October 25, 2024
A well-deployed silence can radiate confidence and connection. The trouble is, so many of us are awful at it, reports The Wall Street Journal.
We struggle to sit in silence with others, and rush to fill the void during a pause in conversation. We want to prove we’re smart or get people to like us, solve the problem or just stop that deafening, awkward sound of nothing.
“I should just shut up,” Joan Moreno, an administrative assistant in Spring, Texas, often thinks while hearing herself talk. Still, she barrels on—giving job candidates at the hospital where she works a full history of the building and parking logistics. She slips into a monologue during arguments with her husband, even when there’s nothing good left to say. She tries to determine, via a torrent of texts, if her son is giving her the silent treatment. (Turns out, he just had a cold.)
“I should have just held it in,” she thinks afterward.
We often talk ourselves out of a win. Our need to have the last word can make the business deal implode or the friend retreat—pushing us further from people we love and things we want.
“Let your breath be the first word,” advises Jefferson Fisher, a Texas trial lawyer who shares communication tips on social media. The beauty of silence, he says, is that it can never be misquoted. Instead, it can act as a wet blanket, tamping down the heat of a dispute. Or it can be a mirror, forcing the other person to reflect on what they just said.
For a mediation session, he trained a client to respond in a subdued manner if the other party said something to rile him up. When an insult was lobbed, the client sat quietly, then slowly asked his adversary to repeat the comment. No emotional reaction, just implicit power.
“You’re the one who’s in control,” Fisher says.
Acing negotiations
Soon they were shaking on a deal.
Hamburger, who retired last year and now sits on three corporate boards, also deployed strategic silence when running meetings or leading teams. If the boss chimes in first, he says, some people won’t speak up with valuable insights.
Days into one CEO job, Hamburger was confronted with two options for rewriting a piece of the company’s software. He didn’t answer, and instead turned the question back on the tech team.
“People were like, ‘Really? Are you really asking?’” he says. By morning, he had a 50-page deck from the team outlining the plan they’d long thought was best. He left them to it, and the project was done in record time, he says.
A day without speaking
For years, Kraft assigned his students a day without words. No talking, no texting. Some of the students’ friends reported later that they’d been unnerved. After all, silence can be a weapon.
Many students also found that when forced to listen, they bonded better with their peers.
When we spend conversations plotting what to say next, we’re focused on ourselves. Those on the receiving end often don’t want to hear our advice or semi-related anecdotes anyway. They just want someone to listen as they work through things on their own.
The question mark trick
Without pauses, we’re generally worse speakers—swerving into tangents or stumbling over sounds.
Michael Chad Hoeppner, a former actor who now runs a communications training firm, recommends an exercise to get used to taking a beat.
At a cocktail party or in the boardroom, you can subtly trace a question mark by your side, or in your pocket to force a pause.
Sell with silence
Fresh out of college, Kyler Spencer struggled through meetings with potential clients. Some sessions stretched to two hours and still didn’t end in a yes.
The financial adviser, based in Nashville, Illinois, realized he was rambling for 15-minute stretches, spouting off random economic facts in an attempt to sound savvy and experienced.
“I basically just bulldozed the meeting,” says Spencer, now 27.
His client list soon started filling up, and happy customers now send referrals his way.
“It’s amazing,” he says, “what you learn when you’re not the one talking.”
Research contact: @WSJ
