Why silence might be the most underrated leadership skill, and what's hiding in it for you.
Hello friends,
In a 1:1 last week, I noticed something I notice a lot. The person across the table said something honest. Something that mattered. A small fragile sentence about how they were doing. And the leader I was watching, who is a kind, attentive, well-meaning person, jumped in within about two seconds. Validated it. Acknowledged it. Offered a thought. Moved gently forward.
It was a good 1:1.
It could have been a great one.
What I think we miss
Most of leadership listening advice tells us to ask better questions. And good questions matter. But the move I see leaders skip more often than question-asking is the move right after. The one where you don't say anything.
Most of us cannot tolerate three seconds of silence after a real sentence. Three seconds feels like thirty. We rush to validate, soothe, frame, move forward. We do it because we genuinely care about the person, because we want to show we got it, because silence in conversation feels like absence to most of us.
But here's the thing. Silence after a real sentence isn't absence. It's space. And space is what allows the speaker to keep going. To say the second sentence. The one underneath the first. The one they didn't quite know they were going to say until the room held still long enough for them to find it.
The first sentence is what they thought they were going to tell you. The second sentence is what's actually true. Most of us, in our rush to be a good leader, never get to the second sentence.
Why this is so hard
There are a few reasons silence is so uncomfortable in business conversation.
Silence feels rude in most cultures, especially in business cultures. Filling silence feels like care. Not filling it can feel like neglect.
We're also a little scared of what the second sentence might be. Subconsciously we know it's probably harder than the first, and our nervous system would rather not invite it in.
Holding silence asks something of our own body too. We have to be okay being a person who isn't doing anything in this moment. That's surprisingly hard, especially for people whose job description has "lead" in it.
And most of us learned, somewhere along the way, that the smartest person in the room is the one talking. Holding silence feels like ceding the room. (Which it is, on purpose.)
What helps
I somehow love to put things into 4-5 steps, my mind loves these little controlly-structured things. So here we go:
One: count to four in your head after a real sentence. Not three. Four. Three feels short to the speaker. Four feels considered.
Two: when you do eventually speak, lower your volume slightly. Lower volume signals "I am not racing." It also calms your own nervous system, which is the actual point.
Three: try a non-verbal response. A small "mhm." A slight nod. A continued open face. These small acknowledgements tell the speaker you heard them without taking the conversational baton.
Four: if you do feel you need to speak, let your first sentence be a question that goes one layer deeper. Not "and how did that make you feel?" Too clinical. Try: "What else is in there?" or just: "Tell me more."
A different way of holding this
If you're a leader who has ever sat across from someone telling you something honest and felt the strong urge to fix it, smooth it, pivot, or move on, I want to be honest with you about something. That urge isn't a failing. It's almost always rooted in care. You want to take their discomfort, you want to make the conversation feel okay, you want them to leave the room feeling supported. That is a generous instinct, and it's most of what makes you the kind of person people want to talk to.
There is another way of holding this. Not silence as a technique. Not the strategic pause used to manipulate or extract. Just a gentle willingness to let the room hold what was said for a few more seconds than feels comfortable, because you trust that the person across from you has more to say, and that you don't need to do anything other than be there while they find it. The leaders I've watched do this well don't look impressive in those moments. They look soft, unhurried, attentive. And then about thirty seconds later, the person across from them says the thing they came in to say.
You're allowed to not speak. You're allowed to sit with what they said. You're allowed to be the kind of presence that doesn't need to perform listening, because actual listening looks suspiciously like nothing. 🫰
Have a lovely day,
