Silence -The Most Underused Tool For Great Leadership

Welcome, listeners, to another episode of the Reality-Based Leadership podcast. I hope you've been enjoying this new series I'm doing with Alex Dorr, the VP of People Evolution at Reality-Based Leadership. And I've certainly been enjoying it. It has been more of a freeform rather than us trying to, you know, deliver some, you know, module of training. What we're really working on is having more dialogue around some examples and, and A little bit deeper on some of the concepts or what maybe our thinking behind them or how we tend to use them or, you know, ideas for you. So that's the premise of this. Long story short, we should get into the podcast. But today, Alex and I were thinking about ideas that we could bring forward as reminders that might help. And one of those, I think, that's really underrated and a topic I wanted to talk about today is the topic of Silence, being comfortable with being uncomfortable and being comfortable with silence. And silence is not something the ego is comfortable because even when you stop verbalizing, you start ruminating. And so I'm talking silence isn't just auditory, it's also silence in your head. And the opposite of silence is attachment. Silence is lack of attachment. It's the letting go. It's ability to have space between Stimuli and reaction. It is space of nothingness. It's space of not knowing. It's space of mystery, not mastery. It is a comfort with, you know, we've got some stuff on the table. Let's be with it for a while. And in today's world, it's so transactional. And when you're over-managing, you're really verbal. All your meetings are a lot of talking. That's why we love self-reflection at Reality-Based Leadership, because self-reflection done well is silence. It is clearing your solid beliefs, your ego interpretation, the sense you're making of the world, and it's questioning it enough to loosen the ego's grip on it. And so silence is akin to space and spaciousness and the Space to think multiple things could be true. And this space, the crack that really lets the light in, because as much of us, we like to move through the I know world, very few of us are willing to move through the I don't know world. And that takes silence where we're entertaining what could be true or more true. And we're questioning, is it true and always true? And it's in that silence that is the only space for self-reflection. So what I started to say, reality-based leadership is based on self-reflection. Um, the way I know you're self-reflecting, the most obvious symptom of self-reflection is silence. It is quiet journaling or shutting down the brain. It's being willing to sit in mystery for a while. So I thought that was a good topic because I hear a lot of people not very Good at silence. They want to know the inside. What do I say when? They want to know the answer. They want what tool do I use? What do I do? What do I say? How do I respond? And they want to know the quick answer instead of let's just spend some time together, increase the pool of shared meaning like they talk about crucial conversations, and and be okay while we you know get. exposed to this. Like, let's, let's think together. And that's the invitation a lot of us aren't making.

Yeah, I— there was a client you were working with. I think this was back during the pandemic, but they changed us a little bit. They were like, what we try and do is crawl, walk, but never run. And I liked that because I feel like so many groups are like, run, run, run, run, or someone brings up an idea, next person jumps on it. It's just go, go, go, go, go, execute, execute. And they really focused on like crawl, I think that is like, let's get clear on it. Maybe there's some silence. We'll put a question out there. We'll get a visual out there. Let's reflect on it, get intentional. And then, you know, what we say next, does it add clarity or chaos? And you're doing a little bit of like self-auditing. Like, do I bring up my first idea? Let me sit with that. Maybe, maybe jot a few things in my notebook before I add that idea. And, you know, I like that. And the question that was brought up in one of my sessions is, what if when I try something of reality-based leadership, whether it's a new coaching question, Or instead of jumping into fix, I try and toggle someone up, or I set up my first tool. And as they're looking at it, they just get silent and it just gets really awkward. And, and I found that early on when I was bringing these tools as a trainer, like as a facilitator with groups, I couldn't sit very long in that silence. One, it might've been my discomfort with knowing where the tool would end up. Or my competence in some of the tools. But I learned with some of these, the more you just trust the steps of them, the more you'll— you can allow more space of silence. And then the more you know, like, as you do reality-based leadership, you start to realize as a leader, you don't have to know very many answers. You're just pointing to the reality, some of our constraints, the problem as it really is. And then the answer really comes in the room. Yeah. If you allow the silence. And so, that was my thoughts to kick off this podcast. And some of the things I just had to learn, I think, from you, Cy, was like in those moments, you know, when there's that silence, like drink a glass of water, act like you dropped your pen, look out the window for a second at the trees. Like, you got to figure out something because I'm also, we'll talk about this later, like more of an extrovert. Cy is an introvert. I just would struggle with that. And I've found it's a key thing for leaders, regardless of some of those things, to add to your toolkit. It's like a secret tool that I think isn't being used very much.

Yeah. I think it's a new leadership competency that goes along with when I am talking and writing about holding the center. A lot of holding the center means as people go to extremes, you don't honor that interpretation of the world. And you just say, I'm going to be an elder. I'm going to sit quietly here And be here when you get back, and you'll learn to trust that I don't go where you go. I hold the center, and I'm gonna stay quiet and uninterfered with. Most people can't stay extreme, uninterfered with, unargued with. A two-year-old had. I had one son who used to have some tantrums, and he was so. Strategic, man. He never did those in private. He only did those. It's kind of like he knew his mom was a public figure. So after about 3 people recognized me in a grocery store, he's like, perfect audience, right? I don't wanna make up a story about him, but it just felt like that. And he would throw a tantrum and I would do all of that. Like, you are not doing that here. Like, get up. And I had a beautiful mentor and she's like, if he throws a tantrum, just sit down. Right in the middle of the grocery store. I would just sit with them, wouldn't interfere, wouldn't ask him to be different. Sometimes I'd kind of encourage him if we were at home. I'd set a timer. I'm like, you got 10 minutes, man, to just melt down. And you might want to like throw some more arm into it. Like unargued with hardly anyone can have a tantrum. They usually little kids start laughing. Like when you sit by them and you're just like, dang. Seems like today's hard for you. Like those big emotions, like pretty soon they're like checking you out. They're like, you know, peeking from underneath the tantrum. And, and I get there are some big emotions that are just really visceral for kids, but this was a behavior. It was not a triggered emotion. And, um, but it took me working my program. You can't be silent and present without working your own program. I had to notice my thought that came up, like everybody thinks I'm a horrible parent. And I had to do the work on that. I'm a horrible parent is that True. Yeah, there's some things that are true about that. There's some times I, I am not very effective. Untrue. Yep, at the same time it's untrue. I'm pretty caring and involved. Like, and I think part of silence is it's not just a stand-up, it's not just a I'm not gonna give in to you, it's a I will use my space wisely, I will calm myself down, I'll check myself before I wreck myself, I will edit my own story. I will, because a lot of times people stay silent, but then they go vent to other people. And that's weaponized silence. Like if I can stay silent and I'm really upset by something, I need to go journal and continue my silence, which does not involve involving another party. And it's between, it's getting myself right, checking myself before I wreck myself, getting clear. Then when I do go, unless maybe another party, my advice I'm soliciting is better because it's not colluding with me in story. It's answering my request for how could I do this better. And so I think, you know, the cool thing about silence is you can't be, you know, judging while self-reflecting. You can't really be like— silence protects you from a lot of things. And I think silence is like so important. And it also gives people— first of all, what I'm saying is you got to get good as a leader with your own silence. But I also think it gives space for the process to work. And for people, if you want shared accountability, your silence is handing them the baton and being willing to wait for them to make some choices and figure out what they're going to do with the baton. And for me, being silent is remembering my role. Like, I could think of 100 ways that you should be putting on your negative brainstorming to fix your problem, but it's not my problem.

Yeah, so, you know, there's so many good things there. I was going to add one of the best things I think we teach leaders, or that I learned, and that, that you told us early on, Sai, as we were— as I was starting to train, was like master an exit line. And I think we don't say this enough, but you're not scared to go into a conversation tool or a way to try and help if you have a memorized, just in-the-bag exit line to say. You know, the one I like is, you know, You know, we've done a lot of good work here. We're really reflecting here. Let's just table this for now. We'll go on to the next action item if it's a group setting, or let's talk about the next thing. We'll come back to this maybe later in the meeting or next week sometime, or whatever it is. And that exit line is right when there might be that silence and a little bit of awkwardness. You sense there's something else going on besides just, you know, working into how we could. You can then just give it some space. Everybody gets the ego off the hook and we can all walk in process. And another thing that I found is if you're using some of the reality-based leadership tools, is it's not that it's not working when there's silence. People are like, it totally flopped. It's like you might have gotten halfway there, 50% there. Sometimes you can say, let's all just email this out. I'll take a picture of what we're working on, or I'll send this sketch I have and let's walk with this for a few days. And then I'll connect either individually or we'll just, you know, get together and see if there's any ideas that have come up. And I think taking it from like the silence as being it's not working or, you know, what you hoped is happening as far as ideas coming up or people sharing is there could be a ton of things going on. It could be people, you know, processing. It could be so many things. So I think the exit line and then maybe moving that thing you're working on to an assignment. for self-reflection with a couple of days of space. Both of those can be great, um, when this happens.

And I think what you're hitting on, I would even take to a bigger statement, you know. So I use the tool, it was met with silence, it didn't work. So that's ego math. Um, I use a tool, it went to silence, that's such a great sign it's working. I've stopped the verbal dialogue. Silence equals reflection. Even, I mean, and so when a tool hits silence, that's the first sign it is working. Give it time to marinate. Give it time. I wouldn't pour a marination on meat and check it in 1 minute and be like, see, marinating doesn't work. And so I think it's so important to get out of this management thing where we have a meeting and we have an agenda and we need the decision within this False 50 minutes of this thing. And so we talk and we put everything else off and we never get— it's like, we're gonna budget 15 minutes to add to the pool of understanding of shared meaning here. And then we're gonna walk away with an assignment for us to really work through what we think are some of the biggest challenges and what we think are just symptoms of our resistance. And let's keep thinking. Mm-hmm. Let's like keep Talking. And I think there's quite a few things with our teams that we've got to get out of, we're going to talk about and decide. Like, we are going to budget 3 weeks for understanding. And it's like in project management, the first step is like initiating, like scoping. We're going to dedicate time to thinking and processing. But I think silence Is the sign that something is working because everything we teach is based on self-reflection. And so if a leader, you can put a tool out there and it brings people to silence, I would cherish that. Yeah. I would say, love this silence. Seems like a lot of you, I hear, you know, gear shifting without a clutch. Like I hear paradigm shifting. It seems like we've stopped the old conversation. And one of the things I love with David White's poetry is he says, any conversation that's exhausting, end it and begin a new conversation. So if I have stopped an old exhausting conversation, awesome. And I saw people at the table and I've got people like their mind a little unsettled. Let's go with that. And I want to make space for that and honor that and honor The silence. And, you know, we got a lot of training with that as a therapist. I was part of a team in Sioux City that if there had been a death, you know, like on the roadway, like the highway patrol, there were some of us on call at the med center that we would go with the highway patrol to a house, you know, probably wake somebody up in the middle of the night and be there to say, you know, unfortunately your spouse was in a car accident tonight. Killed on the way home. And going in, the officers would be like, what do I say? And I'm like, one sentence, just say the truth like we rehearsed. And then they would be like, but then what do I say? I'm like, nothing. And they're like, but what if this happens? I'm like, answer's still the same, nothing. What do we do? We just be with them. And they're like, oh my God, that could be like hours. Because it's predictable. Somebody is like, no, this can't be true. I just talked to them. You watch them go through denial and you repeat the sentence. And you're like, I'm really sorry, and we're here, and we're not leaving right now. Then they go into like usually on their knees sobbing, or shock—that was the other one—on their knees sobbing, and uninterrupted. The average person can't cry over twenty minutes straight.

Wow!

And then pretty soon they do the crying. It's just the first wave of grief. This isn't the end of it, folks. They do the crying, then they come out of it with whatever their need is. Can I see them? Um, did they die? I want information. Did they die immediately? Did they— we answer the questions we have very matter-of-factly. If they want to see them, we're like, yes. If they— we have— don't have answers, we're like, we'll get those for you. But we start to let them lead and it comes from such a more beautiful place. Now we have a lot of training on letting people sit in silence because that's usually a sign they're going inward, they're Either seeing something, feeling something, they're, they're switching something. And so I think silence is self-reflection, and I think it's a sign that things are working. But in our world, we want a tool that will work in 32 minutes in the one meeting we have. And we do, we try and do too much work in meetings. And a lot of the work is in the thinking between the meetings. David Whyte also says that, um, there's nothing like getting— if you wanna get to the truth, there's nothing like a good walk around the lake that will bring you to the truth. Like if you're in an argument, leave with permission. I'm leaving. I'm gonna take a walk. And then the Gottmans say, if you're in an argument, um, take a break, but don't use the break to ruminate. Use the break for silence. Leave it, go do something else and come back. And so I think silence is such A positive sign that things are working.

There was a workshop about the, like, just saying the one line, waiting, and the silence sometimes does all the work. People are like, well, I'm doing nothing. And the answer is you're actually doing everything. Let silence do the heavy lifting for you. Being that conduit. I was thinking a lot about the topic that got brought up at the workshop with a bunch of leaders was like what to do with complaining or someone that's, you know, bringing up like the constant issues. And of course, reality-based leadership mind, I'm like, there's a tool for that. Let's try edit your story. And I remember the, uh, the teacher or our facilitator was like, you know, one technique you could try is literally just sit in silence as they just keep going, you know. Yeah. And eventually he's, you know, he said like after 45 minutes or an hour, or maybe, Sai, you have the numbers better, like based on what you said there, they just, it just simmers down and they realize like you just sat there And you're engaged, but they just realized like that was not okay. Yeah, postmortem. And of course that drove me nuts because on the business side, I'm thinking we're paid to use resources wisely. Venting is not helpful for others. You know, it creates grudges, especially if it's an untrue story. So I'm like, but we could have edited the story. It was only a 15-minute comment. That's in my head. But I'm like, ah, I didn't like that response. I don't know if I trained that response, you know, but that's really powerful. And I probably for 3 months, I'm like, that was, Not good advice. And then now that I think about it, I was like, that was pretty wise advice as another technique. And I think the question wasn't even about was it business or in, you know, personal life. So that was interesting you said that. I just remember that experience.

Well, and I think too, we've got to be really careful because the ego morphs everything. You know, we started saying, gosh, if you're not using some of these tools because people were not using them, you're not practicing reality-based leadership. But even that, the ego can morph because the tools can be used to lead the witness and force an answer. And like, I'm uncomfortable with lack of resolution. So here's Here's a tool. We'll resolve this, and people feel punched in the face with the tool, and the ego is still bruised. And I don't know that we have to have immediacy with the tools. I think we have to have reflection with the good mental processes, the tools put out on paper. I think tools can be useful to change the energy, but we have to be careful because the ego can take anything that looks like help. And morph it out of motive into control. And help a lot of times, as I wrote in my book, um, Life's Supposed to Be Lived Happy, is the sunny side of control. And we can be really righteous. We're like, well, I'm a better leader. I use reality-based tools. I'm going to use this on you. And it can be super tone deaf and it can be super like, screw you and your tools. Like, I'm not in a place of readiness yet. And that's why we've got to love people up before we call them up. And sometimes loving them up is, um, is being willing to sit with them in silence. Because if people don't come along with the tool and they're like venting, a lot of times what we do is mass abandonment, which is people's biggest fear. And instead of sitting and saying, you know, I wouldn't say this, but it doesn't seem like your thinking's very clear right now from my perspective. And I'm going to sit with you anyway while you You know, work your way through that. And we got time. You're a good employee. I'm not going anywhere. This isn't gonna be the hill we die on. We got this. I got you. The ability to sit in mystery, because I see people want to learn our tools for mastery so they can, you know, do things to people.

Get through the situation fast. Yeah.

And part of that's good because it helps people with breakthrough that they can, there's no place for their ego on paper. But the other thing is, you know, we both love Byron Katie. And if you watch her work, she keeps bringing people back to the tools, but she lets them go far, far away. And she's like, and she stays very quiet. It drives people nuts when they see her present because she doesn't present. She's super quiet. And when I'm in my best leadership spot, I'm just quiet and letting people do them. Yeah. And when I sense the spot, I'm like, hey, here's an invitation. What if you ask yourself this and come back? But I'm at a point in my life right now, like I'm only going to work with volunteers. I'm not going to convince anybody of anything. I'm not going to, you know, defend anything. Defense is the first act of war. You know, I'm going to accompany people while they journey and hopefully insert some wisdom from time to time. And remember, it's their journey. And I think a lot of us leaders aren't yet in that place of our own self-regulation. And that's probably, you know, what I hope to contribute next is help people, leaders, be more comfortable with things like silence.

Well, more to come on that topic. Um, anything else you'd add, Cy, to, uh—

No, I just, I just would notice, um, I like assignments for self-reflection.

Yes. Yes.

And with this one, I would just notice when you got into silence that made you really uncomfortable. And, you know, and what you did, because it wasn't to solve the business problem, it was to ease your own discomfort. And so how can you increase your tolerance for discomfort? You know, the power of a leader is not what we tell people, it's what we get them thinking about. And silence actually is probably the first sign that people have gone inside and are reflecting.