Several absolutely imperative skills for gaining effective feedback rarely surface in the popular training literature. Gen-Yers know that questioning is basic, yet they regularly tell me that they struggle with developing useful questions. Furthermore, there is little common knowledge of the power of listening. Indeed, one form of listening, golden silence, is one of the most effective keys to digging out useful feedback from managers and others.
If you google "golden silence," you get a tactic of the Deaf Guild and a snoring remedy. The golden silence I'm talking about as one of the most successful tools for gaining feedback is completely unknown. To my chagrin, neither of those legal beagles, Alan Shore or Denny Crane, is aware of its auspicious power in managing the innocent or the guilty. I assume that our narcissistic habits keep most of us from in-depth knowledge of particularly useful listening skills. We only reward the mouth, not the ears.
All kidding aside, golden silence grows out of education research regarding the effectiveness of various teaching styles. The studies found that one instructional style was invariably more effective than all the others, especially in the presentation of complicated scientific information. It was a style that relied heavily on two-way communication between teacher and student: aiming at creating a positive flow of information in both directions. This is just what you need for effective feedback insights.
The research shows that, essentially, golden silence involves longer pauses between questions and answers. Though extremely rare in most situations, it is a universally reliable technique. I first encountered the skill in the sales work of Miller and Heiman, but it never made the big-time in professional and managerial training.
Golden silence is a pause for approximately four to six second at two different points in the questioning process: after you first ask a question and after the respondent answers it.
When you give your respondent a moment to think about what you've asked him/her, the information given is much more likely to be solid information than if you had given half as much time. That's golden silence one.
Golden silence two is the practice of waiting after your respondent speaks and of giving that person the opportunity to add more information. What you'll find is that the person will revise and elaborate on what he/she first said.
This is a profoundly straightforward and elegantly simple process that is ultimately far more productive in developing a flow of information than any other technique.
While this accurate description makes the application of golden silence appear easy, that is not always the case. On one occasion, while working with plant managers who were not at all used to learning communication skills, I saw one manager get red-faced as I talked. I paused, waiting to see what he had to say. He took advantage of my silence with several expletives, saying that he "didn't have time in his busy day for this s--t."
"So you think this is a waste of time?" I asked, waiting about four seconds before he spoke up. He responded in no uncertain terms. When finished, I continued looking at him, quizzically, but in silence for another five or six seconds. Then he added quite a bit more information to what he had said earlier and started to elaborate in his ever-colorful language. Half way through his dissertation, the group of ten managers broke into howls of laughter--realizing what I had done to him. He turned red-faced and left the room. He was at the next session with clipboard and pen, taking notes. He also posed a number of smart questions at the following sessions.
This is one of those skills that you need to try on to realize it's effectiveness. Actually, it's built upon the fact that most of us quickly develop "silence nerves," and have to speak up, almost compulsively, when there is conversational silence. That's it's power. It's usefulness in gaining important feedback is nothing less than phenomenal.
I'd appreciate hearing from you after you've tried golden silence a few times.
