The Long Pause

A message from Mike...

As we’ve shared recently in our blogs and through social media posts, we have a wall of images in our office that represent our teammates’ “Coins”. This display has become a great reminder for all of us of the depth of our full-time staff and our team of Expert Facilitators, and what we all value.  

In this week’s blog, our colleague and dear friend, Mike Kontio, gives us a glimpse into his values, and shares some of the currency beneath one of the images he chose.    

Mike is a military veteran with 22+ years of leadership and communications experience within Special Operations and the Founder & CEO of Tilted Optic Solutions. Known for building cohesive teams that deliver results in complex, high-stakes environments, Mike is an intentional leader, passionate about people, culture transformation, and creating lasting impact.

We’re honored to have Mike as part of our Game On Expert Facilitator team, and appreciate his ability to focus on connection and bring people together.

 -Steve Shenbaum

On the wall at Game On hangs a picture of old, weathered books sitting on a wooden shelf. Some show their spines partially, others their pages. Some stand straight, others lean. One is lying across the top. Another is held shut by an old metal clasp. 

You can tell there is a story within the history of these books, but you can’t tell much more than that. 

You don’t know the titles. You don’t know the authors. You don’t know what’s written inside or how many people have held them before they ended up on that shelf. 

That’s why I chose this picture. 

My Coin…is curiosity. 

We’ve all heard, “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” When I study this picture, I think it goes further than that. Sometimes we don’t even have the cover. We have a few things we can see, our own experiences to interpret them, and then we fill in the rest. 

We do the same thing with people, businesses, relationships, and problems.

I’ve learned that some of my worst assumptions have come from thinking I knew the story before I had enough information to understand it. 

If you really want to know what’s inside, eventually you have to pull the book off the shelf and open it. 

My teammates have a nickname for me: “Long Pause.” 

It was earned over time (and many pauses), after building trust and the team understanding how I operate. I don’t always have something to say right away. I listen, I pay attention, I process what I’m hearing, and then I respond. 

The nickname is fitting and I own it. 

We live in a culture that rewards decisiveness. Have an answer. Make the call. Know your position. There is certainly a time for that, especially in leadership and business. But I’ve learned that being decisive and actually understanding something are not always the same thing. 

As a business owner, I need information to make informed decisions. Curiosity is one of the ways I get there. 

The same is true in relationships and life. 

We naturally fill in blanks. Our experiences, environment, successes, failures and biases influence how we interpret what is happening around us. That’s part of being human. Those instincts can be incredibly useful, but they can also cause us to decide what the story is before we’ve heard enough of it. 

I can’t count the number of times I’ve walked into a meeting or conversation with the entire interaction already scripted in my head. I spent hours planning every permeation and variation of the script in my head. 

They’ll say this. Then I’ll say that. They’ll probably respond this way, and I already know what I’m going to say next. 

It’s a great plan until the other person doesn’t follow my script. 

I’ve gotten better at walking into those situations curious instead. Rather than thinking about my response while someone else is talking, I try to actually listen to what they’re saying. If I don’t understand something, I ask another question. 

I also pay attention to the little things people say. 

Every now and then someone will stop in the middle of a conversation and say, “I’m just being honest…” 

I’ll ask, “So, was everything you said before that a lie?” 

Usually we laugh. 

But I’m also curious about why they said it. What changed that made them feel the need to qualify what came next? What are they really trying to communicate? 

Those little things are interesting to me because words give us clues. People give us clues. There is usually more to the story than what we hear initially. 

Curiosity keeps me from having to know where the conversation is going. I don’t have to spend my time figuring out what I’m going to say next. If I’m really listening, the next question, response or decision usually comes from what the other person just gave me. 

Sometimes the most useful thing I can bring into a room isn’t an answer. 

It’s the pause before one. 

The Challenge: 

Curiosity is easy to talk about. It’s harder to practice, especially when we think we already know the answer. 

So here’s my challenge, and it’s one I continue to work on myself. 

The next time you’re in a conversation and become certain you know what the other person means, catch yourself. 

Pause. 

Before you respond, ask one more question. 

There’s only one rule: you can’t ask the question to prove your point. Ask something you genuinely don’t know the answer to. 

Then listen. Not for the opening to respond. Not for the flaw in their argument. Not for confirmation of what you already believe. Listen because you’re curious about what might come next. 

Do it often enough and the pause starts to become a habit. 

That’s really the challenge: practice being curious when it would be easier to be certain. 

You may not change your mind. You may not change theirs. That isn’t the point. 

The point is to leave the conversation knowing something you didn’t know when you entered it. 

That’s it. 

It sounds easy. Try it. 

I think one of the reasons curiosity has become so important to me is that we seem increasingly quick to put people and ideas into categories. We decide what someone believes, what motivates them, or why they made a decision based on the small amount of information available to us. 

We can become pretty confident about stories we’ve never actually read. 

When I slow down and get curious, I usually discover something I didn’t know. Sometimes it changes my opinion. Sometimes it doesn’t. Understanding someone doesn’t require agreeing with them. 

But more often than I would have expected, I discover that underneath the things we disagree about, we have a lot more in common than we thought. 

That brings me back to the books. 

They’re old and weathered. They’ve been handled. Some stand straight and some lean. One is even locked. Every one of them has a history that isn’t obvious from where we’re standing. 

People aren’t much different. 

Neither are businesses, relationships, teams or problems. 

So I’m good with being “Long Pause.” 

I don’t need to have the quickest answer in the room. I’d rather listen a little longer, ask another question and understand what I might be missing. 

Because you can’t know the story from the shelf.