What If the Most Helpful Thing You Could Do Is Interrupt?

This newsletter is inspired by Empower World's Coaching and Leadership Podcast conversation between Jeanine Bailey and Marie Quigley, Co-founders of Empower World: Episode 266 "Can I Pause You There? The Art of Bottom-Lining in Coaching"

Ten minutes into a session, your client is telling you the same story again. The details are vivid, the pace is quick, and you're listening carefully for new information. Yet something tells you that nothing new is emerging. You feel the urge to pause them, and another voice says something like: don't interrupt, don't be rude, respect them by giving space to voice their stories... and so on.

So you keep listening, and the session keeps circling. Perhaps the conversation overruns or you feel you are not giving your coaching partner the best opportunity to experience the change they desire.

At Empower World, this moment comes up again and again in our mentoring and supervision work. It sits at the heart of a skill we call bottom lining, or pausing. It's one of the most effective ways a coach can support a powerful conversation and one that might be commonly avoided.

The problem: when listening stops serving

Coaching asks us to slow conversations down so our coaching partners can expand their thinking beyond where it has been before. But expansion rarely happens when a partner is caught in the details. We can often hear the signs:

• The client speaks quickly, with little hesitation, pause or reflection.
• The conversation sounds "heady," full of information but light on insight.
• The same story - or the same point - comes round again and again.
• The details take the session further from what the client said they wanted to explore.

When this happens, the coach's silence, however well meant, can also keep the client stuck. The session fills with words while the partner's real desire in relation to the change they seek is out of reach.

The story is not the work

Every story a client brings has come in for a reason. It deserves respect. But the story itself is rarely where the growth lies. It's a symptom of something deeper: the beliefs, values, habits, emotions and experiences that shape how the person shows up in their life and work.

Sometimes the storytelling is itself the pattern. Talking in detail can be a familiar, often unconscious, way of staying on the surface rather than going somewhere less comfortable. When we notice this, we have an opportunity to share this and explore with our partner whether it might be a pattern - or something else - opening it up for them to be free to decide what it means for them.

Why coaches hold back

When we introduce bottom lining or pausing to coaches as a way of managing and supporting a powerful conversation, the pushback is almost always the same: "I don't want to be rude." "I don't want to cut them off." "I want them to have space to share what matters."

These instincts come from genuine care. Yet it's worth getting curious about them. If we believe interrupting is rude, what might that belief stop us from doing? What challenges might we avoid offering? What might we stop being curious about? How far are we willing to walk at the edge with our clients, if that's what they've asked of us? How is that a pattern in our own lives and what is the impact of that on our experiences?

There is also an important distinction to hold about this way of working. A pause offered to the person we are in a coaching conversation with, based on our own curiosity - not the coaching partner's - does not serve them. For example, interrupting out of our own impatience, an eagerness to give advice, discomfort with silence, or a wish to steer the partner toward our agenda doesn't serve them, it only serves our personal agenda, versus for the coaching purpose.

Think of a skipping record

Picture a record that has started to skip and the same part of the tune plays over and over. Turning up the volume won't help, and neither will listening more patiently. What helps is lifting the needle - with care - to a new part of the song, so the music can move on towards its conclusion.

Bottom lining works the same way. It doesn't stop the partner's music. It frees it. And just as you would lift a needle carefully, rather than drag it across the vinyl, the way we pause the conversation matters as much as the decision to pause.

Pausing in partnership

The ICF's PCC Marker 6.6 offers a clear frame: the coach allows the client to complete speaking without interrupting, unless there is a stated coaching purpose to do so. A stated purpose might be breaking a loop, managing the session time the client has agreed to, or offering a real-time pattern interrupt in service of the client's growth.

That word "stated" is where the practice begins. Here is how we partner with coaching partners to make pausing a natural, trusted part of the work.

1. Establish the agreement from the very beginning

At Empower World, we advise asking for permission to pause or bottom line in our ways of working from the start, and that sometimes involves a little teaching. It might sound like: "To support your thinking, there may be moments when I notice a story repeating, and I might invite you to pause. Would that be useful for you to introduce into our ways of working?"

When partners understand that a pause is offered with purpose - not because we're uninterested, but because we're committed to where they want to go - it no longer comes as a surprise. It becomes part of the partnership. And coaching agreements can be revisited throughout an engagement and within a session, as the partner's needs evolve.

The invitation is to find a way of describing this way of working that feels natural to you and serves the person you're working with. Identify the way you would like to bring it into your coaching conversations that lets people know it will serve them to identify the deeper work you can do together. 

2. Ask permission in the moment

Bottom lining is never interrupting and talking over a partner mid-flow. It's an invitation: "May I stop you there?" or "I notice this has come up a few times. Would a pause be useful here?"

That simple question keeps the client in charge. They may say yes. They may say, "Let me just finish this thought." Both answers are welcome, because the person decides how the conversation flows and what they choose to share.

3. Invite the coaching partner to explore beneath the story

Once the needle is lifted, a single question can open something new:

• "What's the crux of what you're sharing?"
• "What's really going on underneath this?"
• "What's the purpose of this story you've shared today?"

We might also share what we're noticing - perhaps that detail tends to arrive when a particular topic comes near - and explore with the partner whether that resonates. The aim is always the client's deepening awareness, never our own interpretation.

4. Honour how each coaching partner thinks

Bottom lining isn't a rule to apply to everyone. Some partners need time at the start of a session to talk things out before they're ready to identify a focus. We agree to that space in advance, and we don't interrupt it. Other partners prefer not to be interrupted at all. They speak until they've finished, then they invite a reflection.

What changes when we do this well

In our experience, coaching partners almost never object to a well-contracted pause. Many welcome it openly: "Yes, I go off on tangents. I'd love help staying focused." What might have felt like an interruption becomes an act of trust, respect and partnership.

Questions to sit with

• When you hold back from pausing a client, what is driving that choice: care for them, or comfort for you?
• How do you currently describe your ways of working at the start of an engagement? Where might pausing fit?
• How would you know whether a partner's detailed storytelling is serving them, or protecting them?
• What would it sound like, in your own words, to ask permission to pause?

An invitation to experiment

The next time you hear the record skip, you'll know what to do. Lift the needle gently, with care and permission, and let the client's music move on with your partner's permission and as per your contracted way of working together.

What might change in your coaching if you felt more confident about pausing your partners?

Be Empowered

www.empower-world.com

If this reflection resonates with you, you may enjoy listening to the full conversation on the Empower World Coaching and Leadership Podcast with Jeanine Bailey and Marie Quigley, Co-Founders of Empower World. You can listen to the full episode here:

YouTube: https://go.empower-world.com/YT-Podcast-EP-266

Direct Link: https://go.empower-world.com/Podcast-EP-266

Spotify: https://go.empower-world.com/SP-Podcast-EP-266

iTunes: https://go.empower-world.com/IT-Podcast-EP-266

We’d love to hear your thoughts. What could pausing make possible in your coaching?

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