The awkward silence

Have read a few things about the silent pauses in meetings (I think it's common in Apple) where there will be periods of silence in meetings where the attendees are thinking. Mostly, as far as my experience goes, it is not very common. I have been in some of the meetings where there will be a period of silence when a particular person has to talk and when we say " David ... are you there?", he would say " I am thinking..." Since this kind of silences is not very common in meetings, people usually do not expect it.

But it is also a powerful negotiating technique. Suppose you are negotiating with someone, and you want A and the counterparty wants B, you are in a deadlock. If both of you are experienced negotiators (or smart businessmen or politicians), there should be a silence, and each party will expect the other party to break it first. And it will get a bit long and awkward. If you feel awkward with the silence and jump in to say something, usually you compromise on what you want or you mumble something to postpone the issue. If you just go with the silence and keep quiet it becomes a challenge of who blinks first, and if you win the challenge, you may win the battle.

Such a situation happened in my project call last week where I was saying A, Developer was saying B, the Super manager was supporting the developer and there was a deadlock and a silence, and we got into a "Who will blink first" challenge. There was around 30 seconds of silence during which I got very tense sensing the battle. Finally, the developer spoke, and he had his way, but the client came back strongly refuting him later.... but that's not the objective of this post. I feel I am better off than I would have if I had broken the silence.

I think seasoned businessmen and politicians know this. I once had a troubled episode of renting my home to a businessman and initially when we were discussing he let in many periods of silence, and I jumped in to break them every time. And I never got the better deal. Either he got things the way he wanted, or I just postponed the discussion and the decision.