OUR METHOD

The PACING Framework

Pacing is more than speed. It’s a framework of qualities and practices that help leaders and their teams move, thrive, and relate to purpose and with purpose.

To make the framework easier to use, we gave each letter in PACING its own purpose. Each pillar has a pulse and a purpose: a distinct rhythm that shapes how it comes alive in practice.

These definitions will continue to evolve, but together they serve as a fluid, customizable playbook for pacing.

The Six Pillars

Purpose

Play sparks safe experimentation and joyful learning. It's the energy of trying, testing, and imagining together where curiosity meets courage.

Examples

Brainstorming, stretch assignments, micro-missions, prototyping, role play, training, coaching.

Purpose

Action is not busyness. Action is about locating energy for courage, change, and agency.

Examples

Acknowledgement, learning about needs, releasing stuck energy.

Purpose

Care is an art that considers weaving the layers of and harmonizing the paradoxes of the human condition like assertion and empathy, compassion and social responsibility for me and you. It is strongly anchored in our belief system and that integration and flow from with within and with others. Care fosters individual growth and collective dignitiy, balancing personal responsibility and social responsibility. It is the big concept and is influenced and best describe by these wonderful authors, researchers and theorists.

Examples

Radical Candor ™ (real dialogue the reflective and generative that is describe by Adam Kahane PHD) not download and debate, love languages™, Emotional Intelligence 2.0 ™, Trust (so many here but I put a link to Brene Brown and  Brene Brown and Roger Mayer et all , The Language of Emotions , Kotter’s Change Methodology, Developing insights, skills (coaching, leading, delegating, decision making) and competencies in human centred needs and psychological factors, trauma, grief and loss, restoration, and conflict, paradoxes in conflict (Bernie Mayer) and power and love (Adam Kahane).  Radical Compassion . I really love the work of Dr. Michael Gervais so if you don’t know him. Check out his rich podcasts with leaders and athletes how we does care and how he weaves care into leadership releasing stuck energy.

Purpose

Intake gathers context, meaning, and aims to collect data and build insight and awareness.

Examples

Journalling, debriefing, soliciting and giving feedback, observing impacts and behaviours, shadowing or mentoring, research, storytelling, conflict resolution, redefining beliefs. keep as is and add. Some of my favourite leaders in this are Dr. Diane Davey, Dr. Tasha Eurich  learning page, Leeann Renninger co-founder of Lifelabs

Purpose

Navigating turns insight into movement. It's the rhythm of planning, adjusting, pivoting, and course correcting without losing direction. Navigating is action to but of the future kind. It forecasts, plans, dreams, synthesizes information into a plan and leads this with various mechanisms to support the movement (communications, readying people for change, sheltering plans to be strong but adaptive). It’s a rhythm of planning, adjusting, pivoting, and course correcting without losing direction. Navigating engages in collaboration and autonomy and it locates choices.

Navigating might be best told with a story here.  Navigating, like all pillars is big concept.

In 2026, I was on vacation in New Zealand during the cyclone. The purpose of my trip to explore, learn, and experience the culture didn’t change just because the weather did. I just needed the right tools and small adjustments to stay on course. I had an umbrella, but I quickly realized I couldn’t use it the same way everywhere. Depending on the direction of the wind as I walked exploring volcanos and culture, I had to adjust my grip and angle so it would protect me without flipping inside out. Sometimes the wind pushed me forward; other times it slowed me down. It became a simple lesson in awareness and adaptation. Like adjusting sails, I had to respond to changing conditions rather than fight them.

Examples

Synthesize information into plans, making decisions (and linking these to grounding principles), tools and resources (collaborative teams), milestones and metrics, adapting strategies, course correction (eg. difficult conversations about performance or job fit or reorganization), spending some time in the in-take pillar engaging in feedback. correcting.

Purpose

Grounding roots action in values, ethics, and embodied awareness. It allows leaders to respond rather than react, pause intentionally, and reset energy.

Examples

Pausing and breathing, aligning decision with principles and ethical responsibilities, mindfulness and body practices (massage, brain cranial therapy, napping, showering between meetings), counselling, taking your shoes off and putting your feel on the ground,  reality checking with trusted friends and experts. 

Guiding Principles

How Pacing Works

Each pillar carries nuance. But beyond that, pacing is not a standalone concept. it is a relational practice. It gains meaning through leadership skills, core competencies, and the systems we shape and influence.

We pace with change.

We pace through conflict.

We pace alongside learning and development.

We pace in moments of accommodation and growth.

Build intimacy with the pillars. Develop your relationship with each pillar, be ready to articulate their meaning, value, and purpose with others.

At its core, pacing is about staying in motion. Movement means there is life. Even in stillness or rest, we are still in flow.

Every pulse matters, every purpose counts, and together they create rhythm, connection, and meaningful movement.