Listening to the Silence

I was recently reading two articles in Leadership magazine. One was titled “Can You Hear God Now? Your Most Important Leadership Role: Discerning and Obeying God’s Voice. Together.”  The other was titled “I Have This Feeling…Even Non-Intuitives Can Hone Leadership Instincts”. Both of the articles had the same theme and instruction:

Listen to the Silence

Listening to the silence very often shows you what people are REALLY thinking and saying. Since reading those articles the same thought pops into my mind every morning. “It is often easier to filter through the noise then to listen to the silence”. What do I mean by that? I am going to tell you. Hold on to your seat. I am shooting straight from the hip right now. Ready??

When you listen to the noise you are able to filter out the words that you want to hear to accomplish what you want to do. Silence very often will guarantee some disagreement. It is our nature to not want to deal with disagreement so we avoid the silence and say “Nobody said anything about…”

However as responsible leaders, friends, family members, and spouses we should always be willing to listen to the silence. That does not mean that you have to agree with their disagreement. It just means that there may be some wisdom there waiting to be tapped into.

So I challenge you. The next time you are meeting with a group of people get feedback from the quiet one. Or when you are speaking to a friend or spouse make it a point to discover what the silence is about. But don’t nag them because the silent ones are silent because they do not believe that they will be heard. They need to know that there is a safe harbor before they will open up. If they will not open up then you may need to ask yourself if you are REALLY providing a safe harbor. Well…that is a topic for another post.