Every Leader Forgets What No Longer Hurts

BTS, we’re running a Pause Ball Campaign here, speaking with a handful of CEOs about human performance at work. Someone asked whether I’m specifically targeting CEOs with this conversation because I was trying to get senior leaders to slow down.

Not exactly.

I'm trying to help them see.

Because one of the strange side effects of success is that the constraints you once felt every day gradually disappear from view.

Not because you stop caring about others. Because you've personally solved the problem.

Think about the things that consume your attention when you're early in your career.

Will I keep my job?

Can I pay the mortgage?

Am I doing well enough?

Do people think I'm capable?

AM I capable?

What happens if I make the wrong decision?

Most of us can remember a time when those questions carried real weight.

They weren't theoretical, we felt them deeply. Perhaps late at night when trying to sleep!

These quesitons shaped decisions. They influenced confidence. They sat quietly in the background of conversations.

Then, if things go well, life changes. You gain experience. You gain confidence. Build networks. Develop expertise. You earn trust. You accumulate evidence that you can handle difficult situations. And eventually some of those earlier concerns stop consuming your attention.

That's a good thing, right? In many ways it's the outcome we're all working towards.

The problem is that once a pressure disappears from your daily experience, it's surprisingly easy to forget how much influence it still has over someone else's.

This is where I think Maslow’s model is helpful. Whether or not you agree with the hierarchy exactly as he described it, here its enormously insightful.

Humans behave differently depending on the needs that are most active in their immediate world.

If safety feels uncertain, safety captures attention.

If belonging feels uncertain, belonging captures attention.

If status feels uncertain, status captures attention.

We like to think we're making purely rational decisions, but much of our behaviour is shaped by whatever feels most important or most threatened in the moment.

What fascinates me is what happens when people move beyond those concerns.

Once a need is consistently met, it often fades into the background.

You stop thinking about it, because it no longer requires your attention.

And that's where the visibility gap begins.

A CEO who hasn't worried about paying a mortgage in twenty years can still care deeply about employees who are feeling financial pressure.

A leader who has spent years building confidence can still care deeply about a graduate who is terrified of getting something wrong.

A senior executive who instinctively knows how to navigate ambiguity can still care deeply about employees who find uncertainty exhausting.

The challenge is not compassion. The challenge is visibility. Consciousness.

Humans are remarkably good at adapting to their environment. Once something stops hurting, we stop noticing it.

I think this is one of the reasons leaders are sometimes surprised by what emerges in engagement surveys.

The pressure points feel obvious to employees. But the same pressure points can feel almost invisible to the people leading them. Because they've learned to navigate those challenges so effectively that they've forgotten they are challenges.

It's similar to the way experts often struggle to teach beginners.

An expert can perform tasks automatically that a beginner must think about consciously.

The expert hasn't lost empathy. The skill is so second- nature to them, that they've lost visibility of the effort it once took.

The workplace version of this happens everywhere.

• A leader who has become highly skilled at managing energy may underestimate the exhaustion being carried elsewhere in the organisation.

• A leader who has learned to pause before responding may underestimate how many people are reacting from pressure.

• A leader who has developed confidence in difficult conversations may underestimate how much avoidance is occurring underneath them.

This is why I think pause is such an important conversation. Its used in high performance sport, medicine and defence. But in corporate we’re still frowning upon it.

Pause is not a handbrake. That's the part people often get wrong.

Pause is creating enough space to notice what you've stopped seeing- at any level of an organisation.

It's the moment before the decision.

The moment before you fix-without-facts.

The moment before you tell-not-ask.

The moment where you ask yourself whether other people are experiencing the situation in the same way you are.

Most organisations try to close these visibility gaps through surveys, town halls and communication initiatives.

Those things are valuable. But they don't always build the underlying capability.

The capability is curiosity.

The capability is perspective-taking.

It’s recognising that your experience of the organisation may be fundamentally different from somebody else's.

That difference doesn't mean either of you are wrong. It simply means you're standing in different places.

This becomes even more important when organisations are navigating change, uncertainty or growth.

Some people will be energised by the changes around us, some overwhelmed by it. Some excited. Some will be cautious - and many of us, all of the above before 10am!

The mistake is assuming everyone is responding to the same experience.

They're not. They're responding to their experience. And their experience is shaped by the pressures, fears, strengths and realities they bring to work each day.

The leaders I admire most are the ones who remain curious about realities they no longer personally experience.

They don't assume everyone sees the world the way they do.

They don't assume confidence is universal because they feel confident.

They don't assume certainty exists because they feel certain.

They deliberately create moments to check.

To ask. To listen. To notice.

To pause.

Because every human forgets what no longer hurts.

And sometimes the most valuable thing a leader can do is remember that somebody else may still be carrying it.