The Silent Treatment
So you find yourself in your boss’s boss’s office. He’s sitting there in his nice suit and cufflinks smiling nicely. Its been about 5 seconds since you finished answering his question about that troublesome project you’re managing and he hasn’t said a word. Not one. Maybe you didn’t answer the question? Perhaps he’s annoyed at you? Maybe he didn’t understand? Perhaps you explained yourself so poorly that he’s stunned?
Probably not.
He’s probably just an arrogant jerk playing power games with you. You see there’s this technique that “important” people sometimes use on those who they are sure are in awe of their power and all round importance. They stay deliberately quiet when you indicate using non-verbal or verbal queues that you’ve finished talking. The hope is that since you are a normal person inbued with social graces that you’ll pick up the slack and keep talking. Then, as you grope around your little brain, you’ll spill the beans on your secret plans or whatever. After all you’ll be so flustered.
What should you do. Don’t panic and choose one of these two options:
- Talk about anything even obliquely related to the subject. Go into enormous, banal detail. If you’re talking about a project schedule then list every task you can think of. Don’t forget to give a history of which people have had anything to do with each individual task. Most importantly, try not to pause for too long for at least a few minutes. The idea is to apply a bit of aversion therapy. He goes silent. You babble.
- The alternative is to sit there quietly as well. After all he asked a question and you answered. If Mr Bossman has more questions then he should be able to ask shouldn’t he? After a while if he doesn’t get a flustered reaction from you he’ll probably not try it any more.
Hopefully you’ll never face the situation. I’ve only had it tried on me a few times. The first time I was flustered and madly groped around for a while trying to answer the question. By the next time I’d worked it out by reflecting on how uncomfortable I was the first time. I used the babbling technique which worked - no more attempts from that guy. The last time, with a different person, I tried the going silent technique. I also tried to smile knowingly at him. He gave up on the discussion (probably because he thought I was a deranged axe murderer).
P.S. If you’ve ever used this technique on someone then please stop reading my blog. We don’t want your kind around here.
August 18th, 2006 at 12:16 am
Maybe he’s thinking?
I’d probably go with 3. Ask him if he understood my answer.
August 18th, 2006 at 4:40 pm
Jason - true, he could be thinking - it depends on whether or not social signals saying “received and preparing response” are emitted. If all that you are receiving are social signals saying “not finished, keep talking” then its probably a power game.
I’m absolutely sure the times it happened to me that it was a power play since the normal conversational social signals weren’t being sent.
August 19th, 2006 at 2:37 am
‘Silent treatment’ is a recognised win-lose technique that is taught to people, although that might not be the name. I recall learning about it, the issue is that people under pressure and not aware of the technique will ramble in a panic and start revealing information. This works very well in a sales situation, but it hardly makes sense in a project settingbecause in general there isn’t such a need to extract secret information, and it carries severe costs. As do all win-lose techniques, but this one is obvious.
I can’t recall the advised counter-tactic. If we think about it, the counter-tactic is mostly about knowing of its existance, we could do anything as long as we understand the game. Personally I’d wait a while — play the game back again — then pack my things and get up, saying, “let me know if you have any more questions.” And walk out. But one has to do it non-aggressively, as that will hand the guy a weapon.
August 19th, 2006 at 10:37 am
Iang - definately a win-lose technique. A pretty silly one since it allows someone to *perhaps* get some extra information at the likely expense of damaging a relationship.
Being silent is a more risky approach than babbling - since it is a more obvious tit-for-tat retaliation. It is, however, also more likely to elicit (grudging) respect from the offendor.