Power Telephone Technique 5

Being on the telephone, or face to face and leaving a long silence can, for most people be very uncomfortable, practice it.

Try leaving long pauses in conversations at home or with friends, don’t tell them what you are doing, count to yourself how many seconds are actually passing, it’s usually far less than you think.

Can you think of an example where Silence has worked for you?

I was working with a chap recently who had a teenage daughter, after discussing the power of silence he had a conversation with her that went something like this

Where are you going tonight?

I’m going to Natasha’s she’s having a sleepover

At that point he remained silent! Normally he would have responded “ok then” or whatever, however the simple act of saying nothing made his daughter open up and tell him far more than she would have done normally,

Michael will be there and her Mum & Dad are away etc etc!

This technique is VERY powerful….most people think great business people have the gift of the gab or can talk for ever actually the OPPOSITE is true

Great business people are great listeners….and the same goes for engineers, project managers and, environmentalists!

Using silence and listening effectively, are crucial areas and we’ll come back to them in a later module however remember whenever you ask a question WAIT for the answer, most people don’t.

Start practicing using silence today……you will soon reap the benefit of this skill

To conclude, all the things that we have talked about are all greatly aided by proper preparation. There is nothing more frustrating than looking back over a phone call or a face to face meeting thinking a lot of “if only’s” and “what if’s” so lets try to avoid those things.

Therefore think of all the elements we have discussed in this series and how you can put them to great use

Finally, why not write a small script, only a few lines worth of dialogue, and then record yourself reading this script. Then to re-record using the techniques we discussed.