The Power of Pause E-Book

Nance Guilmartin

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 280

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2009

Beschreibung

A clear, actionable plan to fight frustration at work, make savvier decisions, and avoid costly mistakes when we're short on time, attention, and choices One of the most frustrating dilemmas for working people today is how to be effective when we feel we don't have time or we're facing non-stop demands. The Power of Pause process is a dynamic practice that Nance Guilmartin has taught thousands of people worldwide, equipping them to regain control of thoughts and avoid miscommunications. This tested method helps readers to take a moment to wonder what's called for when we feel we're short on time, attention, temper, or choices. In that instant, we can use a simple method to rewire our overloaded circuits, tap into our "missing-in-action" common sense, and raise our communication intelligence. This process is not about slowing down the pace of workday life. It is about enabling anyone who is time-pressed to make savvier choices and avoid costly mistakes. * Shows how to exercise leadership skills that save time and strengthen relationships * Offers a process for learning to engage in productive exchanges rather than attacking or being resigned * Enables managers and teams to save time and money * Reveals how to fix problems and achieve goals with less stress The Power of Pause methods enable managers and teams across varying industries/any industry to save time and money, fix problems and achieve goals with less stress-even in the face of competition, cultural and language differences, or tight budgets.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Praise

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

AN INVITATION TO THE POWER OF PAUSE

Why I Wrote This Book

An Antidote to 24/7 Demands and Continuous Partial Attention

Putting This Book to Work

PART ONE - THE POWER OF PAUSE PROCESS

CHAPTER 1 - RESTORING THE ABILITY TO CHOOSE

How Do We Work When We’re Living at the Edge of Time?

What Happens When We’re on Automatic?

CHAPTER 2 - WHAT IS A PAUSE?

Are We Asking the Right Questions?

Stripping the Gears

CHAPTER 3 - THE PARADOX OF PAUSE

What’s Your CQ?

Your Mindset Drives Results and Raises CQ

Cues That a Pause Is in Your Interest

Yeah, Buts . . . on Pausing

What’s Next? How to Take Back Control and Get New Options

PART TWO - GET CURIOUS NOT FURIOUS

CHAPTER 4 - WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE’RE WIRED TO SNAP?

Curiosity Doesn’t Come Naturally . . . After We Grow Up

How Do I Interrupt an Emotional Hijacking and Make Smarter Choices?

Why Are So Many of Us Working with Our Fuses Lit and Ready to Blow?

“Missed Understandings” Set Off Chain Reactions

CHAPTER 5 - GET A REALITY CHECK

POWER OF PAUSE PRACTICE #3: Give the Benefit of the Doubt

POWER OF PAUSE PRACTICE #4: Stop Putting Deposits in Your Resentment Bank Account

POWER OF PAUSE PRACTICE #5: Use Rephrasing as a Twenty-First-Century Risk ...

CHAPTER 6 - WHAT IS CURIOSITY?

POWER OF PAUSE PRACTICE #6: Use the Get Curious Not Furious Approach

CHAPTER 7 - HAVE YOU BEEN CAUGHT IN A DECISION-MAKING SPEED TRAP?

Why Is It So Hard to Give or Get Customer Service Today?

CHAPTER 8 - WHEN CURIOSITY BECOMES YOUR NEW DEFAULT SETTING

Tips and Yeah, Buts

What’s Next: Ways to Work Smarter Together, Not Harder

PART THREE - WHAT DON’T I KNOW I DON’T KNOW?

CHAPTER 9 - HOW CAN WE ENSURE SUCCESS IN TIMES OF UNCERTAINTY?

The Paradox of Knowledge and Uncertainty

CHAPTER 10 - DRIVE SUCCESS WITH AN EXTRA MEASURE OF HUMILITY

When Rapid Growth Creates Bottlenecks

CHAPTER 11 - REVISITING THE RESENTMENT BANK ACCOUNT

Resentments Trigger Reactions

TIPS AND YEAH, BUTS

PART FOUR - THE ART OF THE PAUSE

CHAPTER 12 - WHERE ARE WE GOING?

How Do We Shift to Collaborating?

What’s It Going to Take to Bridge Cultural Differences, Tame Egos, and Save Lives?

A Postscript About Seeding Innovation

When You Get to the Fork in the Road

Investing in Our Common Humanity: One Conversation at a Time

CHAPTER 13 - WHAT’S IN IT FOR ME?

What’s in It for Our Customers and for Us?

It Has Everything to Do with Alignment

CHAPTER 14 - APPRECIATIONS

Un- Be- Lievable!

The Power of Pause: Putting It All Together When Everything Is on the Line

Perfect Balance: The Story of a World Championship Manager

TIPS FOR EFFECTIVELY GIVING AND ACCEPTING APPRECIATION

CHAPTER 15 - THE POWER OF PAUSE PRACTICES

IT’S TIME

NOTES

APPRECIATIONS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

INDEX

Praise forThe Power of Pause

“Nance Guilmartin reminds us all how important it is to pause and listen carefully to what our colleagues and clients are saying. A simple but powerful message in today’s world.”

—Lou Bifano, vice president, IBM Tivoli Software

“There are times when life’s going to put you in a ditch. This book helps me get out of the ditch—to rejigger my course, appreciate what I’ve accomplished, embrace my team, stoke my fires, and proceed on.”

—Peter Shaplen,ABC World News freelance producer

“I agree wholeheartedly with Guilmartin on the important ideas she shares in The Power of Pause. In the time that it takes to draw one breath, we can begin to change the world.”

—J. Barry Griswell, retired chairman & CEO, the Principal Financial Group, and coauthor, The Adversity Paradox

“Swift action can be reckless and lead us astray. Guilmartin implores us to tap into the brain’s capacity to pause, reframe, and reflect before acting.”

—Jamshed Bharucha, provost & senior vice president, Tufts University

“This book helps us take our blinders off and gives us back the power to make a choice and not be driven by our emotions.”

—Bob Tobias, director of public sector executive education, American University

“Reading the book gave me immediate takeaways: I had ideas for my CFO, two great ways for teams to start meetings and handle what’s on our plates, and new skills to enrich my approach to performance appraisals.”

—Greg Miller, CEO and president, CrossCom National

“The Power of Pause rehumanizes the workplace and gives us both thought- and action-provoking momentum to be proactive instead of reactive. Nance Guilmartin provides a framework that is just as useful in the lunchroom as it is in the boardroom or war room. Another winner!”

—Lieutenant Colonel Edward Pfeffer, U.S. Army, Retired

“Speaking as an IT executive, I cannot think of a better resource to provide to my staff for dealing with the decision making in a high-stress environment. Knowing that they have read this book would give me the confidence that they should be making reasoned, well-thought-out decisions, particularly in times of crisis.”

—Ramon Padilla Jr., assistant vice chancellor, information resources, Florida Board of Governors

“Imagine all the conflicts in a company that lead to wasted time and money. Nance Guilmartin’s techniques—which you will find in this book—taught us how to break through these barriers.”

—Joe Wyson, executive vice president, OCEANAIR, Inc.

“The way you see and describe life today is painfully true. I admire the way each part of the book flows to the next, drawing me on to read and learn more. It is the perfect orchestration of an empowering idea that others and I can put to work, and not a moment too soon.”

—Moshe Hammer, founder, From Violence to Violins

“When it’s all about the bottom line, this book is a profit accelerator and a buffer against stress. The Power of Pause is on time and on target.”

—Suzie Hise, CEO, Hise Consultants

“By using the tools Nance’s book teaches, I am better able to communicate feedback to teachers simply because I now take the time to try to understand why a particular behavior occurred. I’ve learned not to assume that I know everything I need to know.”

—Susan Darrow, director of educational services, Music Together®

“The Power of Pause will help managers and coaches take the idea of helping coworkers be more effective leaders inside their organizations by providing them with ‘the’ textbook for making significant positive change in their lives.”

—Joe Esparza, cofounder, Leadership Outfitters

“It’s easy to see how the book’s tools can help business owners who do so much to make this country work. Why? Because—no kidding—it gives you fast, easy ways to turn a problem into an opportunity and into a greener bottom line.”

—Dan Hubbard, owner and operator, the UPS Store

Copyright © 2010 by Nance Guilmartin. All rights reserved.

Published by Jossey-Bass A Wiley Imprint 989 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94103-1741—www.josseybass.com

Power of Pause is a federally registered trademark of Nance Guilmartin.

Get Curious Not Furious is a trademark registered to Nance Guilmartin.

The material on pages 91-92 from the New York Times, January 5, 2008, is copyright 2008 by the New York Times. All rights reserved. Used by permission and protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States. The printing, copying, redistribution, or retransmission of the Material without express written permission is prohibited.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Guilmartin, Nance.

The power of pause : how to be more effective in a demanding, 24/7 world/

Includes bibliographical references and index.

eISBN : 978-0-470-54986-5

1. Public speaking. 2. Communication. I. Title. PN4121.G77 2010 153.6—dc22 2009031951

If you wonder whether there is a better way to be effective and make a difference—in the work you do and the life you live—then this book is dedicated to you.

And these words would not have become a book without the “no excuses” encouragement of Kirk Landon, who kept saying, “Just write it down and the rest will take its course.”

Now it’s up to you.

AN INVITATION TO THE POWER OF PAUSE

Working in a nonstop world, we can go to sleep one night and wake up the next morning in a W new reality. Regardless of what we do for a living or how we spend our personal time, we are no longer able to count on what we used to know or could reasonably predict. Consider these three questions. How do you:

1. Make the most of the time you have?

2. Successfully handle what’s on your plate?

3. Still feel good about yourself at the end of the day?

We wonder how we’ll find the time or the resilience to handle what comes at us full speed and to feel that we’ve made a difference. As one exhausted, technology-savvy business entrepreneur recently commented, “This leaves us insecure and discombobulated and brings to mind the often quoted phrase: Stop the world I want to get off. The trouble is that even if you did get off for a while—to collect your wits—would you know how or where to get off, or get back on?”

You don’t have to get off, but you can pause. This book will show you ways to succeed by using that pause to plug into a different source of your own power and effectiveness. My method is called the Power of Pause®, and it’s based on a paradox: to have more control over your choices and your time, you must pause—for seconds, minutes, an hour, a day, or even as briefly as a single deep breath.

It’s time to see ourselves, the people we work with, our customers, and the challenges and opportunities around us through new lenses. If you:

• Want to be a more accomplished and effective manager or leader or simply to be able to do your best work

• Are tired of being misunderstood and wasting precious time untangling knots

• Want to initiate and promote change with less resistance, instead of tolerating an Us versus Them debate

• Want quicker ways to build trust and extraordinary relationships when you or others are pressed for time

• Want more productive results

. . . then I invite you to explore the approaches you’ll find in this book. This is not about time management, nor is it about slowing the world down or unplugging from it. Instead, you’ll learn a low-tech, three-step Effectiveness Equation and twelve Power of Pause practices to make every pause a productive one.

In sync with new research on the brain’s neural plasticity, I’ve been teaching people to stretch beyond what they thought they knew. And I’m right there with them, which is why I’m offering you a practical framework to take action regardless of the time compression you face. It’s called the Effectiveness Equation; think of it as a global positioning system to help you make better choices. It gives you a set of coordinates to pause (get your mental bearings), to adopt a Get Curious Not Furious™ mindset (get your emotional bearings), and to access humility (to go beyond what you think you know to generate a more informed response). The Effectiveness Equation takes you through three stages, which unfold throughout the book:

Putting this equation to work enables you to “create” additional time for yourself. It also produces an exponential effect by increasing your own impact and by raising the effectiveness of others around you, who learn by the example you set.

Why I Wrote This Book

I began to develop the empowering concepts for this book decades ago when I noticed that they helped me, and my colleagues, prevent and solve problems quickly. First, as a news writer (on a deadline), interviewing people on different sides of a story, I discovered that it was crucial to listen respectfully past their passionate positions to uncover the truths in each person’s point of view. Later, as an aide to Senator Paul Tsongas, I saw how effectively he persuaded people on opposite sides of issues to reach agreement (for example, to protect the Alaskan wilderness, innovatively restore failing cities, and protect against the threat of nuclear weapons). He was passionately committed to understanding what people’s positions on these issues meant to them and to their families.

When I became editorial and communications director at Westinghouse Broadcasting, I looked for opportunities to go beyond my opinionated views. I helped introduce the practice of “doing well by doing good,” originating public-private partnerships to lead national behavior change, including the For Kids’ Sake campaign and the Designated Driver program. In the days before cause-related marketing was common practice, the For Kids’ Sake campaign pioneered the concept of inspiring customers, sponsors, and community organizations in over one hundred U.S. cities to address local needs, as well as created a $20 million profit center for Westinghouse and its clients.

The Designated Driver program was a radical idea conceived to engage the public in a proactive approach to prevent people from drinking alcohol and driving. The idea stemmed from a series of pauses, none more important than the sadness that overwhelmed the newsroom after the death of a respected young reporter killed by a drunk driver. In the midst of what could have been a typical reaction to a tragedy—to set up a memorial fund for his widow and child, call for tougher laws, or run a series of powerful public service announcements—we stepped back; we paused to wonder what more we could do. How could we do something more powerful and longer lasting to prevent people from drinking and driving? This pause led us to collaborate with the Harvard School of Public Health to turn a local tragedy in Boston into a nationally recognized lifesaving campaign.

Next as a business consultant, observing increasing conflicts in the workplace, I began insisting that individuals and organizations use the Get Curious Not Furious process when things went wrong. I urged them to have the humility and wisdom to ask, What don’t I know I don’t know? I challenged them to stop looking for blame and to discover the underlying problems, hidden opportunities, and unimaginable solutions. As a result, people and teams worked better together and made progress faster.

As a communication specialist, executive coach, and educator, I have spent years in the field strengthening people’s capacity to “ rewire” their behaviors and adopt more constructive ways to achieve their goals. These clients have included CEOs who learned to take their companies in new directions that go beyond industry norms and their employees’ comfort zones; newly promoted talent (previously superstars in their fields) who thoughtfully overcame resistance to their inexperience as managers; top hospitals that found time and cost-effective ways to support and retain their exhausted, seasoned employees; and savvy entrepreneurs who discovered better ways to attract and retain profitable customers and talent.

An Antidote to 24/7 Demands and Continuous Partial Attention

In a 24/7, fast-paced world, how do you balance getting the job done, meeting performance levels, while motivating others to stay in the game for the long haul? How do you keep teams focused on the task and desired outcome with so many distractions? The answer is simple: Form meaningful relationships! This is impossible to do if today’s managers cannot take the time to pause, listen, and act based on what they’ve learned.

—(MILLENNIAL GENERATION) MARKETING MANAGER, FORTUNE 500 COMPANY

“Pause, listen, and act based on what they’ve learned.” This is good counsel. Considering the speed of what comes at us—conflicts with colleagues that take us by surprise, competitors breathing down our necks, a daily barrage of information demanding a response, and time-sensitive opportunities beckoning—is it any wonder that we feel exhausted or stressed, or don’t have enough of the one thing in life that technology and intelligence is supposed to save us? Time!

It’s no surprise that when we’re running low on time, we also run out of patience, curiosity, creativity, and resilience, let alone our sense of humor. We make mistakes, miss opportunities, and wish we could hit the rewind or fast-forward button. We feel ambushed by “drive-by” e-mail attacks or anonymous electronic gossip or abrupt voice mail messages. Before we know what’s happened, we have a communication breakdown.

Research reveals that we’re working in a world of “continuous partial attention,”1 prompting some of us to schedule a weekly “secular Sabbath”2 or “e-mail-free” Fridays. We yearn to rebalance priorities and take back time for ourselves, or to interact with people in person, rather than solely through communication devices. More of us are asking, How can I change the way I use my time, make different choices, and still succeed?

It’s time to turn the tables on our “no time,” “no choice,” overwhelm-driven attitudes. Here’s what the four parts of this book cover, and how their lessons will enable you to make the shift:

By the end of Part One, The Power of Pause Process

• You’ll be able to suspend the urge to react on automatic and give yourself a chance to make better choices. (Please see Figure I.1.)

By the end of Part Two, Get Curious Not Furious

• You’ll be able to have a productive conversation in the midst of a disagreement, or regain control when the unexpected happens, without launching personal attacks or jumping ahead with an instant answer or reactionary defense.

By the end of Part Three, What Don’t I Know I Don’t Know?

• You’ll know how to hit your internal pause button, regroup, and discover what you didn’t know you didn’t know that can lead to an unimaginably successful result.

By the end of Part Four, The Art of the Pause

• You’ll be putting the effectiveness and communication intelligence practices in this book to work and helping others join you, giving you more time and energy to do your best in a “Just Do It” world.

Figure 1.1 You Have a Choice

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. Making this commitment is a new way to achieve success and personal satisfaction.

Putting This Book to Work

Parts One, Two, and Three are divided into short segments on:

1. The principles and research that drive the Power of Pause practices

2. True stories, case histories, and personal reflections on how the practices work in the real world (Where indicated by an asterisk [*], names and details have been changed to protect privacy.)

3. Putting ideas to work, a feature that identifies practical ways to apply what you’ve read

4. Tips to help you turn these ideas into new habits you can use on your own or with others

5. Yeah, buts, which respond to the typical and valid questions that come with the territory of advancing new or counterintuitive ideas

Part Four takes you behind the scenes to see what happens when the Power of Pause principles are put to work by people who are succeeding against the odds—whether the obstacles are political, economic, financial, cultural, or personal. We make the journey with them from remote villages in Turkey, where there is a cancer epidemic, to the creation of an international research collaborative that unites Christians and Muslims; from a university symposium outside Boston sponsored by a low-key CEO, to peace accords in Baghdad; from launching the first improbable business-to-business Web site, to becoming one of the largest e-commerce retailers in the world; and from failure to triumph on the field, to positioning a team for the opportunity to win every game they play—right up to the last at-bat.

And if something in the book doesn’t immediately apply to you, just skip ahead. As a busy executive explained, “After I know where an author is taking me, how they got there, and what’s in it for me, then I can go back to read what I skipped the first time around.”

Using the Power of Pause practices and the Effectiveness Equation, you can quickly become more successful, while helping others do the same no matter what comes at you at the speed of life.

PART ONE

THE POWER OF PAUSE PROCESS

HOW TO SHIFT FROM RUNNING ON AUTOMATIC

CHAPTER 1

RESTORING THE ABILITY TO CHOOSE

As an attorney representing public service workers, Bob Tobias became known for listening to both sides in a dispute and finding common ground. Today he is director of public sector executive education at American University, having retired as president of the nation’s second-largest union in the federal sector. This is his story about the day he discovered the power of a single pause.

When I first started negotiating collective bargaining agreements, I was very young and inexperienced, representing leaders who were twice my age. I was also facing the other side’s chief spokesman, who was a grizzled veteran.

I felt compelled—by my fear and need to impress—to interrupt and respond to any statements by the other side’s chief spokesperson that disparaged my side to any degree.

Although I did not smoke cigars, all of the members of my team did. So to be one of the “boys” I bought cigars, lit them, and then let them go out.

One day while I was lighting a cigar, the chief spokesperson started a diatribe, but before I could speak, he ended the diatribe with a concession.

It occurred to me that it might be a pattern; diatribe followed by concession. During the next diatribe, I overcame my fear and need to impress by lighting my cigar. A concession followed.

It was the first time that I noticed that I had a choice whether or not to respond. It was the first time that my emotion did not drive my behavior.

Bob Tobias took advantage of that pause to generate a better result. That is the “gap advantage” you gain when you exercise your power to pause.

How Do We Work When We’re Living at the Edge of Time?

When we’re up against a challenging person or a deadline, we’re primed and instinctively programmed to react. Yet having the ability to shift gears under pressure and give ourselves the gift of a pause is one of the keys to being effective and making the best choices.

We live at the edge of time. It’s the one thing most people agree on: I don’t have enough time. Time to think. To decide. To get to the bottom of things. To get the job done right. To deal with upsets. To build quality, dependable relationships. To figure out which top priority is the real priority. Yet it’s hard to resist the pressure to just decide, or to shake the addiction to “time-saving” devices. The ubiquitous use of instant communication technology, including cell phones, PDAs, BlackBerries, or laptops, encourages spur-of-the-moment, often ill-considered responses—like the kind you fire off just before departure when the flight attendant announces all electronic devices must be turned off, or when you are interrupted or distracted, perhaps when taking personal time with friends and family. Yet we feel pressure to respond immediately because that is what clients or colleagues—even family members—expect.

Why do we live this way? Because we don’t think we have a choice! However, we can change the way we look at who and what’s coming at us, and the way we respond by using the Power of Pause methodology. It offers a sequence of practical steps to manage our reactions and to prevent them from taking control of our decisions. First let’s look at some typical situations in which our judgment is tested and we risk being overpowered by our circumstances. Remember Bob Tobias’s experience and the results he achieved by choosing to pause.

What Happens When We’re on Automatic?

Misunderstandings and decisions happen at the speed of our emotions. We find ourselves in this bind whether we’re employers or employees, customer service agents or customers, healers or patients, or even when we’re working on a virtual team with colleagues we’ve never met.

We’re quick to say yes to someone’s request because we don’t think we have a choice. We just hit the Reply All or Send button on an e-mail instead of considering our options, picking up the phone, or walking down the hall. We jump to conclusions based on assumptions, expectations, or wished-for outcomes that are frequently far from reality. Then, working just from what we think we know, we fast-forward to make decisions, set out to prove a point, simply get rid of the problem, or take our business elsewhere. We’re asked to do more with less, especially less time. We cope with these demands by shifting to automatic decision-making behavior, and we:

• Have knee-jerk reactions—emotions drive us to act before we reflect.

• Go with our gut—we follow that instant “go or no-go” feeling.

• Fall into habits—“That’s how we’ve done it in the past.”

• Persuade or delude ourselves—“I’m the boss: it’s my call.”

• Take it personally—“I can’t believe they did that to me!”

• Assume we have no choice—“That’s the best that we can do with what we have.”

• Hear what we want to hear—“Maybe” means “Yes”; “No” just means “Not now.”

Think about it: What did it cost you, your team, your organization, your customers, or your relationships the last time someone was misunderstood or made a snap decision that backfired? There is another way to handle what life throws at you. It starts with changing your outlook by changing what you plug into and what you tune out. I’m not talking about unplugging from technology or abandoning your to-do lists. The Power of Pause process offers a practical way to rewire your overloaded human “software” and tap back into your long-lost common sense. The following story shows what a seasoned professional decided to try when her to-do list was overwhelming.

Making Time Count

How do you make the most of the time you have—when you don’t have the time you need—and end up being more successful than ever?

“Are you out of your mind?” said the nurse, as I was presenting the Power of Pause process as a quick and helpful way for busy nurses to be more effective in caring for their patients.

“Don’t you know what’s going on?” she cried. “There’s a nursing shortage, patients need more care these days, the doctors are always busy, and now there are six different kinds of nurses on a floor, and you can’t just ask anyone to help you out because they might not have the training or they might have a different degree than you and not feel it was their place or job to help! To make matters worse, when a patient gets sicker or dies, there isn’t even time for nurses to deal with our own emotions.”

What she was saying between the lines was clear to me and to everyone else in the room: How was she supposed to pause in the midst of all that and get her very long patient care to-do list done?

I took a deep breath, asked everyone to do the same, and then slowly let it out. Clearly this nurse was very upset at the idea of taking even a moment to catch her own breath, let alone to be with her patients or colleagues when they needed a few minutes of her time.

“It sounds like there’s no way you have a minute for yourself, or anyone else,” I said.

“Yes, you heard me loud and clear,” she replied.

Then I asked her, “Would you do me a favor? I’m not sure that I have the right answer for you at this moment. I’d like to share something that I learned in preparing to speak to you today. If it answers your question, let me know. If it doesn’t, we’ll go from there.”

The nurse nodded, sat down, and waited for me to tell my story. Here’s what I said:

When I was preparing tonight’s class for your group, I was intimidated. I asked myself, Who am I to be giving nurses any insights? After all, I wasn’t trained as a nurse, had never worked in a hospital—what was I thinking? Even though my mother was a nurse and my sister is a nurse, I knew I needed more insight than the anecdotes they’d shared with me about the challenges nurses face.

So I called my friend Barbara, who had spent the past two years in and out of hospitals. She’d been diagnosed with appendiceal cancer and given six months to live. Undaunted, she was doing everything she could to live as long as possible. I told her I was teaching a professional development workshop for nurses and that they would be getting credit for it, so it had better be good. I asked her, “What is the one thing you wish I could help nurses understand better from a patient’s perspective?”

Barbara thought for a few minutes and then said, “Tell them that the most important thing to a patient when a nurse comes into the room—before they stick that needle in or ask us how we are doing: Could they stop and see me as a person first and a patient second? I realize they don’t have enough staff to help them take care of us. And I know that they care. Here’s what would be so healing that won’t take but a moment. Could they soften their gaze as they look at me? As they approach my bed, could they consider whether I need a gentle touch or a positive thought that would remind me that I am more than an item on the checklist in their understandably difficult day?”

A murmur moved across the room as the nurses were reminded that this was why they had gone into nursing. Some acknowledged that they, too, had felt like “procedures waiting to happen” while hospitalized. The nurse who’d asked the question said she appreciated my honesty and said she would think about what she could do differently.

One year later, I was back teaching another group of nurses. When I asked whether there were any questions, suddenly that same nurse raised her hand; she’d slipped in while I was speaking.

“Do you want to know what I learned to do differently?” she asked. “Here’s what I do now each time before I enter the patient’s room. I pause. By that I mean, all I have time for is to take a deep breath and let it out. That’s all it has taken for me to remember to see the person first and the patient second. Sometimes I gently stroke their arm or shoulder before I give them medication or check to see how a wound is healing. Sometimes it feels right to give them a smile or a knowing look that acknowledges I realize that they would rather be home. That’s all it takes—the time it takes me to breathe.”

Putting Ideas to Work

This story is about what we need to be able to do for ourselves—before we can bring our “best selves” to work or to the situation at hand. This becomes increasingly important when people feel overwhelmed by information and conflicting roles and responsibilities. We are pushed to the limit by demands that test our patience and values, and that interfere with making the right choices—whether there are too many competing interests and alternatives or too much conflicting data to process.

The nurse found a way to incorporate a pause into her routine while barely skipping a beat. In return, she was appreciated by her patients and felt more in control of a job that had seemed beyond her control. She could feel less stressed and more present and empathetic because she had found a way to take better care of her patients and herself.