Over the past few weeks, I’ve written about a few related leadership ideas.
I shared how experience teaches you not to chase every issue, but to position yourself well and let the right work come to you. I wrote about how leaders train their organizations through what they tolerate and how they respond. And most recently, I reflected on confidentiality—and why protecting the room matters if you want honest debate and better decisions.
All of those ideas connect to something else that’s been very much on my mind lately:
Leaders set the pace — whether they intend to or not.
Pace Is Learned, Not Announced
Every organization has a tempo. Some move quickly. Some move cautiously. Some swing between urgency and fatigue.
What’s easy to miss is where that tempo comes from.
It doesn’t come from a plan or a slide deck. It comes from leaders—how quickly they respond, how fast they decide, how long they sit with uncertainty, and when they choose to push. Over time, people take their cues. They learn what “normal” looks like.
- If the leader reacts immediately to everything, everything becomes urgent.
- If the leader hesitates too long, momentum fades.
- If the leader shifts pace unpredictably, the organization stays tense.
None of this requires intention. Pace teaches on its own.
Slowing Down Is Sometimes the Work
In earlier articles, I’ve written about slowing down — not as a personality trait, but as a leadership discipline.
Slowing down to love the problem before jumping to a solution.
Slowing down to let real debate happen in the room.
Slowing down long enough to consider what a response will reinforce.
Those pauses matter because speed can feel productive while quietly creating confusion, rework, or misalignment. Sometimes moving fast is just a way of avoiding the harder thinking.
In those moments, slowing down isn’t hesitation. It’s responsibility.
But This Isn’t an Argument for Always Slowing Down
There are times when leadership absolutely requires speed. When the direction is clear.
When alignment already exists. When delay would do more harm than action.
In those moments, speed of the leader becomes speed of the team. Momentum matters. Decisiveness matters. Hustle matters.
Strong leaders know how to do both.
They slow things down when clarity is missing. They speed things up when confidence is earned. The problem isn’t moving fast or slow. The problem is doing either on autopilot.
What People Actually Watch
What I’ve come to appreciate is that people don’t just listen to what leaders say. They pay close attention to how leaders move.
They notice:
- how quickly messages get answered,
- how fast decisions are made,
- how often priorities shift,
- and how leaders behave when pressure rises.
From that, they infer what’s expected of them. Your pace becomes permission. Your urgency becomes contagious. Your calm, when it’s genuine, spreads just as easily.
The Question I’m Asking More Often
These days, before pushing or pausing, I try to ask myself a simple question:
What pace does this moment actually require?
Not what feels most comfortable. Not what clears the inbox fastest. But what best serves the organization right now.
Leadership isn’t about choosing speed or slowness as a philosophy. It’s about choosing tempo with intention.
And once you start paying attention to pace, you realize something subtle but important: You’ve been setting it all along.
