EXPEDIA GROUP TECHNOLOGY — SOFTWARE
Manage Silence
Five steps to using Silence to coach through change
Why Manage Silence?
Successful managers know how to offer frequent support and encouragement to employees which in turn builds motivated individuals and focused organisations. This role of management is known as coaching and is especially important during periods of change.
In 1969, Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross wrote On Death & Dying. This unlikely source has since become the seminal work behind change management in corporate strategy and is now known by most people as the change management curve or the Valley of Despair.
Successful coaches know that effective support of employees during this process involves active listening throughout but no more importantly than on the pre-Experiment phases. In these early stages of coping with change, attempts to encourage decisions and action-planning will usually fail and may even cause further detachment which prolongs the Denial, Frustration or Depression an employee may be experiencing. This can be counter-intuitive to many outcome-oriented business minds. 2020 has tested every industry and organisation on a global scale and has also forced individuals through unprecedented levels of change. Right now, managers and leaders of all forms will be coaching others through multiple change processes. And so, we listen.
Silence is Challenging for a Leader
Many of us will have met people who talk slowly or sometimes don’t appear to say much at all. Sadly, these people have received a lot of negative stigma in corporate culture and hence our leaders have developed a phobia of appearing to be one of these people because it makes us appear unstructured or directionless. This is the reason behind the familiar discomfort that swells in conversation as a silence draws on. As a manager coaching through change, this discomfort can be extremely challenging to overcome because we are in a position where we feel obliged to know the structure and direction and project confidence in the change.
What we forget in our discomfort as we fill the void with vision statements, strategy overviews and buzzwords is the basic human need of voice and recognition. Preparing yourself on the change and being up to date with the status is a part of your leadership role and not to be dismissed. However, it is important to be cognisant that in preparing yourself with “the message”, you are predisposing yourself to miss active listening opportunities by taking up airtime instead of using silence. If you have many people that you are coaching through the change, it can be easy to inadvertently become a broadcaster instead of a coach because you will go through the same conversation multiple times and it can be challenging to remain attentive to the individual at hand.
One of my own leadership traits is curiosity. My curiosity can drive myself and others around me to overcome ambiguity and setbacks alike. However, it creates a challenge for me in active listening. What happens is I become curious in what is being said, my motivation kicks in and I start to fill the conversation with a barrage of questions to understand everything in my own mental models! The effect this creates in people around me is a sense of interrogation or controllership. I am incredibly thankful to the employee who gave me this feedback years ago — and I am so sorry to all the employees I did this with as a naive and inexperienced manager!
An additional challenge to overcome is how different people respond to change. Many who read this article will feel that it is not relevant to them because they work with analytical people who are logic driven and not emotional. I am an engineering leader myself, and I know it can be sometimes extremely hard to predict where analytical people are in the change process because they won’t express feelings. Asking the individual how they are feeling with the change will usually result in a flippant response like “Yeah, it’s fine” or “I get it”. Often, the individual will then proceed to critic in minute detail every step in the change which is a sure sign that they are in the Frustration phase! With these people, I have found my own experience to be the best gauge on whether to employ coaching silence or to engage in problem solving at a logical level.
Silence in Practice
A beautiful day in the neighbourhood is a recent movie where the main character, played by Tom Hanks, supports a younger character through a complex change as the person reconnects to their relationships and then promptly loses a father. The character Tom portrays in this movie is looked to by all as a leader and yet doesn’t appear to exhibit the traits of a leader. As pointed out in one scene, he can’t even put up a tent. Instead, what this character does throughout the movie is use silence to demonstrate active listening. Each time the younger character shares a feelings or thought, the coach character pauses, internalises what has been spoken and replies with an authentic insight or expression of empathy in an unhurried but deliberate manner. Furthermore, when it is becoming clear that the younger character is approaching a breaking point, the coach character asks for a shared moment of silence.
While we can not all benefit from having a script and film crew to help us be an infallible coach, the story above demonstrates an approach that we, as managers, can adopt in our use of silence:
- Drop your own preconceptions and put “the message” on the back burner for now
- Make space for the employee to have a voice and share their feelings and thoughts
- Pause, embrace the silence while you consider the feelings and thoughts — remember, the employee will see you are recognising their voice and not think less of you
- Reply with your authentic self
- In crucial conversations, remember that it is ok to ask for a shared silence for both of you to reflect
Conclusion
By reminding yourself of these five steps during coaching, you will create a more honest engagement conducive to learning which allows the Valley of Despair to be traversed more quickly. This is good for you both as human beings but also good for business and promotes positive change agency.
