What Does Constantly Filling Silence Reveal About You as a Leader?

Many well-intentioned leaders feel an almost compulsive need to constantly fill any momentary silence or gaps in conversations and meetings, reflexively jumping in the instant no voice is heard. But this common tendency inadvertently reveals far more about you and your emotional intelligence than you intend.

The deep-seated fear of allowing silence exposes confidence gaps and insecurity. Executives and managers who impulsively fill any quiet moment signal to their teams:

• Impatience - An apparent inability to patiently wait, listen fully, and allow others to collect their thoughts before responding reflects poorly on your temperament, self-control and respect for others.

• Arrogance - Filling every gap quickly with your own voice conveys an inflated sense that your views and solutions matter most, crowding out other perspectives.

• Condescension - Consistently jumping in rapidly assumes that others need your guidance and wisdom to constructively proceed with discussions or decisions. This suggests you see your team as dependent on you always leading the way.

• Anxiety - Feeling discomfort with even brief moments of silence and constantly filling them shows you lack confidence in your presence and cannot stand stillness. Silence unnerves you.

• Micromanagement - When you immediately fill gaps, it hints that you fail to trust your team and feel the need to tightly orchestrate all interactions. This prevents empowerment.

• Interruption - Frequently talking over people or cutting them off mid-sentence demonstrates a lack of active listening and inherent respect for others' diverse viewpoints. You signal that your voice matters most.

• Narcissism - The apparent need to make every discussion center around your opinions and commentary inherently crowds out space for others' voices to contribute meaningfully. This marginalizes teammates.

• Reactivity - The urge to instantaneously respond or redirect each conversation shows a lack of discipline and self-control. It depicts you thinking and reacting intermittently rather than operating with focus and intention.

The more leaders feel the urge to constantly fill silence out of anxiety and ego, the weaker their ultimate influence, presence and impact become. The most inspiring leaders understand the immense communicative power that harnessing silence strategically provides when used judiciously.

How to Recognize Discomfort with Silence

Pay attention to your stress levels during natural conversational pauses. Do you feel rising tension or anxiety? Do you rush to speak just to ease this discomfort? If so, you likely have underdeveloped confidence with silence.

How to Identify Your Own Voice Filling Gaps

Record meetings and listen back for patterns. Are you consistently the first to speak after every gap? Do you interrupt or talk over others frequently? If so, you likely over-rely on your voice due to silence aversion.

Techniques to Get Comfortable with Silence

Start practicing silence meditations to enhance self-awareness. Take pauses during conversations before responding. Go for walks without headphones to embrace natural quiet. Initiate one-to-one silent moments to normalize silence.

Tactics to Build Silence Muscles in Meetings

In meetings, allow others to speak first after gaps. Count to 7 in your head before filling silence yourself. Ask questions but don’t immediately reply. Thank participants who allow space for reflection.

The more leaders feel the urge to constantly fill silence out of anxiety and ego, the weaker their ultimate influence, presence and impact become. The most inspiring leaders understand the immense communicative power that harnessing silence strategically provides when used judiciously.

Executive Coaching to Develop Composure and Confident Presence

If you recognize yourself over-relying on your own voice to fill space and dominate interactions due to discomfort with silence, executive coaching can provide the ideal outside support to develop greater emotional intelligence, executive presence, active listening skills and communication excellence.

Please don't hesitate to reach out anytime if you see opportunity to grow your comfort with silence to empower yourself and your team. True poise and personal influence start with self-awareness - I'm happy to help. With practice, silence speaks louder than words.

Are You Truly Comfortable with Silence as a Leader?

In our increasingly busy, rushed, and distraction-filled digital work world, periods of silence can sometimes feel painfully awkward. We anxiously rush to fill any momentary conversational void or lag during meetings. But the most influential and emotionally intelligent leaders understand and embrace the unique power of deploying strategic silence to listen, project confidence, and empower others.

Common Causes of Discomfort with Silence

Many well-intentioned leaders and managers see silence as:

• Unproductive, representing zero active progress or forward momentum, wasting precious time. Silence makes them antsy.

• Intimidating, with mounting pressure to chime in or speak up building as gaps go unfilled. Silence spurs stage fright.

• Risky, as extended silence might cause others to disengage, get bored, or deem you as lacking ideas. Silence seems dangerous.

This instinctive aversion fuels nervous, constant chatter - speaking simply to fill space, lest anyone become bored or impatient in the absence of a voice. But silence breeds anxiety and undermines influence only when misused passively. Wielded strategically, silence conveys confidence.

The Multitude of Benefits Strategically Leveraging Silence Provides Leaders

When used with purpose at appropriate moments, embracing silence opens up space for magic to happen:

• Silence enables active, engaged listening - you hear people fully without interruption or distraction, absorbing their messages.

• Silence provides time for careful, thoughtful processing before thoughtfully responding - pausing allows insights to crystallize.

• Silence grabs attention and builds eager anticipation and engagement from groups - pausing intrigues.

• Silence empowers and emboldens others to confidently fill communication gaps themselves - people rise to trust.

Silence amplifies the resonance and impact of spoken messages when deliberately incorporated. With practice, silence truly speaks volumes.

Leadership Tactics to Start Effectively Leveraging the Power of Silence

Here are some impactful yet simple ways busy leaders can learn to utilize silence more effectively:

• Get comfortable allowing some silence to manifest during meetings - resist the urge to immediately fill every momentary gap in conversations. Learn to savor silence.

• After asking an insightful open-ended question, make it a point to slowly count to at least 5 in your head before even considering jumping back in to fill dead air.

• When others go silent during exchanges, learn to appreciate these gaps as productive thinking time where they are processing and formulating responses, rather than cueing you to speak.

• After making an important point, consciously let your words fully land with people before immediately moving on or redirecting the conversation. Reflection requires space.

Wielding silence with skill and confidence demonstrates you lead on your own terms, not out of reflexive fear. Reflection requires space. With consistent practice, silence gains gravitas to amplify your messages when deployed judiciously at the right moments.

Coaching to Develop Confident, Composed Communication

Need help becoming more comfortable leveraging the unique power of silence to communicate vision, lead meetings, and relate to your team as an executive? I offer focused coaching for leaders seeking to master critical emotional intelligence, executive presence, and communication skills. Please don't hesitate to reach out anytime if you would like to discuss working together. Wielding silence and space opens up new frontiers for your leadership impact. Let's connect.

What are You Saying? Listen to Yourself for Self-Awareness

When's the last time you really actively listened to a recording of your own voice, communication style and behaviors? If you’re like most people, it may have been a while, if ever.

Many of us instinctively cringe at the idea of hearing recordings of our own interactions at meetings, public speaking, client calls, and so on. The sound of our own voice often makes us painfully self-conscious, bringing out our inner critic. But if we can learn to listen to ourselves with openness, empathy and the intent to learn, reviewing recordings can massively expand self-awareness and emotional intelligence.

Our Natural Discomfort with the Sound of Our Own Voice

Most of us experience immediate discomfort when initially hearing audio or video of our own voice played back during recordings of interactions. We tend to pick up on every pause, diction imperfection, awkward phrase, and nervous tic. We judge ourselves far more harshly than we typically judge others.

This ingrained discomfort and self-criticism often causes many leaders to avoid listening to recordings of themselves altogether after an initial unpleasant experience, robbing them of invaluable opportunities for growth.

The key mindset shift is to learn to listen to yourself with the same self-compassion you would extend to a peer, direct report or friend, not the amplified self-judgement your inner critic projects. This takes mindfulness but allows you to extract lessons.

The Wealth of Insights Recordings Can Provide When Reviewed With Balance

If analyzed objectively, recordings of your communication and leadership presence provide unique insights you cannot easily gain elsewhere:

• You may pick up on subtle but important unintended tones that wrongly imply emotions, indifference or judgement you aren't actually feeling internally. These inadvertent slip ups can undermine trust.

• You can spot unproductive patterns such as frequently interrupting people, not letting others fully finish thoughts before interjecting, failing to ask real open-ended questions, etc.

• You can assess effectiveness and impact of different aspects of your communication style based on how others in the recording react and respond in real-time.

• You can analyze whether you tend to over-explain concepts or points repeatedly. Self-listening surfaces blind spots.

• You can determine from air time whether you share the conversational space appropriately or dominate discussions. Silences speak volumes.

Without listening to yourself, it remains almost impossible to accurately gauge the holistic impact of your presence, words and behaviors on others. Listening courageously lets you be your own mirror for growth.

NOTE: Before recording anything make sure you know the law about recording for where you live. Remember these recordings are for private use only.

Healthy Ways Leaders Can Build Self-Listening to Boost Self-Awareness

Here are some best practices and tactics to guide productive self-listening for maximizing learning:

• Occasionally record short snippets of 1-on-1 meetings, virtual team meetings, webinars or conference presentations. But notify participants politely in advance and ask their permission.

• Analyze patterns and themes vs. over-criticizing one-off mistakes when reviewing. Look for trends and consistency. Remember that everyone mispeaks.

• Balance taking notes on both effective areas of strength as well as opportunities for improvement. Strive for a constructive ratio.

• Remind yourself frequently to focus commentary on specific fact-based behaviors you can change, not imagined traits about who you are as a person. Avoid faulty self-assessments.

• Note 1-2 concrete things you would recommend to someone else if you were coaching them to address similar patterns witnessed in the recording. This objectivity fuels progress.

With consistency and the right constructive mindset, regularly scheduling time to listen to yourself fuels dramatic positive growth by increasing self-awareness and emotional intelligence. All leaders have room for improvement when it comes to mastering high-impact communication. Be your own trusted mentor.

An Outside Listening Ear: Coaching for Communication Excellence

Need a neutral, experienced executive coach to lend an objective outside ear to share candid observations on your communication style and leadership presence based on recordings? I’m happy to listen collaboratively and provide entirely constructive feedback tailored to your growth goals.

Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you would like to discuss how we could potentially partner. You keep expanding as a leader when you stay curious about yourself and keep dedicating time to active self-improvement. Personal growth never stops when we commit to lifelong learning. My door is always open.

Do You Talk Too Much? The Critical Importance of Listening as a Leader

The most effective leaders view communication as a two-way street, listening at least as much as they speak. But in our ego-driven business culture that rewards and even idolizes extroversion, many default to talking too much and listening too little. Here’s how to spot this tendency in yourself and cultivate deeper, more mindful listening skills.

There’s an old adage stating that we as humans have two ears and only one mouth. The inherent implication is that we should aim to listen twice as much as we talk. This wisdom rings even more true for leaders and executives responsible for building trust, spurring innovation, developing talent, and unlocking others’ potential.

Warning Signs You May Be Talking Too Much and Listening Too Little

If you find yourself exhibiting some of the following patterns, it likely indicates areas where you can stand to improve your communication ratios by reducing excessive talking and increasing thoughtful listening:

• You frequently jump in quickly when others are already speaking, sometimes even interrupting people outright before they can complete their thought.

• You often catch yourself barely listening, but rather waiting and looking for the next possible break to interject whatever you want to say, rather than truly absorbing what the other person is expressing.

• You finish people’s sentences for them, assuming you already know exactly what they will say based on the few words you heard.

• If you were to review detailed notes after meetings, you’d observe that you personally dominated well over 50% of the overall airtime, talking over peers.

• You feel impatient, distracted, and tempted to redirect the conversation when discussion centers on topics that do not particularly interest you.

• You find yourself repeatedly reiterating the same points multiple times to try to ensure your perspectives land and sink in with others.

These types of patterns clearly reveal you have ample areas for improvement when it comes to exhibiting openness, curiosity and presence through more mindful listening rather than simply waiting for your next turn to promote your own views.

The Multitude of Benefits More Active Listening Provides Leaders

Making a concerted effort to increase listening while reducing excessive talking yields profound benefits:

• You build far deeper and more trusting relationships when others feel heard and respected.

• You surface more diverse insights, perspectives, concerns and opportunities through uninterrupted conversations.

• You quickly identify emerging needs, grievances, roadblocks and disconnects early before they escalate.

• You powerfully model openness and interest in others that everyone else you lead will then emulate.

• You defuse unnecessary conflicts and tensions before they metastasize by hearing people out.

When leaders consciously listen first with presence and care before speaking, their words hold exponentially greater weight and influence. Talk less, accomplish more.

Actionable Ways Leaders Can Start to Improve Their Listening Ratios:

Here are some tactical steps you can take to become a better listener by redistributing conversational airtime from excessive talking to deeper listening:

• Set an initial goal to listen 70-80% of the time during most meetings rather than defaulting to a 50/50 split. This means talking 20-30% or less.

• Ask more thoughtful, open-ended questions during discussions then make sure to pause and truly listen to the full responses before replying.

• After important meetings, review your notes objectively – is the balance of documented viewpoints heavily weighted toward your own perspectives versus a diversity of stakeholders?

• Make a point to thank other participants for their unique insights and explicitly mention something valuable you learned from what they shared, even if you disagree.

• Reflect on why you felt compelled to interrupt someone else - what insecurity or need is driving that impulse? Then consciously resist the temptation the next time the urge arises.

The more leaders intentionally embody patience and curiosity through their listening, the richer insights they will gain. While becoming a better listener requires awareness and practice, active listening builds all relationships and pays dividends for life.

Executive Coaching to Develop Active Listening and Communication Excellence

Need additional support and guidance improving your listening abilities and ratios as a leader? I offer executive coaching engagements tailored to leaders seeking to hone emotional intelligence skills like mindful communication, empathy and self-awareness. Please don't hesitate to reach out anytime if you'd like to discuss how we could potentially collaborate. Listening forms the very foundation for impactful leadership and human relationships. My door is always open.

The Power of Listening: How to Make Your Team Feel Truly Heard

The Power of Listening: How to Make Your Team Feel Truly Heard

As a leader, one of the most important skills you can develop is the ability to listen deeply and make your team members feel genuinely heard and understood. When employees feel their perspectives are valued, engagement and morale improve. But when people feel ignored or dismissed, resentment builds and performance suffers.

Why Feeling Heard Matters

Human beings have a fundamental need to feel heard and validated. When people sense you are truly listening to them, without judgement, they relax and open up. This builds trust and psychological safety on your team.

However, if you frequently interrupt, ignore opinions, or impose your own solutions, people get the message that their thoughts don't matter. This leads to frustration, lack of motivation, and higher turnover.

The Dangers of Not Listening

Failing to listen can have serious consequences, including:

• Loss of talent, as ignored employees seek opportunities where their views will be respected

• Lack of innovation, as people stop sharing ideas and insights

• Poor decisions, when leaders miss out on valuable perspectives and input

• Low morale and resentment, as team members feel marginalized and disrespected

Clearly, not making people feel heard takes a real toll on engagement, collaboration, and performance.

Cultivating Deep Listening

So how can you demonstrate to your staff that you are genuinely listening? Here are some tips:

• Maintain eye contact and give your full attention when others are speaking. Avoid distractions and multitasking.

• Ask thoughtful follow-up questions to show your interest, not just to push your own agenda.

• Paraphrase key points back to the speaker to ensure you understand correctly.

• Express empathy and acknowledge the emotions behind what is being said.

• Thank people for sharing their views, even if you don't agree with them.

• Consider ideas and solutions raised by your team, rather than dismissing them out of hand.

• Give feedback on how employee input influenced your thinking and decisions.

Essentially, listening is about curiosity, not criticism. When you approach conversations with an open and non-judgmental mindset, people will feel respected and valued.

Bringing People Along, Even in Disagreement

Making your staff feel heard doesn't necessarily mean endorsing every idea or avoiding hard decisions. But when you do have to move forward without consensus, you can still acknowledge employee concerns and perspectives.

• Explain your reasoning while affirming that you heard their input.

• Commit to reviewing the decision down the line.

• Solicit ideas to improve implementation of the plan.

• Schedule one-on-ones to provide support.

• Thank the team for sharing candid feedback.

With empathy and transparency, you can build trust and inclusiveness, even amidst disagreement.

Listening to Lead

At the end of the day, leadership is about inspiring people to bring their best selves to work. When employees know their voices matter, they are more engaged, collaborative and innovative. By truly hearing your team, you not only make them feel valued, but gain access to insights that can drive your organization forward. Listening is a muscle - the more you practice it, the better you will become.

If you are interested in developing your leadership abilities, executive coaching can be invaluable. Feel free to reach out to discuss how I can help you hone your listening skills and lead through influence, not just authority. Investing in your growth is an investment in your team.