Wrestling with a tough problem at work? Consider a silent retreat

My advice: The next time you feel stuck at work with a hard problem to solve, a complicated team dynamic, or are just feeling burnt out -- instead of hiring a consultant, going to a seminar, or tweeting about it -- consider going away for 2-3 days of silence.

For the last decade, I have been going on silent retreats at least once a year. Sometimes they are short, just 2-3 days. But my favorites are the longer ones, where I spend anywhere from 7-14 days in silence. Through these retreats, I’ve learned three important leadership lessons: how to let go of connection, how to balance input with reflection, and how to build “leadership muscle.”

1. Letting go of connection

People often ask me why I do silent retreats, and so often. “They sound hard.” Yes, the first days can be difficult -- as you disconnect from the world, your dependence on virtual and social attachments, and go to a place where it is just you, alone with your thoughts. That can be unsettling.

But letting go of connection becomes less difficult the more you do it and learn what’s coming next. It’s when you begin to hear new sounds and see new details in the animals, plants, sky and surrounding landscape, details you often miss in the rush of daily life. Even more importantly, you start to feel and think in new ways.

Each day I experience a growing sense of freedom – a freedom that comes with not being so interdependent, so hemmed in by the words and opinions of others; a freedom to truly hear your own voice and fully experience the natural world. It’s a place of deep centeredness and completeness that both grounds and untethers your thinking. 

2. Balancing input with reflection

While asking for input and ideas is essential to leadership, you gain even more insight when you reflect deeply on that input. We are truly in an era of disruption. As leaders, our people are counting on us to develop the insights and actions that will renew our organization and sustain its vitality.

Routines and systems create effectiveness and reliability, but transformational thinking requires stepping away from taken-for-granted assumptions, patterns and ideas. Silent retreats allow me to think more deeply about what I’m hearing and reading. They allow me to gain more understanding about what’s blocking and/or energizing me and the people around me and what we can do about that.

3. Developing “leadership muscle”

I started going on silent retreats as part of a spiritual practice inspired by the Jesuits. They host retreat houses across the world designed to help people get away from social life, work, and technology and become more centered on God. It’s a core part of their teaching. They call it “spiritual exercise.”

But the retreats are no longer just spiritual for me. They also nourish my work life in important ways. In silence, many thoughts and feelings come bubbling up to the surface, which can, frankly, at times be overwhelming. But the idea is to get comfortable with letting them out, with experiencing, identifying and sorting through all the content that roams your mind, and using it to gain insight.

Learning to do this requires discipline and focus, hence the silence. The Jesuits teach that you have to build up to it over time – develop a kind of muscle memory. But this type of “exercise” matters because while not every thought or emotion should be taken literally, collectively they hold great wisdom and are worthy of study. Growing an ability for this type of examination has led to deeper interpersonal understanding and insight both at home and at work – in short, I’ve developed both spiritual and leadership “muscle” on these retreats.

For example, earlier in my tenure as dean, it became clear that while the individuals on our senior team were incredibly qualified and working really hard, we collectively weren’t hitting all of our metrics. And no one was sure exactly why or what to do about it. It was troubling me as I headed off to the desert for a few days. But when I came back, I knew the answer.

As I studied the problem in my mind and thought about all of our frustrations, I realized that our metrics were focused functionally, but the right metrics for us centered on outcomes that depended on activities that crossed functions. We needed tighter collaboration and accountability across units to achieve them. So when I got back, we redefined our 3-5 core metrics and created cross-functional teams that meet monthly to analyze and improve performance against each metric and our performance began to soar.

Bottom line: The next time you have a big policy issue to ponder, a hard problem to solve or a new opportunity to evaluate -- consider going away for 2-3 days of silence. And consider doing it with some frequency as a form of leadership muscle-building. Learning how to regularly disconnect, balance input with reflection, and gain and harness deep inner insight can truly catalyze and transform how you lead people and organizations.    

Sally Blount is Dean of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.