[EP6] The Power of the P-A-U-S-E Artwork

Root Issue Radio!

Welcome to Root Issue Radio, with your hosts, Expert EOS Implementers and co-authors of the Issues Book, Jill Young and Sue Hawkes. We're on a mission to help you remove friction, fast track your growth, and ignite your greatness. Dial in and let's dig deep

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Root Issue Radio!

[EP6] The Power of the P-A-U-S-E

April 15, 2026

0:00 | 19:42

In this episode of Root Issue Radio, Jill Young and Sue Hawkes explore what happens when leaders stop focusing only on problems and start paying attention to hunches, glimmers, and possibilities. They talk about the “issue under the issue,” the difference between a trigger and a glimmer, and why good leaders need to create space for ideas before rushing to solutions.

Jill and Sue discuss how teams can open up the discussion phase of IDS by asking better questions like “What else?” “What if?” and “What would great look like?” They explain why the first answer is not always the best answer, and how slowing down can help teams see more options, more creativity, and better long-term outcomes.

Jill also introduces the idea of calibrating intuition, describing intuition as pattern recognition outside conscious awareness. Together, they encourage leaders to trust their hunches, ask the harder questions, and give voice to ideas that might otherwise get dismissed too early

Listener takeaway:

When a team feels stuck, it may be time to PAUSE — Perhaps Another Unseen Solution Exists. Slowing down long enough to create space can open up better ideas, deeper thinking, and the kind of team conversation that leads to real breakthroughs.

Get your copy of the Issues Book here!

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Coming to you live, it's Root Issue Radio with your hosts, expert EOS implementers, and co-authors of the Issues book, Jill Young and Sue Hawks.

SPEAKER_00 0:11

We're on a mission to help you remove friction, fast-track growth, and ignite your greatness. Dial in and let's dig deep. That's what we're going for.

SPEAKER_01 0:42

That's the issue under my issue, Sue. And in this episode, we're gonna unpack fun stuff like that. What is the issue under the issue that might be a hunch? What are you pretending not to know that might be an idea or a glimmer? Sue, did you know the opposite of a trigger is a glimmer? I did not. Yeah, a trigger is something that kind of makes you feel like, oh no, like, oh, this is wrong, or or oh, we've got a problem or a barrier. A glimmer is, ooh, look at that. That makes me feel expansive and lovely, like a sunset or a sunrise, um, or an idea or an opportunity.

SPEAKER_00 1:29

Wow. I have, I think, used trigger both ways positively, negatively. Now I have a new term for the positively.

SPEAKER_01 1:37

It's a glimmer. Doesn't that just feel right? Glimmer of hope. I love that. There we go. There we go. So we pretend not to know things, but it's not just on the, oh, I pretend not to know that there's a problem. And human brains are, you know, I don't know if we're designed, but we definitely do see the negative, um, the the gaps, things that are missing more often than the ideas or the opportunities. But let's unpack this. What are we pretending not to know that might be an idea or a hunch?

SPEAKER_00 2:12

I love that you used hunch in one of our earlier episodes or maybe future episodes, depending on how these get released. Um, that's the fun of not knowing. But the the word hunch, I mean, when you said it, I it stuck out while we were talking because I went, a lot of times in the session room, we see people kind of going, hmm, and you you physically see their hands go to chin, or you hear that hmm, or you watch their eyes squint up a little bit. You know, it's where you see that thinking starting to happen that shows up from a gut thing. It's not necessarily linked to the conversation. And it's always fun to go, so what's going on over there? That doesn't look like your your yes face or whatever it might be, or to just ask, because sometimes, and I want to hopefully give permission. I hope that's what we do out of this. That's my intent. That when you have hunches, when you have ideas, when you have opportunities, that you become bold, that you embolden yourself, you give yourself permission to go there because sometimes the issue is that we haven't tried that yet. We haven't been there. There is an expansive opportunity, a glimmer, as Jill said, that leads your feelings before you even articulate it well as a thought. And that's where you have to be pretty vulnerable, I want to say, Jill, because I think in our world, at least in my world, as I've seen it, people can be cruel to crazy ideas, to things we've never done before, to unpacking things they're unfamiliar with or that might seem like a stretch from where you are in that brainstorming sort of way. And so they withhold and become what I call stingy. And I'll I'll say to people, don't be stingy. This is where it's pour the gas on the fire, no bad answers, right? There's no bad answers, just contribution. So being able to ideate well, to pose an opportunity, a hunch, a glimmer, an idea, a possibility, and then let go of it, kind of suspended, hanging out there, can feel like you know, when you put your swimsuit on at the beginning of the season and you go, everyone's looking at me. When really nobody is, they're just happy you're there. But it can feel that if if any of you are listening, you can tell I don't love being in my swimsuit in front of people. But when you're in there and you're going, oh my gosh, is everything tucked in right? Does it look okay? I'm getting older, I didn't work out enough, whatever, whatever. You have all this noise going on, but you toss it out there going, let's see, let's see. Oh, wait, we're all in swimsuits, we're at the pool.

SPEAKER_01 5:19

Sue, I love, I love your metaphors because they just bring everything right into the into true human life. Thank you for perhaps. Thank you for doing that. You know, this these hunches, these ideas, um, oftentimes I see they come up during the discuss, identify, discuss, and solve. And one of the one of the things that I like to think about when I'm helping a team IDS is the discussion phase is to open up possibilities. Open up possibilities. Just get just get them open. I have this, I have this painting I did around possibilities. And it's like people come in and they might feel tight, like this is the one way to do it. And a coach's job is to go, open up the possibilities, give permission, open up the possibilities. And one of the things I love to do, especially when I'm at the whiteboard, I'm like, okay, there's the there's the issue. We've identified it. What are the possibilities? I just say the word, or I'll use the phrase, how can we? Dot dot dot. Um, another phrase is what if? Another phrase is I wonder, dot, dot, dot. And what else? What else? And one of one of my favorite things to do is when somebody says, you know, how about how about clowns? Then I will say, what else could we do? What else could we do? What else could we do? Just like you said, Sue. And it's oftentimes teams will come up with one idea, one discussion, and then they just want to go, okay, yeah, that's what it is, and go. And I just really love to encourage people to stay in this space of possibility. Let's give it one more minute. Is there anything else before we look at this big long list of things we could do? And I think what it does is just helps the human brain know that the first idea, the first thing we discuss isn't always the best idea.

SPEAKER_00 7:26

I love what you just said. I love that because I see teams do that all day, every day. So if you weren't paying attention, grabbing the first or the loudest or the most pervasive or the most readily available idea is not always fully baked. It might be a great one. But uh, what did I write down? Where did I put it? I have this messy piece of paper.

SPEAKER_01 7:53

So do I.

SPEAKER_00 7:54

What else is yeah, what else is possible and what else is available? Or one I love is what would great look like? Because everyone can contribute something to greatness. And even though it comes from a person, too often we start narrowing, which is what you were talking about, Jill, into that idea because it seems plausible and logical, and it came up first and it's easy. And so that must be it. Instead of this is where that wide angle lens expansive and then say, of all of this, what would great look like? That's where people start to go, oh, not just the answer, but the best possible answer for the long-term greater good. Because we talk about long-term greater good, and sometimes that first answer makes sense for today or for a while, but it really isn't the long-term career good, meaning everyone makes sense to us and for the leadership team because instead of really marinating in all those great questions you just said that are expansive and let those glimmers start to multiply. Because you can have some glimmers and I can have some glimmers, but when we have a whole pool of glimmers in front of us, that's where the connections start to happen. That's where it's a team sport.

SPEAKER_01 9:26

The team sport. And um, I'm gonna I'm gonna riff on the team sport just a little bit in this with all of these possibilities. Just the other day, I was helping a team, I was um observing their level 10 meeting. So when coaches, when the implementers um observe a meeting, we stay silent until the very end. And I just I listened to this team do this two or three times of they identified the route. When they went to discuss, they just looked to the person who owned the issue. And the person who owned the issue said, Okay, I'll take that and I'm gonna do this, this, and this, and I'll take a to-do around that. And there was no discussion from the rest of the team. And when they did one of these issues, and I'm thinking, oh no, they're not getting, you know, input from everybody. And the marketing person kept trying. I could hear her. She kept trying to say, but what about, but what about, and she just kept, they just kept running right over her. And she could see other possibilities. So they were IDSing in just something's wrong. We'll just do this harder. It was their solution. We'll just do it harder, we'll just try harder, try harder. And she was trying to open up some possibilities, and I just could see the energy of opening up these possibilities. Uh, there's an acronym I like to use when I see teams doing this, and it it has everything to slowing to do with slowing down, but the acronym spells the word pause. P A U S E. Perhaps another unseen solution exists. I love that.

SPEAKER_00 11:10

Oh, Mike, say it again. Say it again.

SPEAKER_01 11:13

Perhaps another unseen solution exists. It's open it up to possibilities. There's I love to think about the leadership team as if I own an issue, I'm gonna come to you and you're my a team. If there's five people on the team and I'm coming to you with an issue, there's four other brains that can help me get unstuck. I want, I want to hear. I want to hear from the rest of the team. This is my A team. This is my my go-to. I'm not defending myself in front of you. I'm saying, help me out. And there's, Sue, there's some interpersonal risk right here that that all team members, when we do this well, you're saying, hey, I'm taking some interpersonal risk here to ask for your help. Um, look at this idea that I have. Tell me where the good parts are. Um, is there something I'm not seeing? Am I not thinking big enough? Am I not thinking big enough?

SPEAKER_00 12:20

Just bring it to the team. That is gold. So I I hope you wrote it. If not on the first time, the second, but that is gold. Um, I do want to highlight two things you said. So I think it's beautiful when teams can say it's your seat, you take it, you solve it, but you don't need a team for that. So that was in your example, and I wanted to underscore it because it can technically look accurate, which many of them that's awesome. Because if it's in your seat and you can solve it, the question I have around that for teams is always like, well, then why'd it make this issues list if we were just going to hand it back to you and you already have it? Is there an unwillingness? We don't have a safe enough space for you to really do what Jill just described, which is get vulnerable and say, Here are all the ideas I have. I'm not sure it'll work well. Right? Like I need the team sport, otherwise, it doesn't need to be on an L10. So we always say, if you can't solve it on your own, you bring it here. And yes, it's mine to decide of the possibilities if I'm in charge of that and I GWC the seat and it's in my accountabilities, that's technically correct, but it may not follow that glimmer of expansion, which is what we're talking about. So, in that nuance of being able to do that, the second one is for our listeners to get when an issue shows up, if it's at your L10 for your leadership team, does it really belong there? And I see in the room all the time, we have our most expensive talent, and what I would argue is our most highly competent based on years and tenure and breadth, not because others aren't, just we have more time uh tread on our tires typically. And that issue is on this list, and I will often say, could any of these be opportunities for our teams to grow in their thinking capacity? Right, because they're on our list because we're the answer people and we get our dopamine hit by always being so necessary, and they can help us get it done. But are we really challenging our leaders to produce leaders who produce leaders, which is those leadership pipeline things I've never given up on. And when I talk about that, it's do you give your people the issues on your team within sales, ops, marketing, finance, so that they have to do the heavy lifting, so they have to think, so that they have to get uncomfortable. Because where EOS will bottleneck is always that next layer. And that's where Marissa and Beth's book comes in, the rollout book. But it'll bottleneck a lot of times because we hang on, because we love being so darn smart and to be the highly capable, competent people we are, that we become more necessary than maybe we need to be. So that our teams aren't doing that heavy lifting the way you say, where it's whoo, I gotta have some glimmers here. Otherwise, I'm just a doer.

SPEAKER_01 15:43

The I'm so glad that you brought up this next layer of leaders. And the first time I heard that quote was from you, Sue. A leader is a leader when they produced another leader. I love that so much. And we're we're we're really exploring these ideas and these hunches and opening up these possibilities. The possibilities are seen, they are witnessed, they come out from people who are close to the delivery, close to the issue. They're in the issue every day. If a leadership team is trying to solve the how do we get the truck stock issue, how do we get the plumbing trucks stocked for the day issue? We're solving the wrong issue and we might mess it up. We will mess it up. And getting everyone to think in the organization involves teaching everyone this pattern, identify, discuss, and solve. And uh, I like to use this phrase, I've been using this a lot, is calibrate your intuition. So we have to give, we um, we get to give these leaders at different levels their opportunity to calibrate their hunch, calibrate their intuition. My very favorite definition of intuition lately is pattern recognition outside conscious awareness. It's all this data that is coming to our brains and our bodies and our hearts and our souls. So ask, ask the question: what are you pretending not to know? What ideas are you pretending not to have? Um, what are what's keeping you up at night that could solve these big issues forever or could help us leap to the next level? But asking this of our leaders and the leaders on the front lines and further out and further out and further out, and maybe the emerging leaders who aren't even technical, you know, in a technical leadership seat. But Sue, thank you for bringing that up.

SPEAKER_00 17:50

Oh, yeah. To your point, if I haven't done that job in the last week, why am I the one solving it? Right? I mean, you think about what the day in, day out of any given seat is on our accountability chart. And if you're not in that, you you don't have that same purview, which is both a strength, but it's also a limitation. And that's why we have to say, who owns this? And when we get clear on that, yes, they can solve it, but it is a team sport. And so I think we're full circle to what where we started, which is those glimmers are an everyone opportunity and solve it where it matters, where it's close to the heart of the issue. Everybody can do this all day, every day. Everybody must build this muscle.

SPEAKER_01 18:45

Well, maybe, Sue, in our next episode, let's unpack that a little bit. How, how, and why uh we can get IDS to everyone in the company. How about that? I love that. Your idea is amazing. I love that glimmer. The glimmer and the hunch.