Last week I told a story about a question hiding under a calendar problem. This week: why that pattern is so common, and what to do about it.
Sometimes, when we run into a challenge at work, our first instinct is to reach for a new tactic, a framework, a tip, or a prompt to help solve the problem.
It’s the executional lens we most often view hard things through, mostly because that’s the first thing that occurs to us as what would help.
“Do you have a framework for solving X?”
I’ve certainly thought about these types of questions when trying to get better at something happening at work.
How can I get better at speaking to executives? How can I be better at that hard conversation? How do I lead my team more effectively?
These are all understandable questions. And often, there are some useful ideas, tips, or practical techniques that can help.
But some of the most useful breakthroughs I’ve had tended to start as a tactical question and end up somewhere else entirely. Sometimes what first looked like a skill or knowledge problem turned out to have something deeper.
Take the question of improving how you speak in group or leadership settings. In my coaching practice, this is one of the more common areas where clients want to focus and improve.
It’s an important area and there are tactics that can help: answer first, say exactly what you mean, work on ways of improving your in-room presence, and more.
But sometimes the more useful questions are different and point internally instead of at tactics: “Why are you nervous in the first place? When you feel that nervousness in the moment, what does it feel like? What is it about that setting that changes how you show up?”
Questions like these can surface things that an “executive communication” framework wouldn’t fully address.
These deeper questions are harder to surface when we’re moving quickly or staying in pure problem-solving mode. If the goal is simply to fix a challenge and move on, our attention naturally stays on the most visible version of the problem.
There’s a reason for this: psychologists find that under time pressure we tend to “seize and freeze” — we seize the first workable answer and freeze on it. Pausing is hardest exactly when we need it most.1
A pause for reflection can create a little distance from that. That can be a walk, writing a page in a journal, or a real conversation with someone who asks a question you wouldn’t ask yourself.
Jerry Colonna has a question in his book Reboot: Leadership and the Art of Growing Up that always causes me to think about things more deeply:
“How have I been complicit in creating the conditions I say I don’t want?”
That’s a pause question. It’s uncomfortable because it shifts focus from the situation to your own role in it. That’s a different mode of thought — slower, deeper, and sometimes less pleasant.
But sometimes that’s where the insight is. You get a different perspective than a framework can offer.
This is not an argument against tactics or action. Sometimes a tactical problem really is just a tactical problem. It’s only a reminder we sometimes need to pause and ask what else might be causing the challenge.
I’ve found it helpful to think about reflection as part of a loop. Action creates data and experience. Reflection turns that data and experience into learning. And that learning can improve the next action you take.
That middle step is the pause to reflect. Reflection isn’t a break from doing the work. It’s one of the ways we learn from work.
Pausing feels especially relevant now because AI is making tactical knowledge so abundant. AI can give us frameworks, prompts, scripts, examples, and advice instantly. That’s incredibly useful. But it also makes it easier to stay in a constant mode of improving through optimization, always looking for the next tactic or tool.
The risk is that we skip taking that quieter moment to noodle on whether we’re solving the right problem in the first place.
So the next time you reach for a new tactic, try pausing first. Ask whether there’s something underneath that deserves some attention. If it’s helpful to have a conversation with someone about it, go for it.
Every once in a while, that pause may surface something that can change what you decide to do next.
Hi, I’m Jeff. I spent 25 years building product at LinkedIn, Facebook, Headspace, and Included Health. Now I coach senior product leaders through the moments where the old playbook stops working: a bigger scope, a new company, communicating at the exec level, or figuring out what’s next. I work with a small number of 1:1 clients in six-month engagements, and every one started with a single conversation. If that’s you, or someone on your team — reply to this email. I read and answer every one.
Kruglanski & Webster (1996), “Motivated Closing of the Mind: ‘Seizing’ and ‘Freezing’,” Psychological Review 103, 263–283.