Why Every High-Performing Leader Needs a Pacer
MIT Sloan Management Review ·
Matt Harrison Clough/Ikon Images 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 […]
Matt Harrison Clough/Ikon Images
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.
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:
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.
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.”
By far, the most common factor respondents mentioned was the unchecked leader’s effect on the energy, motivation, and commitment of people around them. Without a pacer, fast movers continually burn out those around them — not only because of the pace itself but also the emotional fallout from frustrating last-minute changes and unnecessary mistakes. One respondent noted the depressing realization that “everything becomes a competition, and everyone is trying to outshine the next person.” Such a reality leads to turnover. In the words of another respondent: “Burnout. Cash-flow heart attacks. I quit my job despite loving the team, culture, mission, and my job.”
A fast mover may also cause broader misalignment problems among groups and units that don’t buy into the leader’s requests or aren’t equipped to move at the leader’s pace. A leader who fails to adapt to the different schedules or priorities of other units creates missed team deadlines and many “moments of avoidable rework,” one person noted. But a pacer can push a leader to consider and integrate another group’s pace into decisions about operating speed. This dynamic, explained another respondent, “keeps decision-making grounded, prevents burnout, and creates more consistent alignment across the organization.”
Meanwhile, naturally slower leaders don’t burn their people out: They bore them out. Respondents described top talent becoming frustrated by continuously missed opportunities and cynical about the future in the absence of a pacer who could help spur faster action. The result? Many people leave voluntarily; others get jaded and give only a fraction of their best.
Are you a leader who tends to run too fast or too slow at times? Your team may experience this as constant-but-fruitless motion or, conversely, as analysis paralysis. A trusted person who acts as a pacer can help a leader adjust their typical speed in order to make better decisions and avoid burning out or frustrating their team. Consider this look at how a fast- or slow-moving leader can affect the team, and the differences that a pacer makes.
As obvious as the problems caused by fast movers and slow movers may be to the people around them, it’s often hard for a leader to connect the dots. If you want a more well-rounded view, seek input from a few people you believe are most likely to tell you the truth.
You can also take a look in the mirror and consider these signals that you’re running too fast:
And look for these signals that you’re running too slow:
If you believe that you might benefit from a pacer — or that you need a new one — ask yourself some questions about what you need from them, beyond the tempo adjustment itself. For example, do you need help with your general leadership pace, or with domain-specific matters like financing, exit decisions, or how to pace technology adoption or growth? Do you need an ongoing relationship with a pacer, or is your need limited to a specific time frame (say, the first six months of a new role or the first year post-merger)? Do you need a pacer whose primary role is to be your operational metronome, or one whose role is more strategic?
Having decided what you need from a pacer, determine which qualities are nonnegotiable. High on your list should be evidence that they will be trustworthy — not just protecting information but speaking the truth, whether you want to hear it or not. This may mean that the pacer you choose is structurally independent from you: They stand neither to gain nor lose by being candid, and you’re confident that they don’t want your job. You must, in short, believe that the pacer’s intention is to help you win, not to pull ahead themselves.
You must also have confidence in the pacer’s competence and credibility, or you’ll be unwilling to follow their suggested pace. That typically requires that the pacer has enough of their own experience to know what the “right pace” looks like in practice, not just theory. They also need the relevant contextual knowledge. Pacing in a vacuum is useless: Your pacer must understand your team’s bandwidth, organizational capacity, and industry pace if they are to help make decisions worth trusting. An ongoing pacer will likely need to modulate speed — slowing things down, speeding things up, or keeping things coasting, as the situation evolves. This means that they need strong emotional intelligence and relationship-building skills befitting someone who can get a good read on how you and others are doing.
Where do the best pacers — those who are trustworthy, competent, and complementary — come from? Our data suggests that the answer varies. Your pacer might be senior to you in position or experience, a peer, or a subordinate. They might be within your chain of command or in a broader advisory role within the organization. They might be only tangentially connected to the organization if they are an executive coach. Here are some of the more common pacer job types and the associated strengths and limitations we observed.
Pacer Type Best For What to Watch Out For Board member/senior executive
Governance-level pacing; long-horizon accountability
May lack operational granularity
Professional coach
Behavioral tempo patterns; self-awareness
May not have an industry-specific clock speed
Peer leader/adviser
Real-world calibration; “been there” credibility
Limited availability; potential conflicts of interest
Chief of staff
Day-to-day operational pacing; calendar as a tempo tool
Power dynamic that may limit candor
Trusted internal lieutenant/direct report
Cultural context and organizational clock speed; employee capacity and buy-in
Imposing their own tempo rather than calibrating yours
Drawing on our advisory work with leaders, we have found that the right place to look for a pacer depends on both your stage of leadership and the kind of pacing challenge you face.
If you’re a rising leader, start close to the work. Look for a former boss, experienced mentor, board member, customer, or peer who has already operated successfully at the level you’re approaching and has seen you perform under pressure. If you’re starting a new role, you might ask that person to serve as your pacer for the first 90 days, meeting every two weeks to discuss three questions:
The best pacer is not necessarily the most senior person. It is someone experienced enough to recognize the appropriate pace, independent enough to speak candidly, and familiar enough with your context to offer more than generic advice.
If you’re a veteran leader, begin by asking who can still tell you the truth. Direct reports may understand your pace better than anyone, but they may not feel safe challenging you. Consider an independent board member, a trusted peer outside your chain of command, a retired executive, or an external coach. You can also look for clues to help you determine whether you need someone who will slow your urgency, accelerate your action, or help you distinguish between the two, and whether that person is likely to come from within or needs to be an outsider with different experience. Look for these signals in existing data, such as employee engagement comments, exit interviews, missed deadlines, repeated strategy changes, stalled decisions, and initiatives that were launched but never sustained.
While acting as a CEO, one of us (Rahul) experienced the benefit of having a pacer firsthand. Rahul was accustomed to moving quickly, carrying multiple responsibilities, and treating every promising opportunity as a reason to accelerate. One of his board members became his pacer.
When he brought forward a new initiative, the board member would ask, “What are you willing to stop doing to make room for this?” That question helped him distinguish between urgency that the business genuinely required and urgency that reflected his own operating style. By prompting Rahul to consider organizational capacity, strategic sequencing, and the consequences of acting too soon, the board member became a trusted counterweight. Rahul remained responsible for the decisions but made them with greater awareness of pace and what the organization could realistically absorb.
Over time, the best pacers make themselves less necessary. Their purpose is to strengthen the leader’s ability to sense pace, adjust deliberately, and develop better internal judgment. The relationship succeeds when the leader no longer needs to be continually reminded to slow down or speed up but has learned to recognize the signals and respond before the organization pays the price.
The point of a pacer isn’t to let someone else determine your fate or run the whole race for you. It’s not to eliminate your need for self-awareness or self-discipline, or to shield you from personal growth or accountability. Taken too far, using a pacer can just lock in your own limited adaptability and make you overly dependent on the judgment, trustworthiness, and pacing skills of someone else.
But when used correctly, a pacer can help you perform better by enabling you to manage your own mental and physical energy over time. They can free you up cognitively to focus on fewer but more important decisions and help you preserve and expend energy at a sustainable pace. When the pacer worries about the tactics and the splits, you can win the race.