Slowing Down to Speed Up

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Part 2: How to Build These Strategies into Your Work & Life

 

‘Breathe in, Breath our, when in doubt, breathe out.’

~Danny Penman

Several of the pieces of research in Part 1 here touch on a set of practical habits, let’s draw them together now, rather than treating any one as the whole answer. 

Five Strategies for Pausing and Reflection

We need to adopt the habit of pausing to think and reflect.

For Five simple active strategies for leaders to help with pausing and reflection:

 

1. Schedule unstructured thinking time for slow thinking.
2. Get a coach to facilitate the exploration of ideas, make reflection more productive, and to help foster reflective time.
3. Cultivate a list of questions which prompt reflective thought.
4. Keep a journal and jot down what happened, in detail and note the feelings in your body.
5. Set an hour aside each week to review your notes. But don’t just re-read your journal entry, add to it.

Principles for Effective Reflection

Whether you’re reflecting alone or with a group, a few principles to help make the process effective include:

• Be honest. The goal is learning, which requires facing what really happened - a neutral facilitator can help with this in group settings.
• Seek a full picture. Draw on multiple perspectives and data, since individual views are often incomplete or biased.
• Understand the root cause. Look beyond what happened to why it happened.
• Think beyond quick fixes. Consider not just how to improve the existing process, but how you might approach the work entirely differently

The Mosaic Approach to Reflection

Not everyone has an hour to spare, though, and Badaracco's research is useful here. After interviewing more than 100 managers across 15 countries, he found that busy, successful people rarely reflect in long, uninterrupted blocks. Instead they practice what he calls ‘mosaic’ reflection, small pieces of reflective thought fitted into the cracks and crevices of an ordinary day.

His four design principles are worth adopting on their own:

• Aim for good enough. Don't wait for the perfect hour of solitude, a few honest minutes beats a reflection session that never happens.
• Downshift occasionally. Let your mind out of race-car mode during the day: a walk outside, a look out the window, a moment of mental meandering between tasks.
• Ponder your hard issues. Consciously look at a problem from more than one angle, imagine how someone you admire would see it, or how it looks from the perspective of the person most affected.
• Pause and measure up. Before committing to a decision, briefly check it against your own standards and the standards others expect of you.

My own practice: the quarterly step-back

In business I suggest stepping back at the end of each quarter to purposefully review the three months that have just passed. Ask yourself questions about what went well, what did not, what was learned and if it could be repeated, as well as what did not go well and what should not be repeated. It can be hugely beneficial to both you as a leader and to the organization. And the ripple effects don’t end there - by engaging with this process and sharing it with your employees, you have the potential to lead by example and amplify the benefits. 

A technique for the moment: the 1-minute PAUSE

In his book ‘Things your future self will thank you for..’, Mark Rowe simplified a mindful practice and developed the 1-minute PAUSE technique:

Pause – Stop what you are doing and take a break for a minute

Awareness and Attention – take the moment and check in with yourself and note how you are feeling (mentally, emotionally and physically)

Understanding - Recognise and accept that your feelings are something you experience, not something you are.

Simply Breathe – Take a deep breath slowly through your nose and fill your lungs. Hold for a few seconds.

Exhale - Release the breath slowly through your nose, letting your lungs empty completely. As you do, let go of any tension, stress or anxiety you're holding onto. Pause briefly and repeat.

 

It's a principle that Danny Penman distills into a simple rule for the moments that matter most: ‘when in doubt, breathe out’.