How Silence Bosters Stability in the Workplace

Our Stability Project continues with St. Benedict's "Degrees of Humility" as laid out in his Rule. We've learned that Obedience will be a kind of precondition for building the virtue of humility. Now we move on to Silence.

As you probably know, silence is an important part of daily life in most monasteries. Some, in fact, impose very strict silence pretty much 24/7, except when the monks gather for praying and singing of the liturgy, typically the Divine Office, throughout the day and night, as well as Holy Mass. But let's not allow this specific application of the practice of silence deflect its possible application in the workplace.

Recognizing that the degree of silence, talking, and noise in general varies from workplace to workplace, consider how St. Benedict introduces the importance of Silence for his monks:

"Let us do as saith the prophet: 'I said, I will take heed unto my ways, that I offend not with my tongue. I have set a guard to my mouth. I was dumb and was humbled, and kept silence even from good words.' (Psalm 38)"

Our first and most obvious application would be to avoid offensive language directed at another. But what about "good words"? St. Benedict explains:

"Here the prophet teaches us that if we should at time, for the love of silence, refrain talk, we should with more reason still, for fear of sin's punishment, eschew all evil talk."

So it's not just that we refrain from offending someone with our talk. It's important that our lips avoid any and all "evil" talk. We might take this to include vulgar language as well as any words or comments that in any way communicate an acceptance or promotion of evil. Think: lying, exaggeration, cheating, gossip, detraction, off-color remarks addressed to members of the opposite sex, etc.

As a sole proprietor working from home most of the time, my own workplace hums away in silence much of the time. I do speak with clients, vendors, and professional colleagues. But as a percentage of my time working, I try to keep this down to at most maybe a quarter of my time. It's just how I run things and it works well as it frees up chunks of time to concentrate on the good work I want to provide for clients.

In a workplace with lots of folks jammed together, there's more opportunity for talk. I've spent most of my working life in such environments. But thinking about those times, I must say a lot of verbiage was spilled that ultimately wasted a lot of time. You want to be polite and professional, of course. And that likely entails verbal communication. But if you find - as did I - that a lot of talk wastes time, cut it out. Replace it with silence.

An additional benefit of silence in the workplace, besides freeing up more time to focus on the task at hand, could be space for listening: to clients, customers, colleagues, your boss. And not just "letting" others speak. Really listening. It's a real skill that, in my experience, can use a lot more development in most work places - really in life in general.

Or, as St. Benedict puts it,

"...it befit the disciple to be silent and to listen."

We should be able to understand the importance of silence for us non-monks. We don't need to be in a monastery, under the observance of a Rule, to understand that too much talking really takes us away from producing the sort of laser-focused, excellent work that would not only please a boss or a customer, but, more importantly, God. 

And as for promoting stability in the workplace, it should be obvious that the peace and calm that support a stable workplace will be greatly enhanced by an increase of silence.