Earlier this year, news spread across the U.S. about a group of Buddhist monks undertaking an extraordinary journey. Beginning in Texas, they set out on a cross-country “Walk for Peace,” traveling on foot toward Washington, D.C. Along highways, through small towns, and across multiple states, they moved the same way each day: steady, deliberate steps, eyes forward, fully present. What stood out most was not the distance they were covering. It was the consistency. Day after day, the monks walked roughly 20 miles, grounded in mission rather than speed.

Watching coverage of their journey challenged a belief I had carried for years: that speed signals effectiveness. Early in my career, I equated urgency with leadership. Every deadline pushed me to accelerate. Every message got an instant reply. I thought fast decisions showed that I was in control. What I didn’t notice was how far ahead of my team I’d gotten. They were still processing my last decision by the time I’d moved on to the next one.

That gap between my pace and my team’s is exactly what the monks seemed to understand instinctively. Their approach raises a different question: What if pace, not speed, is what truly drives performance?

Here’s what that looks like in practice, starting with your very next decision:

1. PAUSE BEFORE YOU DECIDE

You don’t need a leadership title to slow down before a decision that affects other people. Before you finalize your next call, even a small one, ask yourself three questions: Have you explained the reasoning, not just the directive? Do people understand why this is changing? Have you been clear about what success looks like?

Even something as simple as summarizing your expectations out loud, or inviting one round of quick input, builds accountability you won’t get by rushing. I’ve watched teams spend weeks untangling confusion that a five-minute pause could have prevented—someone assumes a deadline moved when it didn’t, or two people walk away from the same meeting with different priorities. Slowing down before you finalize a decision costs you almost nothing. Cleaning up after a rushed one costs you a lot more.

Research on information overload published in Frontiers in Psychology confirms this. Compressed timelines raise error rates and narrow strategic thinking, which is exactly what a pause protects against.

2. WATCH FOR SIGNS YOU’RE OUTRUNNING OTHERS

One of the most misleading signals in leadership is strong short-term performance. When your pace exceeds the team’s processing capacity, strain builds. Output may remain high because talented people compensate. They stretch. They work longer hours. They hesitate to raise concerns. This might show up as more follow-up questions about something you already discussed, a shift from solving problems early to constant firefighting, or delays in execution despite apparent agreement.

That strain shows up first as fatigue and hesitation, well before it ever touches your results. Then it becomes disengagement. The psychologist Roy Baumeister’s research on decision fatigue helps explain why. Mental resources are finite, and repeated decisions under compressed timelines deplete them, leading to more errors and narrower, short-term thinking. When you or your team hit that wall, quality drops even if output doesn’t (yet).

This is also where psychological safety matters. When people feel safe, they’ll tell you “I’m at capacity” or “I need clarity” before things break down. When they don’t, they stay quiet and push through instead. A quiet room can look like alignment, but it’s often overload wearing a calm face.

3. SET THE TONE regarding TENSION

Your pace in a tense conversation sets the emotional temperature for everyone in it. If you rush to defend your position, the conversation tightens. If you stay measured, people tend to match you.

I once entered a difficult conversation ready to defend one position quickly. Instead, I slowed my speech down and asked more questions than I answered—what they were seeing that I wasn’t and where they thought things had gone sideways. The tone of the whole conversation changed. We moved from defensiveness into actually solving the problem, and it took a fraction of the time a drawn-out back-and-forth would have. Pace signaled that I was steady, not shaken, and that made it safe for the other person to drop their guard, too.

4. MODEL STEADY BEHAVIOR EVERY DAY

The way you move through your day communicates a rhythm, whether you mean it to or not. Do you sprint between meetings? Answer every message the second it lands? Start new tasks before closing out the last one? People around you will calibrate to that pace, without being told to.

Small resets help break the cycle. Take a short breather between tasks, step outside during a long stretch of work, change your posture or location when your energy dips. None of it looks dramatic. All of it reinforces a pace that’s sustainable instead of one that burns out everyone trying to keep up with you.

Speed still has its place. A real crisis calls for a fast response, and some opportunities won’t wait. Most days, though, only feel like a crisis. The monks who walked across the country showed real endurance—their journey covered thousands of miles and took months to finish. The lesson isn’t to move slower for its own sake. It’s that progress holds up better when it’s paced so others can walk beside you.