# Strategic Silence: Enhancing Leadership Impact

**Podcast:** LEITWOLF Podcast - Leadership, Führung & Management
**Published:** 2026-03-19

## Transcript

Silence enables thinking and thinking helps.
Silence increases the weight of your words.
And the signal is this matters.
Excellent leadership does not mean always having the right words, it means knowing when it is better to say nothing at all.
Hello and welcome to today's Lightwolf Podcast, your podcast for leading with impact.
First of all, I would like to take a minute and thank you.
Thank you for tuning in today.
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Now let's dive into the content.
Today we are talking about a leadership instrument that almost everyone underestimates.
Many find it difficult, yet it's often so incredibly powerful.
Conscious silence.
Many leaders believe they must constantly speak, explain, motivate, provide context, share briefings, provide answers.
Yet, impact often does not come from words you speak, it comes from well-placed silence.
Silence enables thinking, and thinking helps.
Greetings to Ralf Krüger and his partner Andreas Stumpf from AMC in Frankfurt.
These guys, together with their team, provide marketing consulting services that break down any purchasing barrier to your brand that you can think of.
I've never seen anyone stronger than them at this very skill.
So greetings to Frankfurt, to Andreas, to Ralph and their teams.
And the reason why I'm citing them here and now is twofold.
First, they are just excellent marketeers.
And second, it's that quote that my friend Ralf Krüger shared with me years ago.
Thinking helps.
And thinking takes time and space.
Conscious silence allows for just that.
Space and time to think.
I experienced a few years ago with a CEO and another member of his C-suite.
The C-suite member is a man who had been around in that company for three decades.
The CEO was also an experienced man that had led the company for eight or nine years.
And my team and I were invited to contribute to developing and in some places updating an integrated leadership measurement system.
They strongly bought into our recommendation to start measuring leadership, because only when you measure it you will get it.
So that HRO, CHRO started the meeting, presented to his CEO, and I was just invited to participate in the conversation and add where I saw I could add value.
CEO just broke into enthusiastic excitement.
He just spoke up and almost shouted out, and he was like cheerleading his CHRO, which was very well intended, very nice, very motivating, appreciative, but not efficient.
Because what started as a conversation turned into a ping-pong instead of a real focus conversation on the biggest points of value.
There was not much listening involved on the part of the CEO.
Instead of asking and listening, he started workshopping solutions.
And the result was the meeting that was planned for 30 minutes and would not have needed more than 30 minutes, lasted for almost one and a half hours without any added value.
In fact, if anything, it wasted an hour and may have cost some of the motivation of the HR leader.
So this is just to illustrate.
Of three typical leadership problems I occasionally experience.
Problem one leaders talk too much.
They believe they lead when they talk.
In meetings, they explain at length.
They give immediate answers when asked.
They fill every pause.
Result.
The team thinks less.
The team thinks less independently.
The team contributes less, and the team takes less ownership for solutions and for results.
Because the boss is doing all the talking.
And if the boss gives you the answers, well, then the boss is responsible for the results.
The worst thing is that sometimes these very bosses are then the ones complaining with me and complaining with us.
Hey Stefan, can't you help us?
Our leaders really don't lead.
We just need to be too operational.
We just have to be way too much involved in operational details.
Not realizing that their own non-listening, their own non-silence might be one contributing factor to the problem that they complain about.
Part of it is created by themselves, right?
So that's problem one.
Leaders talk too much.
Problem two, solutions come too quickly.
An employee presents a problem, and the leader immediately offers a solution.
It's not the ideal solution, but it's a good solution because it has worked for that leader a hundred times in the past and it's fast.
So oftentimes, team members would then shut up, swallow it, take it, execute it, which is short term efficient because that meeting was short, but it's long term fatal.
Why?
Because this behavior of a C-suite member of just throwing a quick solution when your teammate is presenting a problem, this behavior creates mediocrity instead of excellence.
And it creates dependency instead of ownership.
It creates lazy followers rather than courageous leaders.
So that's the second problem we have encountered a couple of times.
And problem three, lack of real presence.
Many leaders pretend to listen, while in fact they are not listening at all.
They are already mentally preparing their own answers, their own response.
The team feels it.
Trust remains shallow.
If you don't truly listen, you only lead on the surface.
One powerful approach to all of this is silence.
Now, a quick survey I'd like you to participate in.
It costs you probably five seconds.
If you could just say yes or not yet to the following question.
Are you aware of silence as a leadership instrument?
Yes or not yet.
Please click in the survey in the show notes.
Now, after sharing the insights, let's move to solutions.
I have three ideas for you that potentially might contribute to solving this problem.
Suggestion number one.
The three-second pause.
When someone else finishes speaking, don't answer immediately.
Count silently to three.
One, two, three.
This short pause has an enormous impact.
People continue thinking, they deepen their point, they take more responsibility.
Silence creates space for quality.
Let me share a real practical example of a brilliant use of silence.
A highly successful CEO who manages an entire private equity fund and works with my team since six years and also works with me in a one-on-one coaching session.
He has made it a habit to listen to an input or to a question.
He then pauses for five to ten seconds, sometimes more.
He may turn his eyes away, maybe to the window or to another place, and he silently thinks.
And when he's done with his thinking, he responds.
And he responds brilliantly.
So that's example number one.
Practical example number two from quite a while ago.
I grew up as a young manager in a company called Proctrend Gamble, which is a global consumer goods company with an American heart.
Very successful, making mistakes, like every company does.
I made many mistakes while employed in Proctrend Gamble, but a very strong company.
It's around since almost 190 years.
And when about 25 years ago, we significantly changed the organization with moving profit responsibility from local countries to regional headquarters.
After a few months, we started running into trouble.
And after those troubles had become visible and more consistent, an outstanding leader, his name is Chris Starr.
Chris, just in case you listen to this, this is about you.
You taught all of us a lesson, and the lesson you taught us not only brought us forward as a company, you helped the turnaround in Europe.
It also taught me a lesson that inspired me to also share this podcast here, which is all about silence and listening.
So what Chris did is he can he came from Brussels over to Frankfurt, where I was based, together with another 10 leaders of my age, my seniority, Chris just asked for our perceptions of the reorganization, what worked, what didn't, and what needed improvement.
He just listened.
He did not defend anything.
He didn't take any revenge.
He just listened, representing the European headquarters.
And after those two hours of sheer listening, all he did was repeating what he had heard, playing it back to confirm his understanding, and then asking three of us.
Now, the only one thing I'd like you to do is take a plane, fly to Brussels, and do the reverse exercise with the European headquarters.
And that solution, that leading with his ears and leading with silence, created a platform for real breakthrough growth.
Because the next 10 years, based on this conversations and just a few more like this, we found our feet, we created a base, we founded a platform, and we started growing together.
My local organization and the regional headquarters, soon afterwards, I changed into headquarters myself for five years.
We just created a platform for making one plus one equal eleven to win together.
And the next decade was a roaring success, which also Chris Stark contributed to majorly with listening and silence as a leadership tool.
That was these are my two examples for powerful silence.
My second idea for you is questions instead of answers.
When a problem arises, replace your first answer that you might be tempted to share with a good insightful question.
For example, if you asked, hey boss, what should I do?
Rather than answering, you should say, Hmm, what do you suggest?
What is your solution?
What could be a good first step?
And then be silent.
Hold the silence.
This develops people instead of managing them.
So that's idea number two.
And idea number three: use silence deliberately in important conversations.
For instance, after a strong question, after giving feedback.
When facing resistance, don't counter immediately, don't rush to fill the space.
Silence increases the weight of your words.
And the signal is this matters.
Excellent leadership does not mean always having the right words.
It means knowing when it is better to say nothing at all.
My invitation for you this week.
In your next three meetings, consciously observe how much you speak.
Experiment with silence.
You may be surprised how powerful this quiet leadership tool can become.
It's been my pleasure to have you on the show today, and I can't wait for you to dial in again.
Let us know your unanswered leadership topics, please.
Maybe your question, your topic becomes a title of one of the next, one of the next 500 Lightwolf Leadership Podcasts.
Thank you for your time.
Have a fantastic week, and looking forward to having you on the show again very soon.
Thank you.
Your Stefan.