Have you ever stood on the edge of a pool and told yourself you are going to jump in?  Then you tell yourself you will jump in when you count to 3.  1…2…3….well, maybe when you count to 10.  Deciding to do something and doing something are two different things.  Very often between the decision to act and the actual action there is a space of time in which we prepare ourselves to act.  Whether it is to steel ourselves for the sudden shock of the cold water or to summon enough courage to initiate that difficult conversation or to be sure we are adequately prepared before we take that very first step on that lengthy undertaking.

I don’t know if there is a name for that space of time between deciding to act and the actual action but there should be.  My best suggestion is the “post decision pre-action buffer” and though that is descriptive it surely isn’t concise.

Many of us, even if we can’t name it, know all about that space of time.  It is the deep breath before the plunge and the moment of silence before the battle.  But not everybody knows about it.  There are those who skip that moment altogether.

A few weeks ago I was watching Die Hard with Bruce Willis again.  I’ve seen it many times but the character played by Willis, John McClane, always intrigues me.  I think what intrigues me most is how uniquely qualified he is for the situation in which he finds himself.  A quick thumbnail of the plot shows he is the lone police officer in a high rise office building that is being taken over by terrorists.  Alone he takes on this small force and secures the release of their hostages though it wasn’t an easy task.  What made him uniquely qualified was the lack of time between his decisions to act and his actions.  It almost appears as if his decision to act was the trigger that initiated action.

One scene really brings this to mind for me.  McClane was being pinned down by automatic gunfire from two of the terrorists.  In the process, broken glass from the nearby offices was strewn all over the ground.  McClane knew he had to get out of that area if he was to survive.  One problem was that sometime earlier he had lost his shoes.  This meant that his run to safety would be in bare feet across a minefield of shattered shards of glass.  But, he didn’t pause.  He got up and ran.  In fact, a pause there might have meant his life even if the purpose for the pause was to try to preserve his feet.  Decision to act followed by immediate action.  That was John McClane.

I think this quality in somebody is succinctly stated by the Human Torch in the movie, The Fantastic Four.  As he was learning to use his new found powers he started to suspect that the ability to burst into flames would also give him the ability to fly.  To test this theory he went to a balcony dozens of stories above the ground and planned on jumping off.  His sister, wanting him to pause to reconsider his choice yelled out to him “Don’t even think about it!!”.  Over his shoulder, as he jumped from the balcony, the Human Torch answered back with a smile, “I never do!”.  Decision to act and then action.

The Gallup StrenthsFinder labels this talent Activator.  For those of us who decide to act, then pause to collect our thoughts, and then act this may not make much sense.  For us the learning is in the preparation and the thinking.  For Activators learning is in the doing.

This article is from the Super Powers Center Series on “Pop Culture Perspectives on Talent”. Be sure to listen to Alex McManus and Dale Swinburne on the Super Powers Center, Saturday evenings at 6PM (ET).