The gap between one video call ending and the next one starting is rarely more than a few minutes, and you probably spend it doing something productive: scanning the next agenda, firing off a quick reply, refilling a water glass while scrolling a notification. By the time the new call starts, you have carried the last conversation’s tone straight into this one without meaning to.
For leaders, those small moments matter because the energy you carry into a conversation often shapes how others experience that conversation too. The tension from a hard conversation, the residual irritation from a meeting that ran long, all of it rides along with you into the next room, the next client, the next decision, unless something interrupts it on the way.
What a Few Seconds Can Actually Do
You can turn a pause between meetings into something as plain as three breaths before you unmute, or a glance out a window instead of at a screen, a small act of mindfulness fitted into the gap itself.
Over time, these small moments of mindfulness can create more space between what happens around you and how you choose to respond.
Something to Catch Your Eye
You might keep a strand of mala beads somewhere you will actually see between calls, draped over a monitor stand, resting on the corner of a desk, hanging from a bag within eyeglass range, a simple reminder that you can return to yourself even during the busiest parts of the day. Catching sight of them for even a second breaks the automatic scroll from one task to the next, long enough to remember there is a choice about how you want to walk into the next room.
Over time, these small pauses become less something you have to remember and more a natural way of returning to yourself.
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