Improve Meetings with Silence
Facilitators often feel compelled to fill up their time with content—slides, activities, questions, etc. I know I tend to do this. Give me 2 hours for a workshop, and I’ll plan it out with stuff from beginning to end.?
But sometimes it’s important to plan for silence, giving your participants time to reflect, think, and absorb. That’s why I like individual, “heads-down” activities. But more than that, build in a pause to your flow—it can have a dramatic effect.?
Just think about the drama of the opening of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony: it actually begins with a rest. Or consider John Cage’s experimental piece entitled 4’33". It’s literally four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence. (The idea is that listening to the environment around you during that time is the music).
Inserting moments of silence into your meetings has advantages. It avoids a few voices dominating the conversation and results in more inclusive outcomes. You’ll also encourage the quieter types to contribute to unlock creativity and imagination across the whole team.
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Try some of these simple techniques:?
What happens when you do all of these things? You get a silent meeting (or near-silent meeting).?
We recently worked with teams at Cisco to create a (mostly) silent meeting template. While you don’t have to forego talking completely, adding more pauses and rests to your sessions will probably make them better.?
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3 年Great thing to point to Jim! There is a ''space before thought'' where the conditioned mind is not active and there is room for fresh insight to occur. That is the magic of emergence and creativity. Innocently, and invisibly most people are trained and conditioned to contribute via content not the space they hold. But we can recalibrate #qualityofmind
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3 年Love this - have you tried an unhurried conversation Jim?
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3 年Hi James, Beethoven’s 5th does not count. A pause at the beginning is no pause. It is just a beginning that begins a little later. John Cage does not count either, in my opinion. 4:33 w/o anything is nothing in terms of pauses. But it becomes interesting in contrast to the expectations for a concert. A pause is a kind nothing in between of something. BTW Do you know Caverna Magica by Andreas Vollenweider? There is a moment that feels endless, when the tune leaves the cave and dives into the ocean with a big splash. Anyway_ I was looking forward to your "graveyard walks." –– This is an excellent example for your important and very true message. Would you mind sharing the story for all of us?
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3 年Great article—going to try this today! Did you put in 4’22” as an Easter egg? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4%E2%80%B233%E2%80%B3
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3 年Love this Jim Kalbach . Do you know Time to Think? Based on Quaker meetings. Really thoughtful and quiet way to run meetings.