In team coaching, the ability to pause and be fully present isn’t just a skill—it’s a strategic advantage. Recently, while teaching timeouts (or as some prefer, La Pausa) to a global cohort of team coaching practitioners, the phrase “center and enter” surfaced as a guiding principle.
When we step into a team’s space—whether it’s a regular meeting or an offsite—our role isn’t to disrupt, take over, or impose solutions. Instead, we aim to be value additive, not value detractive. This means:
✔ Contracting ahead of time to clarify how we can best support the team.
✔ Gathering pre-meeting feedback to align with their needs and goals.
✔ Shifting systemic patterns and context, rather than just focusing on surface-level content.
The Art of Pausing: Lessons from Football
In Spanish football, the concept of La Pausa—literally “The Pause”—is a tactical skill used to create space and shift the game’s tempo. Legendary players like Xavi Hernández and Sergio Busquets masterfully use La Pausa to momentarily slow down play, drawing in defenders and forcing them to react before making their next move. The result? A shift in the game dynamic—one that opens up new possibilities, disrupts expected patterns, and allows for smarter decision-making.
Similarly, in team coaching, our role isn’t always to speed things up or push the team toward immediate action. Instead, we sometimes need to hold the space, allow discomfort to emerge, and let the team become aware of its own patterns before shifting forward.
What’s the System at Play?
What unspoken dynamics are shaping this team’s behavior? Are they enacting a push-to-push culture—where pressure cascades down the line to meet deadlines, and clarity is created along the cascade when obstacles or a lack of clarity surfaces? Or a talk-then-walk culture, where clarity comes first, and execution naturally follows?
Like a great midfielder using La Pausa to control the flow of the game, team coaches must learn to pause, observe, and shift patterns at the right moment—creating the space for new possibilities to emerge.
How might using “La Pausa” in your team coaching help teams see what they are unconsciously reinforcing?
Reference: https://themastermindsite.com/2019/09/22/la-pausa-tactical-analysis
