I recently spent an entire week in complete silence.
No talking. No verbal communication whatsoever. Doctor’s orders.
Not exactly ideal for a communicator.
Sadly, this isn’t unusual for me. It marked the fifth time in 10 years this has been necessary: a surgery to address abnormalities with my vocal cords.
Previously I tried to work through my recovery – using hand gestures, mouthing the words, using a white board to convey thoughts in the moment, and staying fully connected as best I could.
But this time was different.
This time I left town for a remote place assured of silence and a focus on healing.
I limited all screened time. I walked a lot.
I did tactile things – mostly painting. I read for pleasure.
And this is where my brain did something unexpected.
Instead of shutting off or winding down, my brain accessed a gear that is rarely found amid the speed of daily life.
A week of recovery turned into a week of renewed ingenuity brimming with ideas, surprising connections, and new possibilities. Things that would not have happened had I been running on the proverbial treadmill of work.
To be clear, this was different from vacation, from necessary downtime.
It was a mandated stop of verbal communication and a self-imposed limit on digital communication.
That, I learned, was the key to unlocking the floodgate of possibilities.
When you are not actively communicating you become an observer, a listener – a discerning captive to that still small voice from within that provides a way forward.
IMAGINE THIS:
You have a big project hanging in the balance or a must-win pitch on the horizon.
You could engage as you always do – brainstorm meetings, ideation sessions, check-ins, status updates, work reviews, more meetings – and then “sprint” to the finish line.
Or you could give your team some silence and space. A mandate to think rather than perform. Consider it the opposite of the groupthink brainstorm.
This doesn’t require extreme measures or a full week’s worth of quiet and processing.
But what if you provided the freedom, untouchable increments of time and some space to breathe, think, and ideate in silence away from scrutiny of performance, away from the tyranny of the urgent?
What fruit might that yield?
What might a collaborative session look like when unfettered thinking is brought back to the table, rather than expecting brilliance to strike during a planned 60-minute brainstorm?
You and your team likely won’t find that hidden gear under those circumstances.
It is not how the flood of creative problem-solving is unleashed.
Every organization wants the breakthrough idea that accelerates the business. Few are willing to give it the time, space, and necessary silence to bubble up from the quiet depths to the surface.
NOW IMAGINE THIS:
Your competitive advantage isn’t about doing more, or grinding, or hustling, failing even faster, or cracking the whip on your team.
In fact, it might look a lot like doing nothing – or appear to be ignoring the elephant in the room.
But you know looks can be deceiving.
Because what you are doing is making space and clearing a path for the best thinking to emerge. To allow for strategic listening to occur and see how ideas begin morphing into solutions.
That’s not only good business, but it also reenergizes teams to think – and then perform – differently.
And it’s also what organizations seek for the good of their business and their people.