I am reminded of a time when I lived in London and I was lucky enough to go to the opening of restaurant ‘Dans le Noir’. It’s a pitch black restaurant, with blind waiters. It was a great experience and I’d recommend it. My only gripe was it was f*!king noisy. So noisy in fact we had to leave. In retrospect I was not surprised at this. When you are depleted of your predominant sense you would obviously rely on others, in this instance your ears. However, in this moment it became an all out audio war. The entire room was competing for noise in a perpetual state of one upmanship to the point of unbearability.
Now, I had been trying to find a metaphor or comparison for the noisy state of communication at the moment and that was it… this experience in 'Dans le Noir'. Interestingly, I was reminded because the same happened in a coffee shop the other day. Please get to the point I hear you say. At a time when so many of us have a digital voice, in a personal and professional capacity, it can be easy to drown in the noise. We feel we need to speak otherwise we’ll be left behind, every post, every CSR project, every advert, every talking head, every holiday selfie poses an opportunity for mutual FOMO. The reaction tends to be to respond with more noise. Like this blog post I hear you cry!
Now to my point, don’t we all respect that person at the meeting table who listens and allows the conversation to unfold, then boom, drops a one line mic drop moment. Isn’t it kind of beautiful to witness the stand outs, the quiet ones, the mic droppers? Those that listen to the noise, those that sit back, think, then allow themselves to truly communicate who they are and what they want to say, the ones that don’t contribute to the noise, those that at least try and have a different voice. Now I am not saying that finding your frequency amongst the cacophony is easy but finding that meaningful moment is really important and knowing when to speak is beautiful, or shout.. or whisper or even sing. If you don’t have anything meaningful to say then sit back, listen and let others talk, find your frequency. The truer, honest voice will always be a more respected one, or at least that’s what we have seen… or heard.