Sometimes, our motivation to “just get things done” can cause us to make poor decisions. We overrule the voice in our heads that says, “Hold up a sec. Is this what we should be doing right now?” That voice is often the sound of our subconscious, which may have spotted warning signs that our conscious mind is either unaware of or has dismissed. We can save ourselves some unnecessary grief if we pause for a minute and ask – “Why am I feeling doubt about this?”

The ex-Navy Seal and now author and podcaster Jocko Willink provided an excellent example of a situation where stepping back and detaching allowed him to see a path to better outcomes. He was a newly minted Seal, training in Close Quarters Combat, working through an exercise with his squad. Instructors had created a situation where the only apparent way to progress through a house was down a narrow, bottlenecked corridor where the defenders had set up an ambush. Direct assault would result in mass casualties for the assaulting team. Instructors behind the squad yelled continuously, ordering them to proceed down the corridor to clear the house. An initial attack by the assault team resulted in (simulated) casualties. At this point, Jocko realised he could step out of line, raise his weapon into the port arms position and consider alternatives. The pressure being put on by instructors from behind and casualties in front was put to one side while he thought about other avenues of approach. By looking around, he discovered that there was an external staircase that could be used to circumvent the ambush and assault the position from the rear. Jocko used this lesson repeatedly throughout his military career and teaches it to leaders in all fields – an approach he describes as “detach and broaden your field of view”.

While this example seems heavily militarily oriented, it applies to everyday life. By pausing, stepping back, and assessing our goals in any situation, we can choose better paths than the one we’re currently on. Taking a pause allows us to broaden our actual and psychological field of view (which narrows when we’re under stress) and also ask questions. We can ask ourselves, “What do I need to achieve from this conversation?”; “What would this look like if it was easier?”; “Why do I believe this is the right route to get where I want to go?”. We can also ask others for their advice. We can take a minute (or an hour or a day) to seek out those who may have gone through similar challenges and get their input. This kind of pause is crucial in high-stress situations, whether that stress is externally or internally generated. Cortisol doesn’t always help us make good decisions – it reduces the world to fight or flight, when sometimes what we need to do is take a much more nuanced approach.

In the “get things done” organisations that many of us operate in today, it is often more important to stop and ask, “Is this necessary?” or “Is this the right thing to do now?” We are always trying to make progress without taking the time to consider whether we are progressing in the right way or even the right direction. To layer in another analogy, a senior executive who interviewed me for my current role put it like this – “in a warehouse full of barrels of fish, it’s important to know which barrel you should be fishing in”.

Listen to your gut. If in doubt, put down the shovel. Take a pause. Detach from the problem. Then, pick up your shovel again. By being more thoughtful and unafraid to pause, we will deliver better outcomes for ourselves and the people and companies we support.

A few people have asked me recently, “When do I know it’s time to make a change?” In this post, I propose some criteria that I hope you will find relevant.

The context of the question above usually relates to role change. Typically, when someone asks me this question, it is because they have identified reasons to consider new roles and are trying to confirm or challenge their thought processes.

Several drivers show up in these discussions, which I like to frame as questions:

• Am I still learning and growing?
• Do I feel fulfilled by my work?
• Is my work considered valuable by key stakeholders?
• Do I think I’m being fairly compensated?
• Is there a next step or trajectory to this role?

Growth typically requires a level of challenge in the role – we learn most effectively when we are uncomfortable. The corollary to this is that staying in “the velvet rut” of the known and comfortable leads to stagnation and a lack of growth. A quote I like on the subject of change is attributed to John C. Maxwell: “Change is inevitable. Growth is optional.” We are going to be constantly subjected to change – environmental, organisational, personal – and it is up to us to determine whether we learn and develop from it.

One of the major reasons that people look to change roles (apart from having unsupportive or difficult managers) is reward and recognition. People can get hung up on monetary elements when it comes to compensation without considering other aspects. For example, am I being given new growth opportunities as a result of my delivery? Is my work getting publicised? Am I given the chance to be seen as a subject matter expert in my field?

We all have different criteria for what constitutes fair compensation. While the monetary aspect is key (very few of us turn up to work for the camraderie and challenge alone) it is not the only way to be rewarded for doing our jobs well.

I use a Pareto principle calculation to help people categorise the type of work in their current role. Am I spending 80% of my time on things that matter to me and others and that have value? If 20% of my time is spent on administrative work and noise, that’s probably okay. If the percentage grows closer to 50%, that probably indicates that a change (either within or outside the organisation) is required.

I have made a significant number of changes in my career and continue to do so, with an eye to continuing growth and challenge. Sometimes this works out, and the timing is right, personally and professionally, and sometimes it doesn’t. Each time I learn from the experience, and each time I refine and improve my criteria for when role change is necessary for me. One additional criterion that can be useful for you to consider is “What is my tolerance for risk at this stage of my life?” Younger people or those without attachments may have have higher risk tolerance because they don’t have dependents. For those of us with families to support and possibly aging parents as well, our risk appetite may be lower. Either way, it is important to consider if your current role is providing you the right answers to the questions above, and to other criteria that may be relevant to you.

As a final note, I came across a quote recently that made me smile – “You are not a tree. If you don’t like where you are, move.” It is important for all of us to remember that our constraints are often less restrictive than we think!

When I was young, stress was invariably considered a bad thing. It was thought that there was one stress category, which was all negative. Neuroscience and management thinking have moved forward in the intervening epochs, and there is a recognition that human beings need stress to be engaged and to grow.

Mihayli Csikszentmihalyi, the Hungarian psychologist, introduced the concept of Flow. We are in a flow state when deeply engaged with our work. Time passes without our noticing, and the work feels effortless and productive. Flow state is achieved when we can work without distraction and the work is sufficiently taxing to require our full attention.

Developers enter a flow state when coding without stopping for food, bathroom breaks or distractions. Writers constantly seek to enter a flow state to generate high-quality, volume output. We can enter a flow state when working on a new problem or while standing in a river fly fishing (literally being in the flow). To enter a flow state, we also have to be in a state of stress, in this case, called eustress.

Eustress is the state in which we grow and learn fastest. We may feel uncomfortable, like when starting a new job, but not to the point of damaging stress levels. I have learned the most when I’ve been in this state of “not-knowing” discomfort.

Too little stress can be damaging in its own way, particularly if we are used to operating at a certain level of everyday stress. If we have too little stress in our work lives, we may engage in damaging behaviours, spending time doom-scrolling social media or Internet sites. Our motivation suffers, and it can seem pointless to engage with anything. A continuation of this state can lead to a lack of a sense of purpose, which can be very bad for our mental health. Humans need focus and purpose, or we become anxious and perhaps even depressed.

One aspect I have noticed of moving from a high-stress to a low-stress condition over time is that I am more likely to get sick once cortisol levels drop. Several theories address why this may occur, but cortisol suppresses the immune system in persistent high-stress situations. When the stressors are removed, the body switches back to a higher immune response, which may cause pathogens that gained a foothold during the suppressed state to cause an immune reaction. This then leads us to feel sick. Research has shown that persistent, chronic stress can lead to hypertension, heart disease and diabetes, among other serious health issues.

Acute stress can also impact immune response. This tends to be temporary and does not always result in illness.

The key from the above is that maintaining a state of eustress is desirable, and we need to be aware of when we are either under-stressed or over-stressed. Persistent states of stress imbalance can have severe mental and physical health conditions associated with them. The only way to know what our eustress levels look like is to seek out the right challenges for us and know when to disengage from work (or leisure) and when to recharge or re-engage.

In short, go ahead, stress yourself!

What does it mean to be intentional? It starts with being present, which can be challenging at the best of times but is essential when things go sideways. It is easy for us to think about something that has yet to happen while dealing with something that is going on now. For example, instead of focusing on my writing, I could be thinking about a bill I have to pay (I may or may not be doing that now). Or, I could be conducting someone’s year-end review with them and start thinking about the next one I have to do; short-changing both the person whose review I am conducting and letting myself down.

Intentionality also has elements of prioritisation about it. According to Greg McKeown, until the 1900s, the word “priority” was singular – which makes a lot of sense when you think about the root of the word. Priority came into use in English in the 1400s, originating from the Latin word “prior”, meaning first. It was only in the 1900s that the term priority became plural, and it doesn’t make sense to me to have multiple priorities. There is only one. I recently came across a lovely little acronym describing this – “WIN” or “What’s Important Now” – neatly reflecting a singular priority. The critical thing about focusing on a single priority is that we have to deliberately decide not to do something else. Not to be distracted or attempt to multitask. Not to be thinking about what we “should” also be doing while working on that one priority. Marcus Aurelius puts it like this in Meditations – “Ask yourself at every moment – ‘Is this necessary?'”

When it comes to decision-making, being transparent and honest with ourselves about why we’re making a decision and then accepting the consequences of it are a part of the puzzle as well. Not making a definitive decision is a decision itself and should also be intentional.

We need to be deliberate about how we consume information. Napoleon provides an interesting example in a world of overwhelming information. He instructed his secretary not to open his mail until three weeks after it had been delivered. By then, many of the supposedly urgent problems within had resolved themselves. I’ve seen this approach put to good effect in my career – one of my peers, who is far less reactive than I am, consistently spent less energy on problems which ultimately resolved themselves because he was willing to wait. By contrast, I often felt the need to react immediately to the presented issue and wasted energy doing it.

As with many other areas of our lives, intentionality requires practice. We must be aware of when we mindlessly consume information or react rather than think. We need to acknowledge to ourselves when our responses are emotional rather than intentional. As a parent, I’ve made my most memorable mistakes when I’ve reacted rather than being present and intentional. And, by communicating our intent to others, we can make it clear why we’re doing what we’re doing (and maybe not doing something else). This clarity in our thinking and action, driven by intent, makes it more likely that we will fulfil the stated purpose of our lives.

The British Queen, Elizabeth II, was a fixture in my life and that of many others until she died this week. I am not a monarchist – it would be strange if I were, given the nature of UK and Irish relations throughout my life. QE II was a neutral presence in my life and awareness, if not in the lives of many others. Fans of the monarchy and the royal family are undoubtedly grieving the loss of a monarch who outlasted 15 UK prime ministers, including Winston Churchill. Critics have, in some cases horribly, greeted the news of her demise differently.

What the Queen represented, not just in the minds of UK citizens, was a solid, stable, professional approach to leading her country. She was diplomatic and discreet and gave her entire life to the service of the UK. She continued to do so following the loss of her husband of 73 years – the kind of blow I can’t even imagine and a level of commitment that very few people in my experience can demonstrate.

While the notion of the monarchy seems archaic and bizarre to me, the level of leadership that Queen Elizabeth II demonstrated is much more relatable. She navigated challenging diplomatic situations with gravitas, aplomb and surety. There were no reports of her ever speaking ill of anyone, despite having plenty of ammunition in some cases. She was a solid, dependable, compassionate leader of her people. She was constant.

That kind of constancy is rare. I aspire to it in my personal and professional life. I try to be a good Dad, keeping my temper when it is sometimes challenging. I try to be a thoughtful partner and husband to my wife. I put enormous effort into being a good leader, manager and teammate at work.

I fail to achieve these things with consistency. I can get cranky with my kids when I’m tired and in pain. I have failed over the years to see where simply asking “what else can I do to help” would have taken a burden off my wife’s shoulders. I have made mistakes (and continue to) as a leader, manager and teammate, including not being as aware as I should be of the impact of my words.

Where I give myself a passing grade is that I always care. I always try. And I always care enough to try and learn from my mistakes and do better next time. That is the primary area of consistency in my life. I am a constant learner. And, like her or not, QE II represents a life lived in learning and lessons that I can take from a leader who faced challenges I can only imagine.

The need for self-advocacy isn’t always apparent, particularly in the early stages of our careers. When our work is highly task-focused, tied to a delivery schedule or otherwise clearly bounded, it is easier to see how well or poorly we are completing it. To an extent, the work does speak for itself. As we move further along the career path and opportunities become more contested, the people who deliver good quality work and are known and visible for the right reasons are the ones who are more likely to advance. When the challenges become difficult to quantify, and deliverables can be multi-year, it can be much harder to tell the superstars from the outside. People need to raise their own profiles, either directly or indirectly, to stand out.

One person I’m coaching at the moment has put the situation this way:

I have done everything I’m supposed to. I have put in the work, I’ve studied. Even with all of that, I’m not getting the results I expect in my career.

This feedback is common, not just with coachees, but also with people I’m mentoring at work.

I have been in this situation myself. I put a lot of time and effort into my day job. I want to be known for high-quality work. I want to be known as a good manager. I previously held five roles simultaneously, delivering across the board on all of them. Yet, despite this, not only was I not advancing, I wasn’t being acknowledged, compensated or even thanked for it by the people I reported to.

This sort of situation can be deeply demoralising. In order to have different results, we need to be clear firstly on what we want to achieve. We need to have outcomes to aim for, so we can adjust our approach to get there. This clarity of thinking is the basis of self-advocacy and coaching. Without clear goals, we cannot have a point of aim.

Once we are clear on what we want, we have to have an approach to get us there. In my case, I wanted to be doing exciting work with supportive colleagues and be compensated for it. To achieve those aims, I had multiple, straightforward conversations with my leadership and senior leaders in other parts of the organisation. I also explored options outside of the company. Then, when I chose my next role, I continued the transparent conversations with my new management on what I wanted to achieve and what outcomes I wanted to deliver for myself and them.

These conversations can be deeply uncomfortable if we are not used to making it clear what we want to achieve. It can be helpful to use your network to challenge you when you have a position you want to advocate for. Having people who help you practice saying what you want and how to say it can take much of the fear and discomfort out of the “real” discussions. Note that the focus is not on self-promotion but self-advocacy. While rabid self-promoters often do advance quickly in certain cultures, I believe it is ultimately a self-limiting behaviour.

As managers and leaders, we have to make it easier for people to have these sometimes difficult conversations with us. We must provide the time and space for our teams to be clear about what they want and ask them often. We also have to advocate for others – particularly those who are not as practised or as empowered to advocate for themselves. The funny thing is, by advocating for others, we are also advocating for ourselves. Supporting the growth of others helps both us and the organisations we work for achieve our overall goals.

At work, “busyness” is often celebrated but can be the antithesis of productivity. Getting things checked off a list feels like progress, and it feels good to make progress. However, ensuring we’re doing the right things at the right time takes more effort and focus. It requires dedicated time to think.

When I look at my calendar, which I suspect is not atypical for a mid-senior level manager in any large enterprise, it is full of back-to-back meetings. I regularly have multiple conflicts in a day that have to be untangled. As a result, I will frequently have to choose between two meetings to attend. Meetings are scheduled so that they are usually starting at the “top of the hour” and finishing at the “bottom of the hour”. In other words, each meeting fills the half-hour or hour-long slot it has been scheduled to with no space between.

Our limited brains, specifically our prefrontal cortices, do not cope well with this kind of schedule. There is no time to organise thoughts before or after meetings because we go straight from one context to another. In addition, we will never have time to reflect during the day unless we intentionally make parts of our calendar inaccessible to others – something which requires deep intestinal fortitude to maintain in a meeting-heavy culture.

Once we’re in a meeting, it is often unclear why we are all gathered. This is because meetings are rarely run with any clear structure or agenda. Only a few attendees will speak in many cases – usually the most senior and/or most opinionated. The result is that many people, often with great ideas, will never get to share them or think them through out loud with others. If someone does bring up a topic for discussion that is unpopular or not fully thought through, they may become targets for hostile questioning or commentary. This causes people who are uncertain of their status to disengage. Many of the worst meetings I’ve attended have had many individuals multi-tasking while one or perhaps two individuals “lecture the crowd”.

So in two major areas of corporate life, scheduling and meetings, it is increasingly difficult to think. It sometimes feels like we’re discouraging independent thought. People will be less likely to bring ideas forward because they will not have the confidence or a safe platform. The result for companies that have this kind of culture is reduced innovation and productivity.

Back to my original question – what can we do to enable our staff to think? We can encourage our teams to block out time on their calendars for focussed work, including thinking. One way to build this into the culture is to demonstrate the behaviour ourselves by creating protected spaces on our calendars. As described in Nancy Kline’s book “Time to Think”, we can establish thinking partnerships between team members. And we can make meetings safe spaces to think aloud by encouraging everyone to speak without interruption for an allocated period and by using constructive, open-ended questions to help people tease out their thoughts.

Developing insight with others is a critical part of my coaching practice and many others. The idea of “manager as coach” does not sit entirely well with me, but the idea of being a manager who encourages other people to use the gifts they have been given is. If you are a leader or a manager of people, I believe it is your responsibility and mine to help others make the best of their skills. That includes exercising their ability to generate insights at work. Structured thinking is like any other exercise that requires practice. A large part of our job should be to ensure that our people can practice and develop insights that will benefit them and our organisations.

I’ve written before that I believe that good questions are like a “free” and often overlooked superpower. It is incredible what people will tell you if you ask them open questions and listen to their answers. There are some prerequisites to getting the right answers, though.

• There has to be a level of trust in the conversation
• You must be genuinely interested in listening to the other person
• Your questions must be open – not geared towards yes/no answers

On the first point, it can take time to build trust with other people, but even a basic level of trust in a first conversation can be established by how you interact with the person from the start. There are entire books written on the subject, so I’m not going to attempt to summarise that whole field here.

Listening is a skill in itself – and it’s one that most of us think we’re better at than we are. “Listening to reply” is different to listening to the other person without judging what they’re saying or preparing your response. It takes a lot more patience and practice than we routinely put in. I’ve gotten better at listening openly in my coaching work, but I still make mistakes when listening to people in my personal life. I’m particularly guilty of this when I’m having a chat with my wife, and I think I’m helping her by finishing her sentences – in reality, I’m just being impatient by assuming I know the point she’s going to make.

Then, to the point of this piece, the questions themselves. Asking questions that help others clarify their thinking is a core parting of coaching. For example:

“What would make you more likely to want to complete this?” is very different from “Why didn’t you get this done?”.

“What do you need from me?” is a very different question from “What don’t you have?”

Simply asking “What else?” at the end of a conversation can prompt additional thoughts or insights, which is a different question than “Is there anything else?” which is a yes/no question and can signify that you are done with the conversation.

There’s another question that can be very helpful in sparking insight, and it is one we don’t often ask in a work context. “How do you feel about this?” can bring up emotionally-driven concerns from the person you’re speaking with. Helping them identify and label the emotions attached to their thinking can help them move forward productively with the work.

Given the topic of this post, I’m going to finish with a question – what are your favourite open-ended, insight-generating questions to ask?

We see things, and people, all the time. For those of us with sight, it’s an automatic activity. And yet, a lot of what we see is filtered by our brains. As a result, we make inaccurate witnesses to events we are present for because we have so many cognitive filters on the world. For example, because of the automatic nature of what we do when experienced drivers, we often recall little to nothing of the cars we see on our journey to work. Our brain filters out a lot of the visual stimuli – how many red cars did you pass on the way to the office the last time you drove in? You probably have no idea.

We also filter people without meaning to do so. I don’t mean that we edit people out of our worldview, but we don’t always notice people the way we should. I think this can happen when we’re very familiar with someone – we don’t always take time to observe them. So, for example, my wife will not notice if I trim my beard (although she may notice if I don’t, oddly). Likewise, I won’t always see that she has coloured her hair.

Sometimes this lack of observation can feel like a lack of caring. At other times it can be seen for what it is – attentional deficit due to overload or brain filters kicking in for different reasons.

These examples are trivial, by and large. What matters more is when we miss seeing someone for who they are. Conversely, it matters enormously to people when we see them as they see themselves and as they behave.

At the closing event of a leadership development program I co-lead, my co-chair took the time to recognise me publically for the work I do in this area and others. She used thoughtful, insightful language to describe my impact on the program and on the people I interact with and support. She closed the event by saying to me, “We see you, and we recognise you”, in front of over one hundred people. I was genuinely moved by this – not because of the “recognition” in corporate-speak, but because she sees me. No one has ever so clearly articulated this to me in twenty-eight years of a career.

Apart from being awed by the skills that my colleague displayed (and being emotionally ambushed, in a lovely way) I was struck by how much it means to be seen. For our impact on the world to be noted and played back to us. It reinforces the message that what we do matters. It provides the best kind of incentive to continue doing what we do. But, more importantly, it recognises our humanity; to be seen is to be valued, and to be valued is to be human.

From an early age, we are told to control our emotions. We are told, “boys don’t cry”. We’re told to “stop crying” – as a parent, I have been guilty of this myself. If we are out in public with a screaming child, we want the wailing to stop so we are not embarrassed in front of other adults.

These negative messages around the expression of emotion can have long-term consequences. For example, the normalisation of a stiff upper lip, an “I’m ok, you’re ok” approach to life and work can make it feel socially unacceptable to display anything other than positive emotions. A culture of toxic positivity, where everyone has to be ok all the time, can make people who are already struggling feel ever more isolated and alone.

From a leadership perspective, we need to be positive for our staff. We set the emotional tone for the organisation. If we are downbeat, that will become the pervasive emotional state for our teams – emotional contagion is the term psychologists use.

If we are always peppy and hugely upbeat and don’t acknowledge the presence of any negative thought or emotion, what does that tell our people? It means that it is not acceptable for them to entertain or raise doubts or concerns. Very few people are constantly knocking it out of the park from an emotional equilibrium perspective. We all have doubts. We all have “sad days”, as Adam Grant put it in a recent Work/Life podcast.

So, how do we get this balance right? By being authentic. By framing challenges positively but acknowledging the fact that they will require struggle. That effort is required – something that people with fixed mindsets may not be willing to accept.

We need to celebrate the positive in life – there is so much to celebrate – but also acknowledge that those periods of low mood, low energy and struggle are a normal part of life. It is easy to see someone in a leadership position, at the top of their game, as having it all figured out. After interviewing many top performers for his podcast, Tim Ferriss has made it clear that these “Titans” are like the rest of us. As he put it, “Everyone is fighting a battle you know nothing about. The heroes in this book are no different. Everyone struggles. Take solace in that.”

To loop us back to the start, as leaders, we need to make time and space for people to discuss their emotions at work safely. Cognitive empathy, identifying and understanding but not feeling others’ emotions, will enable us to lead our teams and organisations better. And being honest about our struggles and doubts will make it possible for others to share theirs openly and unapologetically. This kind of empathic leadership builds organisations that people want to work for and want to succeed. This is what real employee engagement means. Bring your humanity to work so that others can bring theirs.