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The Power of Pause: How to be More Effective in a Demanding, 24/7 World

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Four time Emmy winner, executive coach educator and author, Nance Guilmartin, shines with her latest book, "The Power of Pause: How to be More Effective in a Demanding, 24/7 World." The book contains Guilmartin's learnings gained from years strengthening people's capacity to change behavior...adopting more constructive and fulfilling ways to achieve their goals. Guilmartin's approach focuses on the "Power of the Pause" - pausing to make a choice, learn what is unknown, be curious, and be truly in-touch with the other.

In today's world, most respond immediately to what is seen, what is heard, and/or what is sensed. This automatic and emotionally unrestrained response can undermine our effectiveness, and our relationships with others. However, we have another choice after something happens, we can choose to pause. Pausing, even for a moment, provides THE opportunity for another perspective, a more effective response, and freedom from the tyranny of our emotions.

Guilmartin adds that the pause cannot stand alone and must be combined (which is covered in the book) with curiosity and humility to achieve the personal effectiveness and fulfillment she has successfully coached others to achieve.

Pause (Presence of Mind) + Curiosity + Humility = Professional Effectiveness and Personal Fulfillment

"The Power of the Pause" is not a mindless book like so many other self-help books, Guilmartin packs a lot into the book's 218 pages. She provides practical ways to apply the principles provided; the research that drive these practices; and true stories, case histories, and personal reflections on how the practices work in the real world.

The power of pause practices which are highlighted in this book are:
* Drive your choices instead of being driven
* Be aware of your filters (and theirs)
* Give the benefit of the doubt
* Stop putting deposits in your resentment bank account.
* Use rephrasing as a 21st century risk management tool
* Use the curious not furious approach
* Ask: What's on your plate?
* Ask: What Don't I know that I don't know?
* Take responsibility for being understood: reverse rephrase.
* Make withdrawals from your resentment bank account.
* Know your trigger points (and theirs)
* Strengthen relationships: Offer timely, specific appreciation.

The author sets high expectations - by the end of the book, she says the reader will be able to:
* "Suspend the urge to react on automatic and give himself/herself a chance to make better choices;
* Have a productive conversation in the midst of disagreement, or regain control when the unexpected happens, without launching personal attacks or getting ahead with an instant answer or reactionary defense;
* Hit their internal pause button, regroup, and discover what he/she didn't know he/she didn't know that can lead to an unimaginably successful result; and
* Put the effectiveness and communication intelligence practices in this book to work and helping others join with the reader, giving him/her more time and energy to do their best in a 'just do it' world."

Guilmartin wrote this book to help people "play the game to position" oneself and others for an opportunity to win. You may not always win but you will always be "positioned for a better chance to win." She succeeds and provides many gems for all who are struggling with time, life-balance, doing one's best work, being understood, trusting relationships, and/or change, uncertainty, and meaning...which is just about all of us!

First let me acknowledge that I have had the opportunity to have Nance Guilmartin teach the methods she espouses in this book to me first hand. The organization I work for had the foresight to bring her in to facilitate a senior staff retreat when our now former CEO joined us 4 years ago. She also did some follow up work with us during this time. Regardless of how you obtain the information, whether in person or in writing - her methods work. What you will find in this book are easy to understand methods on how to begin to take back control of your work time and if you are a manager - how to manage more effectively. The book is an easy read, the methods clear and understandable and more importantly she doesn't just tell you about the methods, she tells you HOW to implement them - both through instruction and example. Be forewarned, the book is so easy to read you can cruise through it almost too quickly. I suggest you pause frequently and reflect on what you just read and how you can implement it in your world before moving forward. As you will find by reading the book, pausing is one of the most important things you can do and will become part of your vocabulary.

This book does one thing fairly well: it tells us things that many of us already know but don't really put into practice. The premise of this book is that we should think before we act. In our hyper-fast world, this is more often said than done, but the author (correctly) points out that the time avoided by making the right decision is worth the time it takes to arrive at that right decision.

As a PhD student who struggles to meet my academic demands as well as those of my required 2o-hour-a-week assistantship (and still manage to have time to go to conferences, etc), I was hoping for a book that would delineate strategies for how to use reflection time before making decisions wisely. What types of things should I think about when pausing? How might one know when one has made the best decision amongst many options, etc. All I got was (a) that we should pause before making decisions and (b) that doing so can ensure making better decisions, avoiding 'heat of the moment' reactions, and avoiding misinterpretations of data. I wanted a bit more than this but didn't get it.

So, my conclusion is that one need not buy this book, but instead only need to read the front and back cover: the 200+ pages in the middle of these are just repetition

Recently I held a one day leadership retreat with 25 researchers and attorneys. The core content was based on the concepts from Nance Guilmartin's book, The Power of Pause. Having been through many leadership programs in the past, the feedback from this group was telling - they felt that for the first time they had practical ways to deal with all the uncertainty in their environment and enjoyed having a leadership reference that provided such a broad range of tactics, behavioral guidelines and powerful examples of how situational awareness can build both personal and professional competencies;they were genuinely surprised at how relevant it was to their work. This book is unique in its approach to today's business challenges.
Suzie Hise, Hise Consultants

Although things are moving faster now than ever, Nance Guilmartin contends that we must take time to pause in order to be effective. "Suspending the urge to react instantly when the stakes are high reflects the awareness and strength of character it takes to pause - to listen to learn, and then to lead."

Her equation, Pause (Presence of Mind) + Curiosity + Humility = Professional Effectiveness and Personal Fulfillment, is the underpinning of the entire book. We need to take time to learn more about the motivation of others and be open to the fact that our way is not always the best way. When we do this, we'll make better decisions that will also save time. As is often the case, taking time up front saves time in the end.

Nance views various tried and true but frequently ignored management practices, like listening and showing appreciation, through the lens of her Power of Pause formula. She provides many examples from both current affairs and her career to support her concepts. In this age where speed is the mantra, it is indeed important to recognize the power of pause.

-- Nick McCormick, Author of Lead Well and Prosper: 15 Successful Strategies for Becoming a Good Manager

Nance Guilmartin has managed to formulate a very clear path on how to be more effective in business, family and personal dealings with other people. we will recognize many of the situations she describes and it might seem very easy at times - but also a pilot looking at his checklist will find it very easy once he has done it many times, yet, the pilot will ALWAYS follow his checklist, especially in emergency situations...so do follow Nance's 'checklist' it will pay off...

Nance provides valuable advice that has changed the way I conduct my business. I have had the benefit of working with her for many years. As a communications professional, this approach produces powerful, profitable and crisis preventing results.

Professionals can benefit from how little time it takes to PAUSE and get curious while moving forward in a meaningful way.

With this book, Nance Guilmartin created a magical flying carpet.

I kept being transported to past events in my life, thinking: "What if I paused at that moment in time?" again and again.
It is quite fascinating to realize that friendly reminders of actions that we miss, are vital to learning life lessons.
Nance, with her inimitably affectionate way, keeps us on our toes by inviting us to: "Be Curious, not Furious!"

'The Power of Pause' is mainly directed at the corporate person, yet I cannot help looking into my personal life, vowing to take a pause next time stress levels reach the stratosphere. Each story in the book highlights the fact that we, human beings in 2010, are living dangerously close to our boiling point and sometimes all it takes is a proverbial straw to break our backs.

I will keep on reading The Power of Pause until I learn to PAUSE.

What is a pause? The author writes 'A pause can be as simple as not immediately responding to something someone says,does or writes. It can he thirty seconds, a minute, and hour or a day. It can be that one, deep breath. It's any space between an action and your reaction. It's the safety mechanism offering you and opportunity to make a different choice that the one you might make if you speed ahead fueled by what you think you know, see, or hear.'

Part Two: get Curious Not Furious :Take Back Control To Get New Options is an excellent section of the book because the author writes about what happens when we are wired to snap and in doing so make poor choices. Beginning on page 59 she writes about how to interrupt an emotional hijacking as she calls it, and make better and smarter choices. She continues on page 62 discussing why so many are working with fuses lit and ready to blow and how a person can stop such behavior that causes stressful situations from getting to us or even starting. Overall the book give some excellent information on how to change negative behavior, even if it takes weeks or months.

You might guess from the title that The Power of Pause is about taking time out of our busy schedules to re-center and refocus -- well, that's partly right and partly wrong -- the focus is less on carving time out for some new activity and more about creating mindfulness and working these pause (but not stop) moments into our everyday life. But what the book is really about is being more effective at work and in our relationships -- and the paradox is that pausing actually creates sanity and allows us to get everything done we need to in a more effctive way. The techniques take effort up front, but help us to avoid problems downstream. Guilmartin convincingly explains how pause activities like asking (the right) questions and getting curious rather than furious are helpful. I have put to use her reverse rephrasing technique and it has been incredibly helpful for me in several situations -- and makes me wonder how many times problems arise from a lack of truly understanding each other. To the skeptical reader (as I generally am) some of the techniques sound corny or obvious at first, but, having seen some of them in action, I cannot deny that they are very powerful techniques that are, in fact, not "common" sense, or at least not commonly practiced.
It's a tall order to write a book that can apply to so many people, but this book is well-written and provides some valuable insights and practical practices that would serve us all well to engage in. As someone who trains managers, this book is a great way to get managers thinking about the way they lead their teams, and how they can create environments where team members can be maximally effective.