Connect First: 52 Simple Ways to Ignite Success, Meaning, and Joy at Work

10

SILENCE

Be Quiet Together

One cannot fill a cup which is already full.

—CHINESE PROVERB

Here’s a surefire way to improve the quality of your meetings. Don’t say anything for five minutes. Really. You can employ this technique to center colleagues at the start of a session, or at the end of a meeting to ensure that you reach a productive conclusion.

There is a provocative Buddhist concept called radical emptiness that in its simplest form encourages us to empty our minds of inflexible “facts” governed by ego and instead open ourselves to whatever is happening in the moment. We are all like cups, so full of preconceived ideas that there’s seldom ...