On leadership, signal, respect, listening, dialog, the office, meditation…
and all that which is demanding silence
How shall i write about silence in this noisy world?
I will create a deliberate space of silence around me: window closed, music turned off, all tabs closed, and I will make pauses to drink in the silence. And I suggest you do the same whilst reading. That way, we shall be talking about something we can experience, rather than just a theoretical concept.
Silence is the space on which a signal gets defined. It is the blank page on which ideas are drawn, the air between words that makes them understandable. It is also a place for renewal and creativity.
Leadership requires moments of silence.
Noise, signal, silence
We talk a lot about noise and signal. But without silence, it is difficult to tell them apart. Noise and signal look very similar: they are both information. Only after processing them we can tell the difference: useless information is noise, useful information is a signal. If I can only tell them apart after processing them, am I doomed to listen to the noise?
To break the cycle, sometimes you have to start by silencing the noise, so you can recognise the signal on the silence.
In practice, this is the way. Stop trying to listen to everything, read everything, and attend every event and meeting ‘just in case’. Stop jumping from one source of information to another, driven by fear of missing out. Take the risk of missing things. Unsubscribe from all the newsletters you don’t read. Also from those you do read but add no value. Perhaps this one too—I don’t know. Decline invitations to meetings and networking events that don’t align with your goals. Close tabs. Delete all the emails you’ve labelled ‘just in case one day’. Create some silence in your inbox and your calendar.
Once the noise has ceased, start looking for a signal from scratch. Ask those whose opinions matter to you, seek out deliberate reading material, and choose meetings that are worthwhile. You will see how little you’ve actually missed, what you have gained will appear clear.
The art of keeping silent
Many things are said in management communications and one-to-one meetings that should not have been. The same goes for emails or posts on internal or external social media. Many unnecessary words end up causing confusion, injustice or harm to others… Misunderstandings, offences and betrayed secrets all begin with someone who does not know when to keep quiet. Someone who uses confidences to create unnecessary complicity, to inflate their reputation or simply to fill an awkward silence. Words that have been spoken can be denied or apologised for… but they cannot be erased. Sometimes, neither the emotional impact they create can be erased.
A leader knows when to remain silent. They know how to say ‘I don’t know’, or ‘I know, but I cannot reveal it at present’… or to say nothing when that is the appropriate course of action.
There is a time to remain silent and a time to communicate, and growing up involves learning to distinguish between them without error.
Moments of silence in conversation
Whether you are a manager, a coach or a salesperson, you exercise your influence (your leadership) through conversation. That conversation requires moments of silence to be impactful.
The first rule is very simple. After a question, always comes silence.
A salesperson can ask: ‘What’s your budget for this project?’
A coach asks: ‘What are you willing to give up to change this situation?’
A manager: ‘What do you need to complete that project on time?’
And then, they stay quiet.
The time that follows belongs to the other person. Let them think. Don’t help them. Don’t offer alternatives, don’t apologise for the question, don’t steer their thinking. Such help is interpreted as rushing. They will feel it is more important to answer quickly than to answer honestly, and the effect of the question will be lost. Let time pass in silence.
The second rule is just as simple. Listen in silence.
When we listen to understand and not to argue, reply or judge, there is no better attitude than silence. If there is genuine curiosity, the non-verbal gestures of active listening will come naturally, and the speaker will sense that they are being listened to.
Listening requires also mental silence. Silence that inner voice that is always judging, commenting and comparing, and simply listen.
Of course, it’s not easy. If it were, good listening wouldn’t be such a highly valued skill.
Moments of silence in meetings
In meetings, sometimes only a few people do all the talking, usually always the same lot. The more such a dynamic is repeated, the deeper it becomes, just as a furrow in soft ground grows deeper every time rain falls on it. That’s how habits work. Silent exercises are an excellent way to break this pattern and encourage everyone’s creative participation.
In practice: when we’re looking for ideas to solve a problem, a good way to start is with a silent brainstorming session. Each participant writes an idea on a Post-it note, working individually and in silence. As many Post-it notes as there are ideas. These notes get stuck onto a board. Only when they are all up there, they get clarified if necessary, deduplicated, grouped together if they are equivalent, and discussed.
The difference compared to a verbal brainstorming session is significant, as this approach prevents that immediate discussion stalls progress with the ideation.
Another valuable way to use silence in a meeting to create a shared focus is starting with participants reading the data or proposal to be discussed individually, rather than with tedious PowerPoint presentations. It is said that this is the technique used by Jeff Bezos
And finally, in meetings with diversity of cultures, styles and personalities, the leader must know how to create moments of silence for everyone to have their say. Otherwise, they will always hear from the same people, and will loose the contributions of those who do not feel comfortable shouting to get a turn to speak – introverts, non-native speakers, newcomers…
– ‘Silence, please, I’d like to hear from X.’
It works.
Moments of silence in speech
Anyone who has ever spoken in public knows the feeling of nervousness during those first few minutes. When we lack practice, that insecurity often leads us to talk too much and too quickly. Our stressed mind makes us perceive an illusory slowness.
The best advice I was given when I was learning seemed rather exaggerated. When you think a pause has gone on too long, make it three seconds longer.
One, two, three. In silence.
Once again, silence is where the paragraphs breathe, the words make sense and the ideas find a space to settle down.
Silence and trust
Having reached this point, and now convinced that silence has value in the workplace, why do HR directors insist on making people work in noisy environments?
One of the great fallacies of the century is the ‘open-plan’ office.
We’re told it facilitates interaction and group creativity. But work isn’t just about sharing creativity. There are people whose job is to check invoices, write code, answer calls, design bridges, draft legal submissions or proofread texts.
Forcing everyone to share an open-plan space is to condemn them to a level of noise that makes concentration impossible. People demand silence.
Open-plan offices are one of the reasons why everyone prefers to work from home, despite the obvious difficulties this poses in some households. And we suspect that the only reason management keeps insisting on cramming people together is so they can easily spot who’s playing Candy Crush. Distrust.
Yes, tolerating silence requires a great deal of trust.
Your own silence
All the above are necessary for cooperation at work to function reasonably well. But the most important moment of silece belongs to you, and you deserve to experience it. It has enormous potential to regenerate and rest your mind.
Its purest and most effective form is meditation.
Sitting in silence, with a straight and comfortable back, we direct our full attention to a small, steady focal point, and try to keep it there deliberately, in silence. There is no hurry, is best to allow at least 15 minutes. We get distracted many times, and it does not matter: we learn to observe each distraction from a stable centre. Gradually, the silence between two thoughts begins to expand; the mind adopts a meditative state, and we discover that there is silence within us too.
That silence, cultivated daily, grows to interconnect the moments of silence throughout the day and creates a space in which ideas and actions develop with more sense.
People who cannot bear to sit still can substitute this for some running, swimming, doing a jigsaw puzzle or taking a quiet walk in the park. These are different approaches to the same thing. But only if practised with full, deliberate and non-judgemental attention to the present moment, in the words of Jon Kabat-Kihn, who coined the term ‘mindfulness’ for this kind of attention. The term deserves credit for having carved out a place for deliberate attention in modern schedules. It is said that ‘mindfulness is trendy’. I am reluctant to call trendy something that was practised in Vedic India, Pythagorean Greece and the early Christian hermitages.
Whatever you call it, the daily practice of mindful silence can really improve our lives. It brings us calm and clarity, and it is a right that it would be a shame to deny ourselves.
The purpose of the game is not to ‘create’ silence. Silence is already there, and to discover it, you do not need to do anything. All you need to do is be quiet.