This week these speaking skills did the heavy lifting for me at work.

I had a long meeting where I needed to get buy in on a plan from my counterpart in another team. I know his personality type needs to feel he’s considered every possible edge case and angle before taking action. “When in doubt, the answer is no”

The problem is I am a fast talking, overactive Irish American. So even knowing this information it is absolutely agony for me to sit in silence long enough for him to fully consider each part of what I’m suggesting. But…

One of the 6 fundamentals of speaking is taking long deep pauses. Practicing this for 2 years now, it’s become much more comfortable when I speak. Turns out this has transferred over to conversations as well.

When I stumbled upon the one point that worried him the most, I just sat in silence, waiting for him to think it through. For nearly a full minute it stretched on, over a remote call, with no facial expression to check how he was feeling. Or if he was evens till on the call. Even asking would interrupt his thinking and stress him out.

But I barely felt any anxiety, or need to rush. I sat quietly. Looked out the window and waited. After an eternity “Ok, I think I got it. This will create some problems for my team, but all of them will be small, and relatively safe. I’m ok with us going forward with this.”

I estimate over 2025 this plan will save me 6 weeks of work.