In my last post, I wrote about my time in Sedona and the Sedona Soulscape retreat. You might think that in a place as gorgeous and spiritual as Sedona, all you would feel is calm. That’s not always the case. In fact, it’s never the case.

One of our hikes was Margs Draw and it was described as “not strenuous,” but my knee was swollen and hurting, and even in September, Sedona is hot at midday, which is exactly when we were on the trail. Our group of ten had a variety of fitness levels including two marathon runners. And then there was me. The terrain was steep and rocky, with plenty of elevation both up and down.

As it turned out, the trail wasn’t well marked, and we got turned around several times. It wasn’t scary, but it added about an hour of climbing and trekking to what was supposed to be our easiest hiking day.

At one point, our retreat leader, Natasha, stopped the group under one of the rare small shade trees on the trail. She led us through five minutes of breathwork together. When we finished, she told us we could each do what worked best for us. Some could turn back and some could continue, with one firm rule: no one walks alone.

What was interesting wasn’t who turned around and who kept going. What was interesting was the power of the pause. Those five minutes helped each of us calm ourselves, check in with ourselves, and figure out what we actually needed. Rather than focusing on the outcome, we started focusing on the process.

That shift from outcome to process is at the heart of what I teach in my facilitation courses. When a group is focused only on the outcome, every detour feels like failure, and people start pushing, arguing, or quietly checking out. When a leader brings the group back to the process, the conversation changes. The questions become “Where are we right now? What do we need? What are our options from here?” Natasha didn’t stand under that tree and debate how we got lost or whether we should finish the hike. She changed the energy of the group first, and then she listened. Good leadership works the same way. You can’t get a frustrated, overheated, or anxious group to make a good decision, but you can create a moment for people to settle so that a good decision becomes possible.

I once saw this play out in a much higher stakes setting while working with a pharmaceutical company facing a serious supply chain problem. They couldn’t get the materials they needed to manufacture their product, and patients were at risk as a result. In a situation like that, the easy reaction is to look backward and ask how this happened and who was responsible. The leader, and he was a true leader, wouldn’t allow it. There was no blaming, no finger pointing, and no “how did this happen.” Instead, he guided the group to focus only on the future and on how they could turn the situation around as quickly and nimbly as possible. It was an enormously difficult problem, but his cool head over those six weeks shortened the time the situation was dire. Like Natasha under that shade tree, he understood that a group can’t find its way forward without a reset.

Think about how often we skip that step at work. A meeting goes sideways, a project falls behind, or a team realizes the plan isn’t working, and our instinct is to push harder, assign blame, or decide for everyone just to get things moving. But a group that feels lost and pressured rarely does its best thinking. A pause can be as simple as stopping a tense discussion and asking everyone to take a breath, inviting each person to share where they are before moving on, or naming that the group has drifted and asking what it needs. Those few minutes can feel like they’re slowing you down, but they almost always save time on the other side, because people come back with clearer heads and more honest input.

The next time your team feels lost on the trail, try what Natasha did. Stop. Shift. Breathe. And be sure to share the results with me. I want to hear about your pause.