LEADERSHIP Series: Guard Your Speech

Leaders communicate. Effective leaders communicate well. Sometimes, however, communicating well means being quiet.

As some readers know, I was a theater major many years ago and completed all my graduate work, sans thesis, in theater. That schooling made it clear to me that actors are taught not only how to communicate, but also how to “be” in the silence between speaking parts. It is a form of active listening, as it were - being the character - which sometimes is not part of the direct conversation, but is part of the stage conversation.

Your leadership may call on you to practice discreet silence. Keeping one’s own counsel. “Playing their cards tight to their chest.” Guarding knowledge. When to speak about a matter and when to just listen takes discretion that is often born of experience – bad experiences.

Proverbs 5:1-2 (AMP) MY SON, be attentive to my Wisdom [godly Wisdom learned by actual and costly experience], and incline your ear to my understanding [of what is becoming and prudent for you], that you may exercise proper discrimination and discretion and your lips may guard and keep knowledge and the wise answer [to temptation].

As in all matters dealing with communication, one must be diligent to not only control the tongue, but also the body. Sometimes, our silence communicates the message we have withheld speaking.

Are you as careful with your silence as you are with your words?


Copyright ©2009 by P. Griffith Lindell