Silence: Because I talked so rarely, people took the time to listen to me

This is a great technique, and an excellent essay describing it. I found it enjoyable to read.

I wonder, though, if the author failed to pinpoint the likely cause of this effect. Yes, I believe that there is an element to it that involves signaling alpha security in a non-verbal way, and another element to it where the sheer rarity of your speech raises its perceived value.

But consider this, which I suspect may be the dominating force at play: if you follow the author's algorithm and only speak if you feel as though saying nothing will have greater cost in the future to put things back on the rails, what are you doing if not filtering out the lower-quality, lower-urgency, and lower-importance thoughts that you might otherwise utter. I believe that the effect of this is that if you only utter the crème de la crème of your thoughts, then people end up suspecting that you're more brilliant than you actually are. At the very least, people will come to learn that if you have something to say, it will likely be well worth their attention.

It's simply a matter of keeping your lower-quality thoughts as the part of an iceberg submerged below the surface.

I'm a grad student in English Lit, which means I teach freshmen comp to undergrads, which in turn means they want to fight about grades at the end of each semester. One former student, who'd read this essay before I posted it (http://jseliger.com/2010/10/02/how-to-get-your-professors%E2...) asked how often students actually win grade fights, and I relied, "Never, with me."

I preface grade fights by saying, "I won't change your grade" and then talk about the paper to the extent necessary. The right way to get better grades is to do better work next time. Being on this side of the desk has definitely made me more skeptical of the students who said, "So and so was a hard grader / mean / hated me," mostly because those things might be somewhat true but can almost always be overcome by greater effort, at least at the undergrad level.

Also, grade fights can sometimes be won through silence, as James Fallows describes: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2009/03/-quot-... . His post is titled, "When you're done talking, stop," which might be slightly better advice than "rarely talk." Since learning the silence trick, grade fights have plummeted in length, since now I've learned to just sit there and give one sentence answers once the substance of an issue has been covered.

Unfortunately, the poster chose to break his dignified silence by posting a epic paean of fatuous self-praise on-line, interspersed with some quotations from his fathers 'blog on wisdom'. Really.

It would be interesting to hear the other sides of the story:

"Yeah, when he finally spoke, we were all surprised he could still talk, it was sort of weird. But I guess he was our manager so we had to listen to him".

"When he went silent in the middle of the negotiation I wondered what the hell he was doing; is this some sort of new trick?"

Dispensing this kind of wisdom seems to be yet another popular form of 'premature victory lap' on HN, where fairly wet-behind-the-ears types with no major runs on the board can puff themselves up by handing out the Keys to Their Success.

In this example I imagine part of the reason why his infrequent talking was taken so seriously is because when he wasn't talking he was engaging in active, serious listening. This gave him a better grasp of what was going on, and it allowed him to make his own speech highly relevant and sensible.

I think this is a great lesson. Good speaking arises from good listening, because only good listening will give you the best sense of what everyone else is thinking and what you need to say to explain your own thoughts to them.

This reminded me of a quote, "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt." It's attributed to Abraham Lincoln (e.g. in the Yale Book of Quotations).

It's a humorous twist on a Bible verse: "Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: [and] he that shutteth his lips [is esteemed] a man of understanding." (King James Bible, Proverbs 17:28)

This is very true. I have repeatedly been called a great communicator which surprises me as I find in group conversations I tend to listen 70% of the time and talk only 30% of the time. I believe because I talk less, more weight is given to what I say. Also, because I talk less, I choose my words wisely instead of just blurting out anything that comes to mind.

In french we have a saying

    "Tourne ta langue 7 fois dans ta bouche avant de parler"

it means

    "Turn your tongue 7 times in your mouth prior to talking"

A metaphor, of course. A reminder, often used by my mum, to say that I was speaking to say nothing.

Carefully crafting the flow of words is as important as the words themselves. Same apply to writing.

While this may be helpful for business people and politicians, I think this isn't great advice for this demographic. A huge skill lacking within this industry (and of course I'm generalizing) is that of verbal communication. Wouldn't talking more, much like writing more, help that skill?

I used a silence technique when tutoring (class size about 20): if you want students to answer a question, give them space. 10 seconds of silence is quite uncomfortable - 30 seconds is extraordinary, unbearable. Don't elaborate, or coach; just ask the question, then total silence.

Nature deplores a vacuum, and silence will draw someone out. Counter-intuitively, it also gives permission for people to speak who otherwise would be too shy.

I absolutely agree with this. I find that time and time again, when I refrain from talking as much as possible, people tend to listen more and more when I speak.

I have also found that silence can be very useful in an educational situation. When I tutor kids in math and they are having trouble working through a problem, the tend to look at me after 5 seconds of effort and expect me to help them. I just stare at them until they go back and look at the problem again. 75% of the time they figure it out. I'll admit, I got the idea from Plikt (the tutor of Valentine's children in Speaker for the Dead)

I think of certain quiet people I know as having high signal-to-noise. When they start to emit, I listen carefully, because my attention will be rewarded with lots of signal per unit time.

I've heard something similar that sums up this way:

       "The more you're heard, the less you're listened to"

The problem with this "silence" is that you are not actually silent, you never are. If you can't back up silence with non-verbal communication skills you will end up being that weird shy guy who never says anything and you really don't want to be weird shy guy.

There is also a huge difference between silence in a group setting, which just means letting others speak compared to silence in a 1-on-1 conversation in which you are forcing someone else to make a move.

Whereas the first is relatively simple to pull off, it also just affects the signal to noise ratio and might give others the impression that you are more intelligent than you actually are. Once that intelligence is put to the test this becomes anything but simple.

The second one can be a lot more difficult. Most people are not accustomed to silence, they prefer noise, they live in noise and they hide in noise. If you are not comfortable or confident enough in how you use silence it will backfire and you end up in a situation that is just awkward.

Something of a twist: I used to post a lot on some topics/lists and people tried to shout me down. Arguing with them wasn't effective in swaying opinion. I began looking for other outlets for my need to "talk" and saying less on certain topics and reserving more of what I did say for blogs/websites. I say a lot less on those topics these days. But people are beginning to listen to me and not count me so much a fruitcake. When I tried endlessly to explain, thinking they just didn't understand, it hurt my credibility and convinced people it was about ego and attention-mongering. I still feel there is a great deal of information which needs to be conveyed on those topics, but I continue to work at finding ways for my communication to be effective and not just so much churn. Since I'm a huge blabbermouth, this just does not come naturally to me at all.

My father also drilled the same idea in me when I grew up. But as of late I started to notice things that do not quite follow this golden rule.

Take following examples:

1, when in a group of friends engaging in casual conversation, staying quiet tend to get you ignored. You will be labeled as "that quiet person" unless you are already a respected member of the group.

2, in business meetings, the most important persons on the table will never get ignored. And it's best for them to NOT dominate the meeting so the other attendees can express their views.

3, The ability of commanding a conversation is highly valued in society, and such skill cannot be gained by being quiet all the time. In fact, even conveying your message across the table takes skills that can only be learned after much practice.

I use an alternate of this as well. In almost never use profanity, particularly as an intensifier. When I do, it's full-quieting, guaranteed to rivet the attention of those who know me. Perfect for those rare times when I absolutely must be heard.

"We have two ears and one mouth for a reason."

I think one of the big reasons this is effective is because when you're not talking, you're listening, and this lets you figure out which stuff actually matters.

Silence is golden when you can't think of a good answer. --Muhammad Ali

It only works if the people who are listening to you don't need to be corrected a lot. Some people in my class who are somewhere between chav and decent IT student have a lot of theories that can instantly be proven wrong. Otherwise yes, I've found this to work really well.

This is anecdotal, but I've heard Steve Jobs is notorious for doing this.

I would post a comment, but...

an economy of words

The following is not necessarily commentary on the poster's method of handling meetings:

I had a manager who would do the say-something-then-sit-in-silence thing. It was absolutely horrible. Basically, you had to be a sociopath in order to not feel perpetually uncomfortable around her. Every 'normal' person working for her was absolutely miserable. I'm sure she thought she was being very clever.

Is this Western ego-mass trying to adopt and assimilate emerging Asian economies by embracing its cultural distinctiveness?