by Ashley Coleman-Fitch
Take one minute right now to pause– to do nothing for even just ten seconds.
What did you do with your pause?
How did it feel?
How do you feel now on the other side of that pause?
I recently facilitated a group working to build a more inclusive culture within their organization. As this group of primarily outspoken leaders contemplated how to bring the more reserved members of their teams into important conversations, the topic of silence came up. “We all need to pause,” one participant said, “[but] when I pause, I hear nothing. The silence is killer– not hearing that engagement on the other end.” There were murmurings of agreement. It seemed that the group understood all too well the risks of a lull in the conversation and accordingly, like many of us, had become practiced at avoiding these lulls by filling the space. But what happens, I challenged them, when we allow that silence and embrace it?
As we discovered through our discussion, four powerful things happen:
We allow ourselves space to think and respond mindfully
We create space for others to enter the conversation
We listen to the quality of the silence
We breathe… and so does the conversation
Responding Mindfully
The essence of mindfulness is the practice of pausing to acknowledge the present moment and allowing our whole selves– our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual selves– to show up in a space. When we are more attuned to the world around us, we begin fostering cultures of inclusion in diverse settings. Some experts argue that cultivating mindfulness is the most important step in developing intercultural competence, the individual precursor to developing cultures of inclusion. Cultural competence expert Stella Ting-Toomey suggests that we must not only pay attention to ourselves– to our assumptions, to our internal dialogue, and to our emotional reactions– but also to others, “becoming exquisitely attuned to the other's communication assumptions, cognitions, and emotions.” (1) We begin to see more, to listen better, and to take in each interaction with the whole of ourselves, approaching the unfamiliar with curiosity and compassion rather than judgment and intractability. “To be mindful of intercultural conflict differences, we have to leam to see the unfamiliar behavior from multiple cultural angles.”
The Buddist monk, spiritual leader, and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh writes, “Whenever we feel carried away, sunk into a deep emotion, or caught in thoughts about the past or future, we can return to our breathing to collect and anchor our mind.” (2) Nhat Hanh invites us to pause, to breathe, and to gather ourselves before moving forward– to become present and take ownership over our response. In this way, we give ourselves time to digest the present moment– what happened, as well as our emotional response– before responding, resulting in fewer gaffes and missteps in the conversation. Additionally, this practice allows each of us a moment to check our implicit biases and blind spots, consider the perspective we are speaking from, and purposefully attune our response to our particular audience to ensure that all aspects of our message– verbal and non-verbal– are heard and received by our intended audience, thereby also decreasing the likelihood that we might unintentionally offend someone we are attempting to connect with. Maybe it sounds like a lot of work, but it’s the work we need to do to connect better and be more whole and human, which feel like worthy goals.
In addition to encouraging your full, authentic self to be present and helping you check your assumptions, biases, and blind spots before putting your foot in it, pausing to become more mindful does one other thing almost by accident: It makes you a more powerful, eloquent orator.
As a facilitator, my role is to guide the conversation– to highlight pivotal ideas and help my participants get past blockages to dive deep into the subject. It can be tempting to talk, but after years of facilitating, I know that mine is the least important voice in the conversation. Truth and solutions are most powerful when people discover them themselves, so my goal is to talk as little as possible, keeping the spotlight on the most important people in the room– the people doing the work. It took me time to appreciate the value of saying less and even more time to learn to use silence as emphasis, highlighting the key part of my message. Embracing silence made me choose my words more intentionally, making my message more powerful and resonating in the silence that followed. It took me even more time to skillfully leverage silence to encourage my participants to become fully engaged and invested, allowing me to step back into the role of coach and guide. That is the power of the pause– its stillness acts as a catalyst for creativity and an invitation towards action and engagement. It invites flow– authentic energy exchange.
An Invitation to Enter
“I grew up in a big family. If I didn’t talk over people, I’d never be heard.” one participant commented. There was lots of nodding and noises of assent around the table.
Someone else offered, “I grew up in a family where it was not ok to interrupt someone who was speaking. It was deeply ingrained in me: Wait your turn to speak… or else,” she finished laughing.
The dichotomy of these two statements illustrates several important things for leaders to remember as they work to facilitate inclusive discussions: The deeply ingrained patterns that may never be articulated but show up in every exchange we engage in, the differences in communication styles, and, as a leader and facilitator, the necessity of attending to all of these different styles and carving out space for each of them in the space.
Just as people enter a space differently– some strike up a conversation before they’ve even entered a room while others take a lap, mapping out the lay of the land before settling in while still others need to nest first– people enter conversations differently as well. Some dive right in, always the first to speak; others wait to be invited. As a leader and facilitator, it is important to be mindful of these different styles and leverage silence as a tool to level the playing field.
A purposeful pause is an invitation. It allows your audience– learners, attendees, participants, peers, etcetera– space in the discussion to breathe, to digest your message, and to formulate their own mindful response. People are allowed to respond to what you have said silently, reflecting on both your message and their reaction before feeling pressured to respond back.
Listening to the Silence
Have you ever gone out in the middle of a snowstorm and listened to the snow fall? There is nothing more emblematic of a peaceful moment than listening to the whisper of those tiny flakes shushing themselves into tiny piles. The world is muted, and for a moment, it’s easy to get lost in the stillness and the magic of the moment.
But why is that moment so magical? What is it about snow that transports us and invites us to simultaneously get lost and be present? Its visual qualities aside– striking as they may be– part of snow’s magic is its ability to mute the world– to impose silence and stillness on a world that is constantly moving. And in that silence we find peace.
Most of us are aware, at least peripherally, that every silence has its own quality: some silences are pregnant, full of anxiety and anticipation; others are tense, holding all of the unnamed feelings in the space; others feel dead, devoid of life or engagement; while still others can signal contentment and mutual understanding, a freeing from the usual din of small talk to be replaced by amiable presence with another.
As facilitators, we are often so afraid of those uncomfortable silences, or worse yet, those dead silences that likely indicate that we have lost our audience, so instead, we fill the silences with our own noise. In doing so, we miss one of the richest sources of information that could tell us not only how our message is being received but who is receiving it and how. When we actually pause to listen to the silence, it speaks volumes. Armed with this new information, we can then better adapt our next steps to respond more effectively and guide the group toward the desired goal.
Breathe
A pause in a conversation is like the blank space between paintings in a museum or gallery– it gives the mind space to rest, digest, and reflect before moving on to the next. It invites each of us– and the conversation– to breathe, to take in all of the nuance and complication embedded in our messaging, and to respond thoughtfully, as our whole authentic selves.
Pausing to breathe, to contemplate, to respond makes us more effective communicators. It makes our message more powerful and leaves room for us to become more generous and compassionate listeners. This might be the most important skill in both understanding others and making them feel heard and valued, thus fostering community development based on authentic inclusion and belonging.
Viktor Frankl once said, “Between stimulus and response there is a space…In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response, lies our growth and our freedom.” Create space to nurture your growth. Pause.
