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Jakob Ingebrigtsen, one of the best middle-distance runners ever, has won gold medals for Norway in two Olympics, won multiple world championships, and set five world records at distances between 1,500 meters and 2 miles. Watch him and you’ll see that he’s often aided by someone running with him for part of the race — a pacer. If Ingebrigtsen runs too fast, his pacer helps slow him down; if too slow, the pacer speeds him up; if he’s on the right pace, the pacer just relieves Ingebrigtsen’s mental energy by allowing him to follow without continuously monitoring his timing. Elite athletes themselves, Ingebrigtsen’s pacers have the sole goal of helping him win. When the pacer’s job is done during the race, they simply step off the course and stop.
Similarly, marathoners and distance swimmers like Diana Nyad often use pacers so that they can focus mentally not on pace but the myriad other details that lead to outstanding performance. The right pacer can also distract from or help minimize an athlete’s mental or physical anguish and help them endure the challenging experience. Pacers, in short, reduce the cognitive load of the performer, help the performer better manage their energy, and prevent second-guessing and anxiety that can affect both short-term performance and long-term well-being.
Leaders, too, often create significant performance problems for themselves, their teams, and their organizations by running too fast or too slowly. Leaders may spend far too much time and cognitive energy monitoring one factor at the expense of others that are critical to success. And leaders, too, can suffer from the mental and physical effects of running at the wrong speed, such as losing confidence in their own timing-related decisions.
Nonetheless, many of us focus primarily on what leaders do without paying sufficient attention to the pace at which they do it — and rarely treat the latter as a distinct dimension of leadership effectiveness. As a result, leaders are seldom encouraged to examine whether their natural tempo fits the demands of the moment or to consider who or what could help them recalibrate their personal pace. In our experience coaching senior leaders, we have repeatedly seen the problems that stem from this oversight. Getting the pace of leadership right can be as consequential as getting the direction right.
To explore the related issues for leaders and their teams, we surveyed 125 employees in a vast array of professional and leadership roles. What we learned is that pacers of various kinds perform the same essential roles for leaders, with benefits similar to those experienced by athletes. A pacer can rein in leaders who move too fast too early or, alternatively, speed up decision-making for leaders inclined to be slower and more cautious.
Do you need a pacer? Let’s explore some warning signals and questions to ask, as well as advice on utilizing this type of resource.
What Pacers Provide for Leaders
In our survey, we asked respondents to consider a current or former leader of theirs and describe why they think that leader tends to run too fast, too slowly, or at just the right speed. For leaders who ran fast or slowly, we asked whether the leader had an identifiable pacer and who the pacer was. Then we asked everyone about the positive and negative consequences for the leader and their team.
Nearly all respondents (more than 93%) described a leader whose pace was often at odds with the needs of the situation. Among that 93%, a notable three-quarters said their leader tends to run too fast while one-quarter said they run too slowly. How many of these leaders had pacers? Just 40%. That means a full 60% of these leaders, whom we’ll call “caffeinated squirrels” and “tentative tortoises,” respectively, had no one to help counterbalance the limitations of their natural pace. So the leaders’ natural advantages — being quick, bold, and decisive for the squirrels, or careful, thorough, and thoughtful for the tortoises — often went from strengths when moderated to weaknesses when unchecked.
Perhaps most interestingly, the benefits afforded by pacers were largely the same for both groups, helping leaders slow down or speed up, or shift gears more regularly to fit specific circumstances — for example, sprinting in a true crisis, slowing down when high uncertainty required exploration, and maintaining their pace during sustained implementation phases. Our findings reveal that pacers help leaders:
- Make better decisions and learn more from prior actions.
- Stick to strategic goals and related metrics and timelines.
- Manage others’ energy levels, motivation, and commitment.
Making Decisions and Learning
A pacer can help fast-moving executives slow down enough to appropriately deliberate before committing to high-stakes action. One survey participant explained that his leader’s pacer helped ensure that projects were “well-thought-out and rarely chaotic while moving forward at a sustainable rhythm.” Another respondent likewise said that the benefits of their leader’s pacer included “not making decisions without being generally aligned and understanding of the risks.” Pacers who help fast leaders slow down also allow time for group learning, the absence of which leads to bad decisions being repeated because they “happen so fast that they aren’t processed before repeating” and “no one has time to solve problems or learn for themselves,” according to survey participants.
For leaders naturally inclined to move slowly, pacers help break through analysis paralysis by convincing them to accept decision deadlines and “good enough” thresholds for action, respondents said. They do so by helping leaders see who or what is closing the gap on the organization’s position — illuminating blind spots such as an advancing competitor, an evolving technology, or macroenvironmental changes creating headwinds or tailwinds.
In other words, pacers help their leaders avoid decision-making and learning failures that would occur at the person’s natural speed. Pacers create feedback loops and action guardrails that otherwise wouldn’t exist. They channel information related to decision pace and outcomes from people who are afraid to share it with the leader directly. They can also help a leader set (and follow) processes for adjusting their natural pace.
Sticking to Strategy
Without a pacer, a leader’s behaviors may frequently be at odds with the organization’s core strategy and objectives. For example, fast movers can be so consumed by speed that their actions don’t ultimately add up. Said one respondent, “The leader demands progress, but because there’s no strategy, everything accomplished is a tactical gain, and the tactical actions are not tied to operational or strategic outcomes.” Unchecked by a pacer, such leaders may react to every new signal, leading to strategic drift and emotional whiplash and confusion for the team.
On the other hand, slow-moving leaders, daunted by the magnitude of the race, may repeatedly delay leaving the starting blocks or fail to speed up despite warning signals about progress. One respondent described watching “the consequences playing out in real time as we struggle financially and fail to meet year-end targets.”
Here is where a moderating influence could make a real difference: As one participant whose leader had an effective pacer noted, “It’s harder to ignore or change performance metrics in real time when you’ve agreed to hold to a pace.”
