Embrace the Rule of Awkward Silence

Intelligent Minds Embrace the Rule of Awkward Silence. You Should Too.

The rule of awkward silence is simple: When faced with a challenging question, instead of answering, you pause and think deeply about how you want to answer. This is no short pause; rather, it involves taking several seconds (10, 20, or longer) to think things through before responding.

But these “silent starts” ensure the undivided attention of participants, who may not dedicate the needed time to think through such a memo if it were assigned as preparation.

The rule of awkward silence has always been valuable as a tool of emotional intelligence, because it allows you to balance thought and emotion, instead of simply reacting based on feeling.

But today, the rule is more useful than ever–much because of how the world has evolved in the past decade.

Why the rule of awkward silence is more valuable than ever

We live in a world that demands instant gratification.

Emails should be answered on the same day. Slack and text messages should be answered right now. You forgot about the Zoom meeting? No problem, you can still join. And the meeting immediately following, too. (After all, with everything virtual nowadays, you don’t even have to leave your desk, right?)

But there’s a major problem with all of this instantaneous communication: It doesn’t leave time to think.

That’s right–think. As in, think critically.

Critical thinking involves deep and careful consideration of a subject. It requires introspection and retrospection. It involves weighing and analyzing facts, and careful reasoning. And it results in making insightful connections.

None of this is possible without time. And time has become the biggest luxury on the planet.

But when you embrace the rule of awkward silence, you steal back time. Time that used to be wasted on nonsense answers. Time that used to be wasted on telling the other person what you think they want to hear, as opposed to what you truly believe.

And once you practice it enough, you will no longer find the rule of awkward silence, well, awkward.

Because while taking an extended pause to think things through may seem strange at first, you’ll begin to realize many of the advantages it provides.

For example, the rule of awkward silence allows you to:

Put the outside world on mute Exercise your thinking faculties Get to root problems more effectively Give deeper, more thoughtful answers Bring your emotions into balance Remain in harmony with your values and principles Say what you mean, and mean what you say Increase your confidence

That may sound like a lot to accomplish in 10 to 20 seconds, but you’ll be surprised what your brain can accomplish once it’s given a little more time to do what it was designed to do: think things through.

So, the next time someone asks you a challenging question, or even what seems on the surface to be a simple one, resist the temptation to respond with the first thing that comes to mind.

Instead, embrace the rule of awkward silence, and think before you speak.