How precious breath has become. The wildfires in California fill the air with particles of ash from burning buildings, trees, and toxic dumps. Shallow breaths feel protective but exacerbate rising tension and anxiety. Now I cherish the breath that fills my lungs and quiets my nerves. When I breathe deeply, I bring oxygen to my blood and nourish my vitality so that I stay healthy, resilient.
I am grateful for centering silences at home and at work. At home I attend to my breath as I sit before a simple table, covered with a beautiful piece of fabric, in a corner in our home that I’ve claimed for meditation. Sinking into the rocking chair handed down from my Auntie Margaret, I hear the familiar creak and feel the grooved arm rest where she worried her thumb. My breath slows, my heart expands, and as I return to a calm presence, I remember what really matters.
At work, moments of silence open us to a more expansive calm, to connection and shared purpose, to the unusual insight of the provocative idea. It may seem paradoxical but starting a meeting with a pause, time to take a breath or two, encourages a feeling of being together before jumping into the business at hand. Connecting first lays the groundwork for compassionate and productive dialogue.
Research shows that slowing down in mindful silence improves cognitive functioning: focus and the quality of our attention. The demanding pace of daily life produces stress, which limits innovation. Taking a minute to become fully present releases tension, awakens creativity and the possibility of inspiration.
A pause is practical and accessible to everyone. The pandemic means that employees are contending with vastly different situations from six months ago, both professionally and personally. On any given day, team members might be particularly strained, irritable, or exhausted. Some may exhibit signs of burnout. Conscious leaders know that a pause is one way to manage these various circumstances and keep the team connected and working together.
Introducing a minute of silence into a conversation or into a meeting can feel awkward at first, but like anything, the more settled you are, the more easily the invitation is received. I keep it simple “Let’s take a minute of silence to bring our attention here, to this conversation.”
Use these five steps to increase your willingness and ability to invite any meeting (of 2 or more) into silence:
Be in silence yourself, sometime earlier in the day to feel the benefits. Take a breath as you arrive in the meeting to expand back into the spaciousness of silence. As you know this experience, it feels familiar, and the team can more easily settle into a spacious equanimity with you.
Open the meeting with a very brief summary of the people, purpose, and outcomes to anchor the team in the present moment of why they are gathered together and why these particular people have been invited.
Then, introduce a moment of silence. Speak simply of the pause as a time to arrive, to gather thoughts, to prepare an inner atmosphere of focused listening and speaking. Let them know they are welcome to close their eyes or leave them open. (A caution: don’t get caught up in preamble, e.g. “This is weird… I’ve never done this before…”) Just start in a grounded straightforward way: “I’ve set the timer (anywhere from one to five minutes or longer), let’s begin.”
You can use words to place the focus on the breath; other times you can simply invite them into a set period of silence.
Complete the silence with a simple thanks as you transition to the meeting. Invite them to open their eyes if they are closed, to move their fingers a bit, and begin the meeting. (Another caution – resist the temptation to dismiss the silence in your embarrassment or discomfort by apologizing or laughing it off.)
People are way more ready than we think. Craig Souza, from Hewlett Packard and a Certified Teacher from the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute uses silence at the beginning of meetings to help people actually show up and discover that a pause is available to them as they hit reset and come into the present moment. Craig said that in his experience people love it. Management agreed: the bottom line is that you have a better meeting. The SIYLI curriculum is backed by a team of world experts in neuroscience, mindfulness, and emotional intelligence.
Why does silence matter? Silence gives us time to consider different ideas, to step out of positioning or politics and remember what we are here to do. The research shows that mindfulness encourages gratitude and compassion. So much more is possible when we generate coherence between us, when we truly listen to one another and build on each other’s ideas.
Over three decades helping leaders run effective meetings have proven to me that a pause can open possibilities when thinking has gotten fixed and can cool things down when productive differences turn into outright conflict.
The more contemplative among us also welcome an interval between words to bring forth our well-considered ideas. I’ve seen breakthrough innovations spoken into the spaciousness of a pause.
The world increasingly holds both great peril and great promise. Will we continue to try to design the future from what we know, from our expert knowledge gleaned over decades of experience, that same knowledge that has gotten us here?
Or will we institutionalize wisdom practices like a moment of silence, that give us the ability to think and act in new ways, reinventing how we respond to the perplexing predicaments of our times. We need an evolution and when we are willing, we can notice and make room for the evolution that is happening through us.
We don’t have time to repeat and reinforce what we know we know. Learning to listen into and speak from emergent wisdom is a personal and collective edge and not something we can do at the busy driving pace we too often find ourselves in today.
Let’s make it ordinary to sit in silence, listen for what we don’t yet know, gain the wisdom we need. In the pause, we can remember how precious life is and that our conversations and our decisions affect the quality of life for so many, near and far, for generations to come.
Photo credit: Kym MacKinnon, UnSplash, @vixenly