Shutting up for better communication

One of the few privileges of having grey in your beard is that you can get away with saying all kinds of things out loud. I don't know if it's because I remind people of a wise old mensch, or their favorite uncle, or (as a Mexican hammock-vendor once pointed out) of Santa Clause? But I can tell you that it's true, I get away with saying what others are thinking quite often. Sometimes you just have to call bs when the stench of it is permeating the zoom meeting. And there is value in that.

But the real gift of the grey is the bit of wisdom that filters most of those words before they get past the front row of teeth. Very often the right thing to say is nothing at all.

Uncomfortable silence during a meeting can be exactly the sound people need to hear. The emotional need to fill that silence with words is strong for certain personality types (Comedians, people-pleasers, a middle-child... to name a few).

But learning to let the crickets chirp can lead to so many good things, not the least of which is hearing from someone with a really good idea who is hesitant to speak in front of a group. As long as someone is talking, those people often feel secure in withholding potentially useful information and ideas.

One useful principle is that of opportunity-cost. For those of you who may have missed that section in business school, it's the concept that the cost of a thing is not what you pay to acquire it... it's what you didn't do with your resources (time, money, emotional energy, etc.) when you made the decision to acquire it. (An example might be the cost of ordering liver is that you didn't get waffles and ice cream.)

The direct cost of speaking up shouldn't be measured by consequences (or the lack thereof) or simply by direct results. But rather by the opportunity-cost of speaking when you did, which is often much higher.

"Uncomfortable silence during a meeting can be exactly the sound people need to hear"

Let me give you an example: You're sitting through a meeting about the shipping department's problem with outbound trucks being unable to access the docks. Someone mentions the idea of an app that can show them some useful information.

Let's say you're a developer and it makes you start thinking about how that app might work. You get all excited about the layout, the features, how it can tie into the database... and you want to share your genius with the group.

What you may not know is that Steve from receiving knows the real problem with the parking is that inbound truckers are arriving 4 hours before their delivery time and catching up on their sleep parked in the staging area. He hasn't brought this up because he doesn't want to draw attention to himself, or to his department. Steve is kind of shy like that.

In this example, your great ideas may have kept Steve from opening up about the issue, and may have kept the Operations manager from knowing the real root of the problem.

Technically maybe nothing you would have said may have been wrong, and it may have even generated a lot of excitement and helped your career. But was it the best thing that could have been done with those minutes during that meeting? Of course not.

The app still might be a fantastic idea, and it still might be worth talking about, but it would have been a complete detour from the central issue of the meeting. Plus, you haven't really had time to weigh the pro's and cons, much less the cost of it just yet.

Volumes have been written about how to get people to open up, about better communication, about creating a collaborative atmosphere where there's no bad ideas. There is certainly good stuff in all of that. But sometimes the solution is as simple as just listening more than you talk. Shut up and read the room.

"...can you give me a little time to look into it and get back to you...?"

So opportunity-cost is one aspect of trying to filter your words. The other, more obvious one, is fully forming an idea before you share it.

"Yes, that's totally possible," you might say, without checking with the people or department who has to keep your promises. Or, you might not realize that there is an open issue with one of the tools needed for that promise, which is going to take weeks to fix.

A better answer might be, "I have some ideas about that, can you give me a little time to look into it and get back to you with a couple of suggestions."

Let me give away one of my secrets (although doing so may cause it to lose some of it's power.) Sometimes when I have an idea, I'll look up and to the left and squint just a little while I think about it. (This works better if your camera is on, by the way.)

People watch a lot of detective shows, and they recognize this facial gesture enough to say, "I want to know what John is thinking about." At which point, I'll go back to the above... "I have some ideas about that, can you give me a little time to think about it...".

Buy yourself a little time to let the idea mature (and to look up the big words you can't remember), so that you can present the idea in it's best form. This not only helps you, and likely the organization, but it frees up meeting time that might be better spent on solving problems which aren't going to be fixed by you.

It's a real gift to know the right thing to say. It's a better one to know when to read the room and be silent.

These are my opinions, please feel free to have your own