The Art of Communication
This fun podcast series is for anyone who has to deliver a message, tell a story or speak to another human being. Robin Kermode and Sian Hansen cover all aspects of how you connect with everyone you meet - whether you're giving a speech, running a meeting or simply talking with friends. Our Communication Experts series includes experts in many different fields: TV and radio presenters, politicians, auctioneers, writers, professors, lawyers, film directors, actors, art dealers, photographers and designers etc. Everyone will be an expert in communicating with their audience in their particular medium. Robin Kermode, is an actor, best-selling author, leading Communication Coach, popular keynote speaker, body language expert and media commentator. For more information visit: www.robinkermode.com
The Art of Communication
The Power of Silence
The Power of Silence.
Silence isn’t just the absence of sound - it’s a secret weapon in communication. Whether you’re delivering a speech, truly listening, or having a heartfelt conversation, knowing how to embrace silence can transform the way you connect with others.
In this episode, Robin Kermode and Sian Hansen dive into the power of silence, exploring how mastering it can deepen your relationships, boost your confidence, and sharpen your communication skills. Tune in for another fun and insightful chat as they uncover why sometimes, saying nothing says it all.
Hello and welcome to the Art of Communication podcast, where we talk about everything to do with communication, both in our personal and our business lives. You're welcome to contact us at robincurmodecom.
Speaker 2:Hello, it's Sian Hansen here. I'm here with Robin Kermode, hello, and we're going to talk about silence.
Speaker 1:I can't believe you just did that. Did you really do that?
Speaker 2:We're going to talk about silence, because you've always said, robin, that silence is an important part of communication.
Speaker 1:I had a client once who was the CEO of a very big company and he was a really great speaker and he was really really good. The issue he had was that he was very dramatic and every speech he made he put in a really long pause and it was mesmerizing. You could hear a pin drop. The trouble is he did it every time and what happened was everyone in the company were laying bets on when the pause was going to come. Oh, really.
Speaker 1:You can't do it so that it becomes a party trick or it becomes expected.
Speaker 2:And given this, when would you let's say to somebody who's maybe less experienced at giving speeches when would you suggest you can put in a pause or a period of silence? I'm just guessing. As somebody who doesn't give that many speeches, I suppose I would put a pause after I've said something that I think is the most important thing I've said in the speech.
Speaker 1:Exactly so. It's when you've said something that hopefully will resonate with them and you want them to think about it, and sometimes that's the time you say it twice. Sometimes you say so, have a think about this, have a think about this. And say the line again Say the line again and then leave quite a pause. If you don't give them time to process it, they can't.
Speaker 2:So basically what we're saying about when you're giving a speech silence is for emphasis and silence at the beginning, focus To get focus. But actually largely when we're talking about silence, I think it's probably in some sort of meeting, in a group meeting, isn't it?
Speaker 1:Yes, and the silence, then your silence. I mean, we can only talk about our silence. Our silence would be partly about listening, which is giving other people space.
Speaker 2:Well, active listening again is incredibly important, as we've said before.
Speaker 1:And very powerful. Actually, some of the very senior leaders I coach are very good at not saying anything, which doesn't mean they have nothing to say. It means they choose the moment to say it. And how many meetings have you been in Sian where somebody just speaks to be heard? They're not actually adding any value at all, but they go well. I agree with what she said, or he said. I totally agree with that. And you think you've added nothing to this at all? No, I know.
Speaker 2:Or they just want to get their two cents in and it's not in any way helpful and move the conversation along, yeah.
Speaker 1:So I suppose the main thing is if you don't have anything to say that's relevant, then don't speak.
Speaker 2:I think that's a really practical point in terms of good communication. Around a meeting room table, staying quiet is powerful and practical because it means you're not confusing the conversation. Or wasting time or wasting time, so I think it's really constructive.
Speaker 1:But it is interesting. It is about being comfortable with not saying anything and I think a lot of people in meetings feel they have to be visible, have to be audible in a meeting.
Speaker 2:Well, of course, because you want to be seen and heard by your boss and everything, Of course.
Speaker 1:But actually I think the classy thing to do quite often is just to listen. In sales, for example, if you ask your customer what kind of TV would you like, if you don't listen fully to the answer, don't leave the silence long enough for them to explain everything then you don't know what kind of TV they do want. So you can't sell them the thing unless you know what they want. And that does require you to be comfortable with just allowing them to speak.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I had this colleague when I was in sales, when I was a stockbroker, I had this colleague who used silence as a technique.
Speaker 1:As a weapon almost.
Speaker 2:No, no technique absolutely worked 100%. So in these busy, heady days of the late 80s, early 90s in the markets, he would ring up his clients and he would say hello, it's Patrick here. And he would be silent until they said yes and he went. Well, you know, have you seen? He'd mention a stock and tell the story. But it was a technique that he used because apparently these people just lent into their phone and thought has it been cut off?
Speaker 1:I suppose they're so used to fast, fast, fast that when something is the opposite of fast. It's interesting. And the thing about pace I I mean I think we've done this before, but when I first started coaching, I went on the radio and I picked up the tone and the energy and the speed of the interviewer. I listened to it back and I thought I'm completely manic because I was picking up their pace and what I've learned is actually use your, use my own pace, my ownusing my own silence to be able to go at the rhythm I want to go at.
Speaker 2:You see how odd that sounds, don't you? I'm going to go on the radio and I'm going to use my silence.
Speaker 1:It's extraordinary if you think about it? It is, but silence is not dead air.
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:Dead air is when there's no energy in it, but you can fill a silence with energy because it's a pregnant pause actually. In other words, you're expecting something to come afterwards.
Speaker 2:There's also times where you're told to be silent. You know, in a place of worship quite often. Or library, you're told to be quiet, because this is time for silent prayer. Have you ever been to a silent order?
Speaker 1:No, Only for a day. My brother went for a week. He actually lost his voice. My brother's a singer, as you know. He got nodules on his voice and he was told not to speak. So he went to a silent Benedictine order in Scotland and didn't speak for seven days.
Speaker 2:Wow, that would be hard, wouldn't it?
Speaker 1:It's hard for him because he's a singer, so he didn't sing at all. But he said by the end, actually it was quite weird when he did speak, so used to not, but you could smile at people and you know you could see the world, but you didn't have to fill it but you didn't have to fill it getting getting used to that yeah so no, there are times when you're being told to stay silent.
Speaker 2:We tell that to children all the time. But sometimes in a speech we say could you hold any comments until the end and please don't say anything. But some people can't help themselves.
Speaker 1:Can they, can, they can't no, and they still come in Mind. You, a lot of my clients say that the hardest thing or the thing that they're most nervous about is presenting upwards to the board or to the CEO, particularly if the CEO is a kind of entrepreneurial mindset where they will just ride roughshod. So often when you're presenting upwards you can't say please don't interrupt me. No, but actually it would be more helpful if they didn't, because probably if you've constructed it well, you will answer all the questions that they would have asked. It's difficult for presenters when people interrupt them. It is difficult.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so sometimes you're told to stay silent.
Speaker 1:Or ask Encourage to Encourage.
Speaker 2:Encourage to yes, no. Sometimes it's really obvious, especially when somebody's really famous, I think what we have in the uk.
Speaker 1:Probably the most loved man in the uk is sir david attenborough, who's the the broadcaster has been, you know, as we all know, broadcasting for over 70 years. He's a kind of grandfather of all things natural and ecological and everything and he's a brilliant man. You wouldn't want to interrupt him, just out of respect, would you? Oh, it's respect so that's really out of respect. I mean, I wouldn't, you wouldn't interrupt the king, would you?
Speaker 2:That's a nice way to turn it around. Your silence is respectful. Your silence is all about listening and accurately hearing what somebody has to say before you respond, if you respond at all.
Speaker 1:Yes, and speak only if it's appropriate.
Speaker 2:So I think the time when it's most difficult to stay silent is when you're angry. Anger can rise up at work. It's less appropriate at work than maybe at home, where you just let vent. But tell us a little bit about using the power of silence If my emotions are running high and you are very angry in a situation.
Speaker 1:I mean, we all know this, but the danger when you're angry is that you vent and it's just continuous. You tend to say the same thing over and over again, which isn't necessarily very helpful to your argument. It comes from a position of hurt often. People often get angry when they think something's unjustified at work. They think, well, I've been working really hard, why are you punishing me for this? And I think, if you're in that situation, really hard, why are you punishing me for this? And I think, if you're in that situation, say how you feel once and then stop talking.
Speaker 2:Well, you're also in danger of saying something you're going to really regret.
Speaker 1:You can't take it back, can you? Because once you've said it, it's out there.
Speaker 2:No, once you've said it, you're only in a position where you can be forgiven. It can't be forgotten anymore. You've said it. So I think silence is sometimes a very powerful way to respond in an argument.
Speaker 1:Also when you're tired. I think the same thing Anytime when your judgment might be impaired. We should be careful, and maybe that's the time to say do you know what? I'm going to listen more and say less today, because I'll probably put my foot in it if I don't.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's true, or write less emails, or whatever it is write less in an email yeah, if you say less, then it's probably better than giving a half truth or misinformation, or that you reveal that you've misunderstood something because you haven't been listening or you haven't let them finish.
Speaker 1:Yes, or you've been blagging, and I think when I was younger, certainly I would. I mean, I'm guilt. I hold my hand up to this and I'm sure many of us are the same. Someone, someone will say well, did you see that film, or do you know this book, or whatever? And you say yes, yes, I do.
Speaker 1:And in your head you're going I really don't, and I hope you don't question me on it further, because they might go what did you think of the third chapter? And you think I haven't know. Can you tell me I'd love to know more? Or I just stay silent and then gradually they'll fill me in and I'll think oh, I see where they're coming from and now I can actually enter the conversation. But I haven't looked foolish because I haven't come in too soon because I've been comfortable with the silence.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that makes perfect sense. So we've looked at silence in a speech and we're now looking at silence in a meeting and when it's most powerful, and basically what we're saying is keep your trap shut if you don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker 1:If you don't know what you're talking about, absolutely right.
Speaker 2:Don't lengthen the meeting. Be respectful, be silent and contribute. When you feel you've got something helpful and truthful to say and contribute. Don't interrupt and actually you will be noticed oddly.
Speaker 1:Because it's powerful. Because it's powerful, so tell me more about this power behind silence. Well, it's something actors learn Really good actors. It's actually the gap between what they say, In other words, what are they going to say next? So character A may say something to character B. We're now waiting for the response from character B, and that pause is electric because we're going well. How are they going to respond to that? What are they going to say?
Speaker 1:I mean, this is an outrageous thing to say for A and what is B going to do? And the longer that pause is, the more exciting it is. Once the response comes, we go okay, now we're into a different thing, but the pause is helpful. And Claude to different things, but the pause is helpful. And claude debussy, the french composer, has this wonderful phrase the music is in the silence between the notes. Oh, the music is in the silence between the notes. And often you get to a really emotional part of a piece of music and there's a almost like it rises over a cliff and then comes down again over a hill and comes down, and that moment of pause is extraordinary.
Speaker 1:I, I know, remember when we inherited a lovely dinner service from my parents and it was hand-painted. It was a white dinner service with tiny blue stars on it. What's interesting when you look at it? There's a lot of gaps between the blue stars. If you just covered the whole thing in blue stars, it would be a plate full of blue stars, but actually it's the space between them that allows you to see the tiny blue stars. And similarly, if you filled your wall up with pictures, with oil paintings the whole wall you can't really see any of the oil paintings.
Speaker 2:So same with words, same with words and when you're speaking.
Speaker 1:And if you have space around them, silence around them. Actually you can really appreciate that one word or that one painting.
Speaker 2:Is there one playwright? You think that does that very well.
Speaker 1:Well, ibsen, chekhov, all the classics can be played like that. It always depends on how they're played.
Speaker 2:Of course.
Speaker 1:I mean Shakespeare can have you know to be or not to be, can have a huge pause in the middle because the character is deciding whether to stay alive or not that pause can be enormous or it could be short, depending on what the actor chooses to do, but the power of that pause is incredible.
Speaker 2:You spoke recently, I think, on social media, about the power of a pause.
Speaker 1:Coming in too quickly.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yes, this is to do with answering questions. So, sian, if you could ask me this question. So, very simple question what is your favourite colour, robin? And I'll answer in the bad way.
Speaker 2:Robin, what is your favourite colour?
Speaker 1:Blue.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's too quick, so how does it?
Speaker 1:make you feel it makes you feel I'm dismissive of the question in a way. Of course, I know the answer is blue. I'm wearing blue. Now, if you ask me the same question again, this is a better way of answering the same question robin, what is your favorite color? Blue yeah, it works better well, it works because it makes it look as if I'm thinking about it you got a huge response on social media for this huge I know it's the biggest response of any video we've ever had.
Speaker 1:actually, it was literally just explaining that one thing of valuing the question by not coming in too quickly and making the person feel valued. Yeah, and it's a super simple way, but it's in minuscule what we're talking about today, which is the power of the silence and the power of the pause.
Speaker 2:So thinking about individual relationships when you're just speaking to one other person? Is there a time to be silent? In other words, is it okay to be comfortable with silence when you're thinking over a question that they asked you?
Speaker 1:When is silence a really intimate part of a two-way conversation way conversation If somebody tells you something very personal about their personal life, if you listen and then eventually respond, or maybe just listen as they tell you this. I mean, I was coaching one person once and he said something very extraordinary happened over the weekend. Robin, and I said okay, and he told me that and it was so awful I can't even tell you what it was on the podcast, but it was so destabilising and he said I think I might have to leave my job and become a priest.
Speaker 2:Whoa.
Speaker 1:It was this big, and I don't think I responded for probably 20 seconds. As I was listening to what he was saying, the conversation slowed down quite a lot, and so both of us had quite a lot of silence in that conversation.
Speaker 2:Because it was so big.
Speaker 1:It kind of demanded that really. It was like, well, how do you even respond to something like that? And then I imagined how he would have responded to what he actually saw, which he then told me and I was then responding changes its tempo appropriately because of what we're talking about. So silence can be much longer, I suppose, in very serious issues like that, whether they're personal or business, but when they're serious, I think they can be longer, because you're already thinking about it and I know that in crisis.
Speaker 1:I was working once with the global head of risk for one of the biggest banks in the world and I said how is your day going? He said, well, not great, because the whole of our computer system for Asia has gone down. And I said we can reschedule, it's not a problem. And he said, robin, I have a team. There was no element of panic or rush. He was very comfortable with saying I've made my phone call, we'll go and have a discussion over lunch about something else. It's relevant to silence. Because he was prepared not to rush. I immediately went into fix mode. So I immediately went into well, of course you must get on your hands and knees with a screwdriver. And he's saying, robin, even if I went on my knees with a screwdriver, I can't fix it the way he told me. That was much slower and he had many more pauses in his speech.
Speaker 2:I think you're right. I think quite often when I've seen people faced with a crisis, they go slower. I think they've been told to go slower and to really think, because I recently did some training on timing stage shows. The one thing they kept saying to us in our training was if there's a crisis, if you have to radio in a crisis during this production, take a breath, stay calm, pause, then say what you have to say yes, don't tumble it out, because actually, when it's tumbling out, you're not making much sense. We just mentioned being comfortable with silence. Is that something that you can learn?
Speaker 1:I think it is. I can only speak for myself and from what I've observed in my clients. But for myself I'm much better at it than I was when I was younger. I think when I was younger I felt I had to be a performing monkey of some sort. Maybe that's why I became an actor, but it was quite high energy. If I look back on myself then maybe it's just getting a little bit older. You feel you have less to prove. I listen more than I used to do and I think that's a good thing. I wish I did it when I was younger more. But maybe that's something you learn as you get older. Certainly, working with my clients, I encourage them to be more comfortable with silence and you can learn it. But you've always seemed to me to say that you're a very good listener always have been. Did you always feel comfortable with silence or?
Speaker 2:do you feel?
Speaker 1:comfortable now with silence.
Speaker 2:No, I don't think so. I'm one of those people that I'd quite like to get things done. I don't want meetings to drag on or anything like that. So I tend to try and construct a meeting. So we cover the points quickly, succinctly. Everybody has a say, we come to a conclusion, We've got an action point Go.
Speaker 1:So it could be 11 minutes. It doesn't have to be 25 or half an hour.
Speaker 2:But what I have noticed is that, in personal conversations, I'm now much, much better at just staying silent as necessary, because what I've noticed is that someone may not have finished speaking even though they've gone silent. Yes, they're still trying to summon the courage to say more. Socially though, which isn't something that we've talked about yet but in social situations, when you're at a drinks party or whatever it is a dinner party I'm really uncomfortable when the table goes silent.
Speaker 1:Because you feel it's your responsibility to host.
Speaker 2:Well, maybe not to host necessarily if I'm not the host. I just think it's just bizarre that, let's say there's six of you having dinner together, that people would just be silent and a social situation is just that.
Speaker 1:Whose responsibility is that?
Speaker 2:I don't know. I think it's got to be the host.
Speaker 1:Well, I think it has to be the host. But I'm like you. If I'm not the host at an event and I can see that somebody at the far end of the table is being ignored or they're on their own, I try to include them, even though I'm not the host, just because I think it's a kind thing to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that kind of silence I'm not used to. I was at a meeting recently where we were having lots of discussion points and we got to a natural break and the chair said OK, we'll take a 10 minute break and in something like that, I'd expect silence in that break. We carried on the meeting and then lunch came, so we paused the meeting and we all went to get our food. It was buffet style.
Speaker 1:Together.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we were all lining up. All conversation stopped, we sat and ate our food in silence.
Speaker 1:And nobody said and tell me about your family or you're going on holiday or anything.
Speaker 2:Nothing, and it was understood that that's the way the chair wanted to organize it and nobody felt comfortable having small talk.
Speaker 1:And what did that silence feel like?
Speaker 2:Oh, really, really awkward for me, but nobody else felt it awkward. Everybody felt it was absolutely comfortable and that's the way the day was going to run. Lunch was virtually silent while we ate, and then we started the meeting again and conversation flowed.
Speaker 1:I'm comfortable with silence, but that embarrassing silence that you've just talked about there, it feels unnatural. It's not like there's a communal group where everybody's thinking about something which you can feel, and there's a kind of energy in that. This seemed almost like everyone was head down eating their food and they're like in little closed off boxes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I think that silence is probably something that a lot of people experience now, because our world is less socially based, one to one, communally, it's more online, and so I think quite a lot of people are maybe used to having silence. I don't know, but I get the feeling that a lot of people are very comfortable with silence and that's the way they studied or did university or whatever it was.
Speaker 1:Well, yes, they may be. I also noticed that, of course, many people seem to have headphones all the time, so they're on their own, they're not communicating, but they're constantly being stimulated by listening to podcasts which I hope they do on their phones or music or something, but sitting on a park bench just in silence, or sitting in the back of an empty church.
Speaker 2:Heaven.
Speaker 1:I like silence because I talk all the time. It's my job and I, quite like you know, meet weekends.
Speaker 2:I'm happy just to enjoy the silence, go for a long walk in silence, yeah.
Speaker 1:You've got to be on the same wavelength as somebody and you've got to be a true friend to somebody.
Speaker 2:I think if you can walk in silence with them and still feel connected to them, but you don't actually have to say anything, and that sounds like a really good place to end when you're walking side by side, next to your friend, where you feel a connection but you're silent there are lots of other fun episodes in this series.
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