You might think, I don't have time to take a pause. That's exactly the moment you need to pause. Take a deep breath.

Speaker 1 18:36

Right. Try it. And I'll say this from my own experience, this is one of the greatest tools for a happy marriage.

Speaker 18:45

Yes, it is.

Speaker 1 18:48

Got myself in too much trouble over the years, and uh boy, it took a while to learn that lesson. But um, all good stuff. So, Shelley, thanks, and we will uh see you next time. Sounds good. Thanks, Joe. Thanks for listening to this episode of Shelley on Your Shoulder. If you found today's episode helpful, be sure to subscribe and share it with someone who's ready to find the clarity to lead and the confidence to succeed. You can listen to Shelley on Your Shoulder at 7bigconsulting.com or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can reach Shelley via the contact page at 7bigconsulting.com. On LinkedIn by searching for Shelley Sager, that's S-H-E-L-L-E-Y, S-A-E-G-E-R, or by clicking on the send us feedback link at the top of the episode description in your favorite podcast app. Until next time, lead with vision, act with purpose, and inspire with heart. Appearance or mention of individuals, products, or services on Shelley on Your Shoulder does not constitute an endorsement. Shelley on Your Shoulder is copyrighted by 7Big Coaching and Consulting, all rights reserved. Any redistribution or reproduction of part or all of the content is prohibited without express written consent from 7Big Coaching and Consulting. Shelley on Your Shoulder is a production of 7 Big Coaching and Consulting in partnership with Left Brain Right Brain Marketing. You can find 7Big Coaching and Consulting at 7BigConsulting.com and LeftBrain Right Brain at LBRBM.com