Silence

I have been invited last week to give a lecture at the Israeli accountant annual convention. This event was unique in its length – I had to make a continuous two-hour presentation. Some tine during the lecture I felt that I am not using my voice properly so I started pausing between sentences. Suddenly I understood the obvious: There are advantages to these pauses, other that relief to soar throat. I tried again and noticed that people are paying more attention. Silence echoes the spoken words and gives audience time to understand. I was reminded of my childhood swimming lessons. The instructor showed us four motions. The last one was a "no-motion", relaxing the body before the next set of motions; same as the silence effect.

Silence is a human and management tool. It amplifies the others' attention to our words, and improves their understanding. However, silence can serve other objectives as well.
When we are on the defensive, we prefer to keep silent. If we are not sure of our deeds, silence will prevent further complications. This is not always an adequate tool, and should be used with care, only when appropriate in a broad perspective, and not only from short-term considerations.

Silence enables listening to other people. Not only hearing, actually listening. If we are really silent, not just keeping our lips still, we can concentrate and listen to what is being said and more than that – how it is being said, what is the body language saying, what is not being said and why it is not spoken.

It is interesting to note that silence is an alternative to shouting. Roaring silence is heard in the distance.
What I find most fascinating is not the power in silence, nor the scream it replaces. It is silence as a means to get others to act that make it such a special tool.

It is claimed that sales people use this tool. When they feel the deal is close, and the customer hesitates, they will take out the contract, mark a small 'x' where a signature is required, turn the paper to the customer, and silently wait. Hard to believe, but most people will sign at this stage.
This technique can be used in other circumstances as well. By being silent, we invite the other side to act. Human nature makes it difficult (at least for most of us) to react to silence so everyone will try to act when the other is silent. The beauty of this tool is its fairness simplicity.

As managers, we must consider employees' silence. When an employee is expected to speak and keeps silent, what can we deduce?

First, all that was previously said is true about employees as well. It might be silence as alternative to shouting, it might be a way to better listen or be heard, and it might be an attempt to move us into action.

Nevertheless, we must consider other options as well. When an employee does not answer, he may have misunderstood what was said and too embarrassed to ask. We must analyze the silence and if this is reason, try a different explanation.
It might be that the employee disagrees with us and is reluctant to argue. I am not saying we should encourage employee resistance, but we must be aware of this option and assess the situation to decide if to accept this silence or try and break it.
And maybe they just had nothing to say and we are speculating to much…

Communication is 20% verbal and 80% non–verbal (body language, intonation etc.). In silence, we don't have even those first 20%.
We must try harder. But if we listen, there is a chance we will understand. When people are silent, they are saying a lot.
Silence is a powerful management tool, and we must learn to use it more. I am finishing now.
It is silence time.

Yours
Moria

To the Hebrew version

Encouraging the doing

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, a Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright, is well known to many of us as the author of the one of the kind book: "Don Quixote". This is not the only book written by him, but indeed the most influential one. In his book, Saavedra writes: "There is a big difference between speaking and doing".
Being honest with ourselves, all of us, as managers, workers and private people, are living examples. We all know that there are things that are right to be done and even though we are aware, we do not behave accordingly; we know about techniques and methodologies that were proven successful, and yet we do not take action.

What makes us concentrate on speaking rather than on doing? What makes us know more and implement less? How can we be sure that our employees, whom we manage, do more than speak? In an era of knowledge, when we rely on what our employees decide to share, and can only partly control what actually is done and achieved, it is important to give them, and give ourselves, the tools to encourage doing, and better balance speaking and doing.

I think I always tried to preach what I say. Enough? Probably not. A book I have read over a year ago, "the Knowing Doing Gap", written by Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton, is my guide to this non-ending dilemma.

Why do people tend to speak rather act? There are several reasons:

First, we appreciate people who speak. Sometimes even more than those who do: Because speaking wisely is here and now, and results of doing are observed only later;
Because speaking outlines the message, but it takes some thinking to understand the messages behind the acting;
Because people who speak (if they do not exaggerate) are considered as people who influence and in some cases, even thought leaders;
Because in colleges and universities in management programs we talk and write, but hardly actually do;
And...Because most of us were appointed to our jobs after checking mainly our speaking skills.

Secondly, we all were all brought-up learning that planning is essential before acting, and the more we plan, the less we need to work on doing. In some projects, we finish all resources of time, money and management care, and yet we are in the phase of planning.

Furthermore, it is easier to speak than do; it requires less energy.

The list is of reasons why to speak rather act is not that short. I will just add that it is very challenging to change existing habits of work, in order to do new things. Leading the change is so difficult, that in some cases we convince ourselves that if we speak, we also implement. Are organizational activities of building a vision and sets of values, actually turning the vision and values into reality? Is a manager stating in the company broad meeting that innovation is important, actually implementing innovation of his people? And there are many more examples.

A few tips that assist in assuring that we will also act and not only speak:

• Pay attention to the balance between meetings and doing; pay attention to the balance between documents (presentation, white papers) and fieldwork.
• Implement the organization's values and turn them into reality; they probably are guiding us in the right direction.
• Promote mainly, workers from inside the organization; less, bring managers from outside. Encourage the incentives of employees to act.
• Assure that every manager and manager works on the field level and does not purely manage others, just remembering the fieldwork from the past.
• Speak simple. It is OK to have a complicated idea if it can be explained in simple words and can be translated into simple actions. If people understand what is expected from them, there is a good chance they will actually do it.
• Distribute responsibility and authority; be patient to mistakes that result. People will not act if they are to be punished when they err.
• Prevent measuring results of the individual employee. If we measure- measure processes of work rather than results. Measure teams rather than individuals. By that, we encourage work within teams (that is so important in the era of knowledge workers). Only measuring results may trigger short-term benefits, but can damage and act as a boomerang in the long term. How to measure the individual? Measure them as to how they comply with the organization's values.
• Prevent competition inside the organization. Most of the competitions are sum-zero and if someone wins, we have others that loose. We all know that competition is a trigger for motivating the people and we all have examples that prove it (i.e. in sports). Competition is important? Encourage outside competition.
• Nurture learning via workshops and hands-on experiencing. Lectures deal with speaking. Teach people through doing. Who learns from doing – does.

In addition, a last tip. I, personally, prepared a short list based on these guidelines and it is presented in front of me every day, pasted on the wall in my study room. At least, once a month, I check myself to see that I did not turn to be an over-speaker in one way or another.

What will we benefit? First, more doing. Later on, more self-satisfaction; and in the end- probably better performance, to our organization, our families (if we took the tips that direction), or if we are lucky- then both.

It is worthwhile. Try it.

Yours,

Moria