Happy Friday,
I’ve been thinking about the power of silence through my client meetings and the leadership coaching training I’ve been delivering this week.
One of the first tools I learnt during my early coaching qualifications was the power of silence. My manager and leader of over 10 years also taught me to ‘enjoy the silence’. I used to imagine a tumbleweed rolling along when I first started to learn this skill and the tumbleweed seemed to take forever! I soon learnt that my tumble weed and the speed of it wasn’t important, in terms of how long it took and my focus needed to be on respecting and giving the other person the silence and space they needed.
When we coach others, silence is a vital and powerful tool to enable the other person to think more deeply, be more mindful and discover their own realities, options, opportunities and solutions.
It’s also an incredibly powerful tool when someone has come to you for support, help and guidance; quite often they want the space and silence from you to just really listen.
The link below has some useful pointers to really help us to use silence in coaching (you can apply this outside of coaching too).
-Allow for silence
-Notice who is struggling in the silence – is it you as the coach?
-Be aware of body language (both you and the other party)
-Demonstrate empathy
-Allow for the struggle in silence – this is where the 'Aha' moments often occur
Take a moment to also embrace your own silence today too.
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