Listening Between the Lines: What Consulting Taught Me About Silence in Conversations
In consulting, especially in talent and organization development, we often talk about insight, the ability to see what others don’t. But over time, I’ve realized that insight rarely comes from talking. It usually comes from listening, and more specifically, from the silences between what people say. Early in my consulting journey, I thought credibility came from how much I could contribute in a meeting, the number of frameworks I could reference, the sharpness of my questions, the clarity of my feedback. Clients, I believed, valued consultants who spoke with confidence. And while that’s partly true, I later discovered something deeper: that some of the most powerful moments in consulting happen when you simply stay quiet. I remember sitting in a feedback debrief once with a senior leader. His 360° results were, in his words, “not surprising.” He smiled, nodded, and said all the right things. But somewhere between his words and his sighs, I sensed something else, a quiet disappointmen...