You shouldn’t lose your team’s best work to workslop and burnout.
With Pause, you won’t.
Pause equips you with 12 proven leadership practices to deliberately tap the brakes so your team can go bigger on top priorities, even as AI turns up the pressure to do more, faster, with less time to think.
From original research on leaders at 150 top companies from Amazon to Google to LinkedIn, you’ll learn how to triple your team’s focus—regardless of the chaos that surrounds them.
What Readers are Saying
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“Shawn Vanderhoven names something every overwhelmed professional feels but often can't articulate: the invisible wake of digital detritus that managers mindlessly create for their teams. PAUSE is a sharp, research-backed argument for why the best leaders tap the brakes—and a clear guide for how to do it without losing momentum. Read it before your next meeting, and then cancel half the meetings on your calendar.”
Daniel H. Pink
#1 New York Times bestselling author of DRIVE, WHEN, and THE POWER OF REGRET
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“You can’t get your team’s attention if you yourself are driven to distraction. Vanderhoven gives you the tools you need to focus on the things that matter. Essential!”
Kim Scott
New York Times Bestselling Author of RADICAL CANDOR: BE A KICK-ASS BOSS WITHOUT LOSING YOUR HUMANITY -
"I've spent years writing about the power of questions. But for good questions to make a difference, there needs to be space to hear them. This book helps you create space and time to have more impact."
Michael Bungay Stanier
International Bestselling Author of THE COACHING HABIT: SAY LESS, ASK MORE & CHANGE THE WAY YOU LEAD FOREVER -
“This book isn’t just a theory. Shawn did the work to find out what leaders are doing to lead great work instead of driving teams to burnout.”
Liz Wiseman
New York Times Bestselling Author of MULTIPLIERS: HOW THE BEST LEADERS MAKE EVERYONE SMARTER
A field guide for leaders drowning in change but on the hook for results.
You’re leading in an environment that eats focus for breakfast. A boss addicted to speed. The pressure to adopt AI and do more. Cyborg-level collaboration. Your team’s talent and time is slipping between the cracks. You need high-quality work on the big projects, but the gravitational pull of busyness makes it nearly impossible.
So you turn to productivity books for answers. But individual productivity hacks don’t survive the first meeting on Monday. You look to leadership books, but organizational overhauls are too big for most managers to pull off. You’re stuck in the middle, and it's maddening.
The way through the chaos is Pause. It puts the solution at your fingertips. You'll learn how to slow things down strategically. Because the only way to go faster on what counts is to stop sprinting on what doesn't. Our research shows that leaders who know how to Pause triple their team's focus on priority work. It's the ultimate advantage for leading in a hyperconnected and workslop-driven world.
And right now, the stakes are higher than ever. Adopting and leveraging AI is paramount. But learning new tools requires the cognitive bandwidth your team simply doesn't have. With Pause, you’ll create the space your team needs to leverage AI instead of it becoming just another demand.
Pause was written for leaders who are done being busy and ready to be brilliant. If you're a knowledge worker, middle manager, or senior executive ready to get extraordinary results, this is your book. And if you're leading Gen Zers, it's especially helpful — these practices build the kind of trust and clarity their generation needs to thrive.
You don't have to keep losing your team's best work to the noise. Pause gives you back what busyness stole. And then some.
What the Best Leaders Do Differently - The 12 Pauses
1. PICK THE PRIORITY TARGET - Generate momentum by turning fuzzy goals into crystal-clear targets
2. TURN OUT YOUR POCKETS- Restore deep work by exposing the hidden workload
3. INVITE DISSENT - Leverage your team's brain power to make tough trade-offs
4. BE YOUR TEAM’S AGENT - Match your team’s talent to tasks that will get you promoted (and them)
5. ESCAPE EMAIL HELL - Identify and replace crazy distracting messaging habits
6. ESTABLISH HOUSE RULES - Design team norms that give focus a fighting chance
7. SPONSOR MONK MODE - Go beyond permission, build an environment where the impossible becomes probable
8. TUNE IN BEFORE YOU JUMP IN - Convert drive-by-delegations into bandwidth-protecting partnerships
9. CLEAR YOUR DESK - Recognize when your team needs your ear and you’ll double their focus
10. COACH THROUGH FAILURE - Replace rumination with confidence by mastering the art of smart recovery
11. PUT GROWTH ON THE AGENDA - Invest a few minutes exploring someone’s career growth, get hours of concentration in return
12. HOLD A CLEARING - Make it easy for people to say what’s stealing their attention so they can get their head back in the game
Download a Free Chapter
About the Authors
Shawn Vanderhoven leads the executive development practice for senior leaders and rising talent at The Wiseman Group. He is a keynote speaker as well as collaborator on the New York Times bestseller Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter (Second Edition).
As a Partner at The Wiseman Group, Shawn co-designs executive development strategies that help leaders and managers amplify their organization’s most valuable asset—its people. He has partnered with leading brands around the globe, including Amazon, Alphabet, Adobe, Capital One, Deloitte, McKinsey, and Salesforce.
He lives in Menlo Park, California, with his wife Anne, and researches how top leaders and teams sustain focus on what matters most—regardless of the circumstances.
Anne Vanderhoven is a researcher and writer. Endlessly curious about how the best leaders create conditions for brilliant work, she is a co-founder of the consulting firm UP.
She has a penchant for medieval and Renaissance history, especially the Black Death (hello, perspective). Fortunately, she balances it with a steady diet of comedians, so her family still invites her to dinner.
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