The power of silence

I loved this video that Johnnie Moore shared, which is a clip from the brilliant BBC show The Assembly. The premis of the show is great – a renowned actor/personality gets interviewed by an audience of neurodivergent, autistic and learning disabled people.

In the clip the questioner is at first paralysed by nerves and shyness and sits struggling to get his question out. The silence is palpable. Lots of people around him feel compelled to offer help and to fill the void. This is, I suspect, partly out of altruism but I’m sure it’s also to relieve the feelings of awkwardness that many of us feel when confronted with silence in a setting with lots of people.

Michael Sheen’s reaction is perfect. He tells the questioner to take as much time as he needs, and then sits there beaming at him with a wide, encouraging grin on his face. When the question emerges it is, of course, excellent.

This really made me think about how in social situations or those with lots of people involved our instinct is to try and avoid silence at all costs. We leap in with a desire to fill the space and say something. And yet there is often value in becoming comfortable with silence.

In a workshop I’ll ask a question or ask for a contribution from those attending and sometimes this is initially met with silence because people are reticent about speaking up. When this happens I’ve learned to resist the temptation to leap in and say something (I’ve seen some facilitators dislike silence so much that they end up answering the question themselves which only serves to absolve the attendees of the need to contribute or answer any subsequent question).

Instead I try to do what Michael Sheen did so well – to look people in the eye with a smiling, welcoming grin on my face. More often than not it will be someone that hasn’t inputed before that actually breaks the silence and speaks up with a contribution.

Silence doesn’t have to be awkward.

I suspect there is so much more that I can learn about the using the power of silence in my workshops (or indeed in life) so this is a note to self to look into it more.

I write a weekly Substack of digital trends, transformation insights and quirkiness. To join our community of thousands of subscribers you can sign up to that here.

To get posts like this delivered straight to your inbox, drop your email into the box below

Photo by Kristina Flour on Unsplash