Silence is fast becoming a precious commodity. People sing about it. People get up early for it. Some even pay for it.
And according to Julia Gillard, silence is a necessary tool for managing a challenging workload and making strategic decisions.
She told a Melbourne audience on Friday that she regrets not spending more time in her ‘Cone of Silence’ during her tenure as prime minister.
Speaking at the Women’s Leadership Forum, a fundraiser for Layne Beachley’s Aim For the Stars Foundation, Gillard said the Cone was her space for thinking and seeking clarity on decisions — either alone or with her trusted advisors.
The expression is a Get Smart throwback. For those of us too young to know all about the secret agent Maxwell Smart in the 1960s comedy series, the struggling spy would regularly retreat into this space for top secret conversations.
Gillard’s often talked about her Cone, mentioning it frequently at speaking events. She’s given it serious importance for getting through some challenging periods of her leadership career and urges other women to consider what entering a Cone of Silence could do for them.
“I should have done it more,” she said on Friday. “I strongly recommend to you that in a world that is so pressurised you do find that clear time to think and reflect, to talk to the best of your advisors. It will help steady you. It will help you stay on course. It will help you see around the corners and work out what is going to come at you in the future.”
It’s true we’re more silent-poor than ever before and now need to actively carve out time and space for such thinking. As Gillard said, with everything blinking and beeping and constantly competing for your attention, we need the space to proactively switch it all off.
What’s not true – and Gillard’s own experience provides proof of this, because if a PM can find it, anyone can – is that we’re apparently too busy to find such space for important, strategic conversations.
There are emails to send. Meetings to attend. Social media accounts to check.
The ‘Cone of Silence’ could ultimately be key to cutting out a good chunk of the activities that make us ‘busy’. As Gillard said, her Cone helped her achieve clarity. It’s where you can return to your sense of purpose and separate the important from the unimportant.
It’s where you can delegate, prioritise, and make forward plans that’ll see you work smarter. It’s where your advisors can tell you some hard truths about where you’re wasting your time, the opportunities you’re missing, the mistakes you’re possibly making.
Finding silence isn’t actually all that hard, it’s our willingness to sit down with it that’s actually difficult. It’s about committing to the silence. No devices. No distraction. No bright, shiny objects pulling you into a pit of procrastination.
Decision-making and strategic planning is hard – as is being alone with your own thoughts. Often, we’d rather be distracted.