40 vs 8 — Ep6: Power of Silence
“40 vs 8” is a weekly newsletter where a generation gap meets literary exploration. Join me, a reader with four decades of life experience, and my curious 8-year-old daughter as we share our favorite reads and uncover captivating stories together.
Have you ever entered a meeting where everyone has the camera off, radio silent, and you occasionally hear someone typing away on their keyboard? “Am I in the wrong room? Should I break the silence?” You might wonder.
Apparently, the socially awkward silence is a thing on Zoom. But silence is not always about awkwardness. Continue reading if you would like to learn more about silence.
When I ask my daughter her favorite quote this time, this is what she showed me.
8 years old
“Ravenous, they ate and drank, and for a while there was silence but for the crackle of the fire, the clink of goblets and the sound of chewing.”
- From the book “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” by J.K. Rowling
I ask her why? She said she liked the sound of “ravenous” and then kept silent…..
40 years old
I admit, “ravenous” is a new word to me. But I also read silence from the above.
Silence, as one of my mentors at BCG told me, with his acting experience background, when used properly, is very powerful.
Silence makes people think.
One of my favorite Sci-Fi movies is Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey”.
Do you know 63% of the movie (about 88 minutes) is dialog-free and silent? It immerses me in an epic space journey. I still remember when I looked at HAL 9000, there was no dialog, no sound, just a red dot “eye” on the screen like this:
And I kept thinking: “What’s happening here? What’s HAL 9000 thinking? What will it do?”
Silence means resisting temptation.
As leaders, we often react quickly, provide immediate answers or instructions, and try to manage the situation. However, sometimes it is better to resist our own temptation and let the team come up with the solution themselves, as this helps to develop and grow the team.
One of the key impressions I got from the book “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team” (which we also talked about it in episode 3) about the CEO’s leadership was how she was able to contain her temptation to intervene and instead remain silent in the moment. You can see numerous examples:
“She (The CEO) took a bite of pizza and watched with everyone else, resisting the temptation to make artificial peace. Out of nowhere, Mikey responded.”
“She resisted any further explanation, wanting the group to work through it.”
“Kathryn resisted the temptation to begin selling Nick. Jeff didn’t.”
It’s not an easy thing to do to control yourself, but that is what makes us less animal, less rushed, and less impulsive. “Thinking slow”, as Daniel Kahneman explained in his book “Thinking, Fast and Slow”.
Silence can also mean “yes…. ah but not really.”
I laughed out loud when I read this:
“Okay, here’s my agenda. And as always, I assume that everyone received the minutes from last week.’
Everyone nodded, but no one made eye contact with their boss. Will was sure this was a sign that no one had read them. He had seen the same behavior in college when the professor had asked his class what they thought of the chapters they were supposed to have reviewed.”
- from the book “Death by Meeting” by Patrick M. Lencioni
“Death by Meeting” is an interesting book by the same author who wrote “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team”. It’s about how to make meeting more efficient and “exiting”. I like the book and will certainly talk more about it in future episodes.
What kind of silence have you seen recently? The powerful one, people resist their temptation one or the “yes but not really one”?
(The remaining part of the article is specifically intended to be silent…)
