Leadership — Being alone with our thoughts

“tout le malheur des hommes vient de ne savoir pas se tenir en repos dans une chambre”

“All of humanity’s misfortunes stem from man’s inability to stay at rest in a room”

From Pensées by Blaise Pascal, written in the 1600s

A search on this “My Writing” page currently returns twenty articles referencing the keyword “silence”.

If you’d like a quiet hour or two to muse eclectically on this theme, I offer you the search here.

I keep coming back to silence as a theme, so why is that ?

First, my experience tells me that silence is one of the simplest tools a leader has, yet so often ignored for many reasons, not least the need to be seen to be busy (a search on busy yields even more results !).

Why else, though? Well, I struggle with silence myself, not only with sitting still in a room (as Pascal puts it) but also being silent and continuing to listen rather than speaking out to give my opinion.

Despite years and years of training and practice as a coach, I am yet to master the art of Stephen Covey’s fifth habit, that of listening with the intent to understand, not to reply.

My guide and coach, Ed Percival, said: BE MORE YOU.