The Power of Wait:
1. It protects people who are trying to communicate from their own impetuosity, so wisdom can assert itself in its own time. “Haste is not of God.” (footnote proverb)
2. It gives time for other events and people and opportunities to rearrange themselves
3. It is calm.
4. It is powerful.
5. It helps remove the garbage, the clutter.
6. It winnows the unnecessary from the essential.
7. It helps you figure out what you want.
8. It helps you figure out what you feel.
9. It helps you figure out what other people want.
10. It helps you figure out what other people feel.
11. It is healthy – lowers blood pressure, and reduces stress.


Why do people have trouble waiting?


Some people can't zip it. They literally don't have the ability to. They might have ADD, be a compulsive talker, or believe the bumper sticker that says, “He who says the most words, wins.”. This person may know a lot and feel it criminal to withhold information. He/she might have a passion to share passionately. This person might have the strength of “Woo” ( footnote Strength Finders) and be gifted in talking, marketing, and sales. Talkers could talk all day and just stop for dinner and continue talking all night. A talker might be an extrovert, or woefully need attention, work as an auctioneer or find it's just plain too hard to shut up.


The power of other people exerts real pressure on us. If we think other people are waiting for us to say something, whether or not that is true, we will talk to fill the silence. Peer pressure is real. Imagined peer pressure is also real. Remove the “shoulds” from your life, about the way you think other people want you to interact and react in conversation and you may find a “real you” that you have never explored or rarely used. It certainly will prevent others from taking you for granted. They will have to stop and listen to you in new ways because they can't predict your words anymore. In management, that is extremely useful. It also forces others to think for themselves before they come to you to solve their problems.
Do you have the habit of worry? Some people do and that is a powerful force that keeps them talking and talking in an attempt to alleviate their anxieties. People who have the habit of worry are likely to hate this habit and so they do things to try to tamp it down. They may smoke, drink or indulge in other addictions in an attempt to self-medicate. It doesn't work. The root of why they worry will haunt them until they get to the bottom of it. This requires work, just like digging out the roots of an old tree. But unless you do get to the bottom of it, it will get in the way of mature thinking, behaving and speaking. Isn't that the goal of a manager who wants to excel, to be mature in thought, actions and speech?


Some people won't zip it; they lack the motivation to try. Egocentric, always right and incapable of delegating, they may be mean spirited, possessed, feel victimized, need to be good at something and talking is IT. Or it's just too hard to stop.


What is the benchmark as to how many words are enough? “Be not tedious in discourse, make not many digressions, nor repeat often the same manner of discourse.” That's what George Washington said. (footnote) As Patricia Mathes, FAA manager, has said more than once, “If you give feedback well, you should only have to do it once.”


The 1970's musical, “Stop the World, I Want to Get Off!” highlights the central problem. The treadmill of the lives most of us lead is running fast. We may want to get off, but we don't know how. Until we learn how to drop out of the rat race and reduce stress in our lives, we find that waiting is hard to do. When we fill the “wait” with activities that we think will get us where we want to go, we may miss the blessing of just waiting to see what will unfold.


If you close your eyes and imagine that you are in a boat going down a river, you can almost feel the current of the water taking it in one direction. Imagine that feeling. You don't have to do much except sit tight and wait. Now imagine that you get tired of waiting and you take up a paddle that was laying at your feet and start to paddle down the river. You are striving and your trip is now different. The first way you allow events to unfold. The second way, you make something happen.


In communications there is a time and place for both actions, the waiting and the striving to make something happen. Which do you do most often? If you use the paddle more than the “wait”, you will miss a lot.