Remember that time I shared that line, “Good, Better Best, Never let it rest, until your Good becomes your Better and your Better becomes your Best.”, yeah, I was wrong. Rest is really really good and it turns out it can be helpful in getting from good to best too.
I have returned from a purposeful pause from blogging that felt intentional, restorative, and absolutely necessary. In this time, I’ve realized something vital for leadership and patient care:
There is power in the pause.
Pause for Empathy and Preparation
In healthcare, empathy isn’t just a feeling, it’s an active skill, shaped as much by intention as by emotion. Before entering a patient room, what if we practiced an empathy pause?
An empathy pause is taking a moment to ask:
- How might I feel receiving these words?
- What resources or support would matter most right now?
This moment is about more than self-awareness, it’s a bridge toward understanding another’s lived experience. It is useful in patient encounters and in management as well.
Brené Brown’s research on vulnerability highlights that the foundation of empathy is born when we allow ourselves to pause, feel, and lean into uncertainty. As she puts it, vulnerability is necessary for real connection and “our most accurate measure of courage” (podcastworld.io). These empathy pauses are acts of courage, they bring clarity and deepen communication by slowing us down enough to truly hear and value another’s lived experience.
Pause Sustains Creativity and Reflection
Pausing is not a passive activity, it’s strategic. Adam Grant has noted that allowing the mind to remain with unfinished tasks keeps them active in your subconscious. Drawing on the Zeigarnik effect, he explains that this state of mental simmer can boost creativity and insight (npr.org). I especially love the line he shares from Aaron Sorkin, “You call it procrastinating. I call it thinking.”. We need time to process things organize them and that takes time and often means we have to walk away from a task, while incomplete, to figure out our next best steps.
An example of how we can set ourselves up for success with this comes from something I learned when I was in my doctoral program. I was advised to always end a writing session in the middle of “a downhill”, like writing the first sentence of the next paragraph. It became its own act of motivation as it encourages me to get my ideas organized for the next writing session. So when I sit down next time, I basically written through the next paragraph or two before I ever have to think about what to say next.
We can do this in all kinds of tasks. It’s not my wife’s favorite, but with two young children I don’t ever seem to have the time to do all of the dishes in one go. So I do them categorically. I wash the plates, then the bowls, then mugs, etc. It might be a neurosis, but it helps when I get interrupted…
Let me be honest, I want to be interrupted!
If I am interrupted between categories, I will wash one of the next category. When I see one bowl sitting in the dryer rack it is a glaring reminder to go finish the dishes. Have you ever seen a single fork on a drying rack next to a pile of dirty dishes? Try it, it will drive you to action, I promise.
The Pause in Dialogue and Music
I once heard this line about a musician and I have also heard it said about great actors and actresses. It is not how they play the notes, it is how they play the pauses. I recently watched the classic, “You make me want to be a better man.” scene from the movie As Good As it Gets. Jack Nicholas and Helen Hunt have this beautiful back and forth where the writing is absolutely superb, but that is not what makes the scene. It is how they each are acting when the other actor is speaking. They are both phenomenal in that scene at playing the pauses.
By playing the pauses we give space that allows meaning to emerge. As with great actors and musicians, who use silence like a second instrument, intentional silence in our conversations and our care can give voice to emotion and meaning. This is where humanity and connection live. How many times have you been half listening to someone until they pause mid-sentence? We are built to identify patterns they are soothing to us, so when a pattern breaks, we are programmed to investigate. So the pauses are immediately interesting to our perceptions and what happens in them can be a great opportunity for connection.
In practice, there are a few things we can do when taking an intentional pauses like taking time for deliberate reflection, like “What assumptions am I making?” or “What values might inform this decision?”.
Playing the pauses transforms downtime into development time (news.harvard.edu). The Harvard Business School found that leaders who incorporate short strategic pauses perform 34% better in decision-making and foster environments where teams are more likely to voice concerns early (higherperformancegroup.com). Purpose becomes clear, reactions become measured, and creativity emerges from the cracks between moments.
The Dark Side of Pausing
Pause is a powerful tool, until it isn’t.
There are a great many instances of this as of late, but pausing too loudly or for too long has risks as well. First of all, I’ll just say what some of you might’ve already been thinking, pausing can never be stopping. That’s not strategic pausing, that is strategic cowardice. If you want to stop doing something, you can just stop doing it, but announcing that you will be taking a moment to assess a situation that you then eventually decide against is just risk mitigation and everyone sees it plainly. The most pressing example of this is what has occurred across industries with respect to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, and the response to the anti-woke movement.
Pausing to understand emerging social movements and counter movements and how your organizations will respond is wise. But when the pause is not followed by any substantive action, the silence speaks loudly. In moments of political tension or moral urgency, institutional pauses can inadvertently communicate silence as disapproval. In today’s anti-woke environment, when organizations silence their advocacy for marginalized communities, the pause becomes a void. The pause becomes a loudspeaker for many in these communities that all of the actions the organization once engaged in to support DEI were never authentic or legitimate. The absence of support feels like withdrawal. In instances like these pausing isn’t neutral, silence a statement.
As I reflect, pause wisely, but don’t slow to silence.
Pause as Shared Vulnerability
True leadership invites shared vulnerability. Brené Brown’s work, particularly in Dare to Lead, emphasizes that courage isn’t acting tough, it’s being honest about uncertainty (npr.org). A culture of pause wherein leaders surface their own unanswered questions builds psychological safety. In times of uncertainty, people are looking for leaders to say, “Look I don’t know what we are going to do in this new environment, but I know our shared values will lead us to next best steps. While we work to build a plan, if you have suggestions or concerns, please reach out to the leadership team to help us make the best next move.”. In this way, an intentional pause in times of uncertainty can become a team-builder, a psychological safety incubator, bringing trust, innovation, and creativity to a confusing situation.
Perhaps rather than Good, Better, Best being wrong perhaps it just needs another stanza.
Good, better, best,
never let it rest,
until your good becomes your better,
and your better becomes your best.
But if along the way,
you find yourself distressed,
take a pause, then carry on,
and soon you’ll be your best.
In Closing
Pauses can be power: to ground us, to prepare us, to open us. They allow us to lead and care with empathy, courage, and intentionality. But in a world that also demands action and affirmation, we must ensure our pauses are deliberate action that do not lead to absence.
Practical “Pause Prompts” for Leaders & Clinicians
Here are pauses that make difference:
- Before critical communication: “Let me pause for a moment. What am I assuming, and how will this land?”
- At decision junctions: “I’d like 5 minutes to reflect, my brain will keep working on this in the background.”
- During conversations: “I want to check in, how does this land with you?”
- After advocacy efforts: “What’s our next step? Silence here will speak louder than words.”
References & Further Reading
- Basically anything by Brené Brown on vulnerability and leadership
- Adam Grant on creativity, reflection & the Zeigarnik effect (npr.org)
- Harvard Business School: strategic pauses improve decision-making by 34% (higherperformancegroup.com)
- Community case: leader’s pause in crisis yields stronger team outcomes (higherperformancegroup.com)
Geoffrey Silvera, PhD MHA 