Silence is Golden

No one in my life has ever accused me of being too quiet. I am opinionated, loud, and sometimes even obnoxious according to my family. Academically, this means that I am a large contributor to any discussion that I am involved in and can dominate the conversation at times.

However, this week a class activity gave me another chance to implement my Leadership Development Plan of enabling others to act through staying silent. This opportunity happened on Wednesday when I was chosen to observe my group’s discussion rather than to participate in it directly and this was not an easy task. I repeat, this was not easy. Throughout the whole discussion, I had to constantly remind myself that I couldn’t share my input even though at times I was practically bouncing up and down in my chair just waiting for the chance to speak.

As painful as this activity was, though, I observed several interesting things about myself in relationship to the group’s interactions. First, because I was completely eliminated from the conversation, I was able to observe how many times I would have normally jumped into my group’s conversation. That number was embarrassingly high. I had not realized just how much I dominated the conversations of our group until I couldn’t participate at all. By doing this, I was definitely not enabling the other people in my group to act.

Also, I was able to observe the fact that my group generated some amazing ideas without my input. This was a reminder to me that I am not as important as I sometimes think I am. The people in my group are creative and unique  and I was able to see that even more clearly on Wednesday.

As we continue writing our proposal and preparing for our final presentation, I am going to take the observations that I made during this discussion and use them to continue to enable the others in my group to act, even if that means that I need to stay silent more often.