Avoiding Embarrassing Silences

29th November, 2011 - Posted by stellacollins - No Comments

I was lucky enough recently to be invited to the Thinkers50 summit (#thinkers50 if you’re on twitter) and there were four great speakers, Marshall Goldsmith (very warm), Costas Markides (very funny), Vijay Govindarajan (very clever) and Marcus Buckingham (very inspiring) all of whom taught me some new lessons about great presentations, engaging with people and especially their use of stories.

I particularly liked Marshall Goldsmith’s approach because he engaged us in doing something for ourselves rather than just listening. Effectively he ran a fast coaching session for about 350 people and I think most of us went away with some new ideas to try – and the motivation to try them. It was very impressive.

His process was quick and energetic and we met lots of new people as part of the exercise so it made the conference much easier later on as you bumped into those people again. He’s very generous with his work and ideas so if you want to find out more go to http://www.marshallgoldsmithlibrary.com/

But the point you might be interested in is the contrast between this presentation and another I attended later in the week where it should have been easy – there were far fewer people and they knew each other, but when the presenter asked us some questions to try to engage us there was an uncomfortable silence. What simple thing did Marshall Goldsmith do that the 2nd person failed to do?

Marshall Goldsmith made it easy to talk to other people first and then to share with the whole room. He directed us to talk to our partners first; it’s easy to talk to the person next to and nobody can tell if there’s one pair who aren’t saying anything yet. Wheras if you ask a whole group to talk to you everyone waits to hear what someone else is going to say, then gets nervous that they’re going to look silly and then there’s that embarrassing silence that makes us all feel uncomfortable.

At that point many presenters go into ‘talk’ mode – say anything to fill the silence and then don’t allow any more silences because they don’t feel good.

Once we’d talked to our partners we felt supported, backed up, we’d had a chance to quickly practise, discuss and refine what we wanted to say so it was much easier to contribute to the larger group.

Try it next time you’re asked to give a presentation and you want people to engage with you – ask people to briefly answer some questions in pairs first and then contribute to the larger group.