Silence is Power

Are you serious about listening?  Silence is a key element to listening to your team.

It can be difficult not to give advice.  It can be difficult to sit back and listen, but it is crucial to allow your team to share and address their problems.

Staying silent both audibly and in your mind helps you to truly listen to the person.  Keeping your mind silent allows you to hear what is being said and observe body language and facial expressions, which are also key to listening to the speaker.  If your mind isn’t silent, you could be thinking of others things such as your response to the speaker or what your next topic of discussion might be.

With silence you are not listening to speak; you are listening to understand.  Folks want to know you are listening because they want to be understood.  There is a myriad of reasons.  They may be upset, frustrated, or angry.  They might be sharing important information, data they have gathered that they struggled with or that took them a long time.  They may not even want to share but are opening up anyway.

Practicing silence will help people catch on that you are listening.  They will feel more comfortable sharing with you.  They will open up more over time.

Another aspect of silence is breaks between words.  After they are done speaking, it is OK to have a bit of silence to think and set to memory what was just said.  No one needs to feel uncomfortable in pauses during discussion.  Take that moment of silence to organize your thoughts.  Try to avoid filler words like ‘uh’ or ‘um’.  They give off the impression of uncertainty, and even though you may be, no one else needs to know.  Fully embrace the silence.

Silence is power.  It is the prime element to listening.  It can be difficult as a leader not to talk, not to give advice, or not to interject.  To avoid this, you must also be silent in your mind.  Focus on the speaker to understand and remember what they are saying.  Practicing silence will help people understand you are truly listening.