The Value in Silence

I talk. I always have and, if I am completely honest, I have a bit of a complex about that following a childhood of being teased for it and having it pointed out. Nevertheless, when I am unsure of a situation or I want to make something happen, using words remains my natural default.

Talking feels like a means to progress. It is the most obvious part of communication. It is the one that we are most in control of for ourselves, and also the one which is the most dangerous to us in others. When others talk, they could derail the conversation as we want to have it, they may speak uncomfortable facts, or they might even give away our secrets to others. As long as we are speaking ourselves, we dominate and direct the conversation. Our words can influence the thoughts of our listeners.

Communication is about speaking and listening. But it is also about thinking and processing. There is the old cliché about having two ears and one mouth, and that we should use them in that proportion. In a two party conversation, the maths of conforming to that means that for one third of the time nobody is speaking and everyone is listening. That’s a good thing. When we are listening to silence, we are better able to hear our own thoughts.

For many of us, silence makes us uncomfortable. As a negotiator, one of the most powerful tools in your arsenal is silence. It’s as simple as just holding out, playing a game of talk-chicken, and waiting for the other person to break the silence first. Typically, I find it takes seven seconds or less.

In the silence, that person’s thoughts are whirling but their discomfort denies them the time to order those thoughts into speaking in a way which conceals or distracts from their truth. The words they use to break the silence are likely to be honest, they will definitely give you insight into the thoughts that triggered them and, ironically, they will almost certainly give you the control that their speaker was grasping for. Because if you have remained comfortable when they were not, you have used the time for more easy thinking. And after you have relaxed into processing what you have already heard, their words give you more to process.

Not all brains work the same way, and there are some people who need silence to be able to order their thoughts. You can probably think of a couple of people you know who speak little, but when they do they are exactly on point. The value they add to the conversation in a short phrase outweighs the babbling of all the other voices in the room. For these people, the noise around them can detract from their ability to process, and it can certainly prevent them expressing themselves. It is easy to discount someone who rarely speaks, where in fact they are the ones with far more opportunity for listening and thinking. These people are enormously valuable to you in moving the conversation on, and allowing them silence gives them the opportunity to make their contribution to the discussion.

There is also a section of people who need silence before they can process what they have just heard. If you want what you have said to influence and direct the other parties, then you must trust enough in the effectiveness of your words to let them do their work. Just because someone has not immediately taken in your message and adopted it wholeheartedly does not mean that they never will. The facts, opinions and interpretations that you have presented to them need to be fitted over and around their own perspective. That takes time, and too much chatter can distract from it.

Silence, or stillness, is not only valuable as brief pauses in a conversation, but also in time away from an ongoing conversation. In day to day life, we use devices to break up discourse. We might excuse ourselves to go to the bathroom or to get a drink or even, for long and intense conversations, we call for a pause to run an errand, to eat or to sleep. The most useful of these are the monotonous, familiar and routine tasks that leave the mind to freewheel while physical needs are met. In mediation, these happen by necessity, because there is only one mediator and there are at least two parties. That means that while I am out of the room with the other party there is time for the first party to digest.

It’s actually one of the arguments against online mediation, because when parties to a dispute remain in their own environment and are engaging with the mediation only via a screen, the breaks in conversation are sources of distraction not focus. Instead of sitting still in the silence created by the break, they’ll use it to plan dinner, or answer emails on a completely different subject, or make a phone call to engage in an entirely different conversation. They are too free to find any number of things to keep themselves from developing their understanding of the subject matter for the conversation they are in.

Of course, there are plenty of good reasons for using online mediation and, as with anything that is flexible, it will be different in every situation. But in an in-person mediation, the time in the room alone with your thoughts is a valuable part of the process of edging towards a solution, as much as the discussion that led to those thoughts.

A good communicator will express themselves clearly and listen well. But there is another leg to the communication tripod: to be a good communicator, you must also be comfortable and familiar with silence.