When to keep your mouth shut

    Klaus

January 8, 2008 by Klaus  
Filed under Klaus

One woman to another: “He wouldn’t dare eat his heart out - he’d break his heart on it!” (Quotation from Louis A. Safian, 2000 More Insults).

This happened to some of my friends and might give you also an example living in the Philippines.

The owner of a printing business was delighted when another company wanted to buy one of the used printing machines. After careful calculations, the owner fixed a price of 2 million Philippine Pesos and started formulating his arguments. But when he sat down to negotiate, an inner voice told him to wait.

The buyer quickly filled the silence with a rundown of the machine’s strengths and weaknesses. The seller said nothing. Suddenly the buyer said, “We’ll give you 3 million, but not a single centavo more”. After an hour the deal was made.

In business but also in personal relations, a word not spoken may be he choicest word of all. Opportunities to improve a situation by “zipping your lip” come up all the time in everyday dealings with others. Following this advice, I was able to deal with many Filipinos for the good of both sides.

Sometimes the benefit of keeping your mouth shut may be that you won’t have to eat your own words. Sometimes an unthinking remark, no matter how innocently made, can have very serious consequences. As the saying goes: “Few men have ever repented of silence.” Or a few women… .

Waiting is a strategy that is too often overlooked in all kinds of situations. Sometimes it’s a wonder what a small dose of determined silence can do. In the past, psychologists used to teach us to talk things out with others. Nowadays I would hesitate to underline this opinion in its totality. I’m sure that also my personal opposite or even counter demonstrator has ears to hear and eyes to see.

Sometimes the “struggle for life” (known from Darwin’s “Origin of Species”) let us easily break one of the most important rules of life: “Talk is silver, silence is golden”. Yes, silence is also an answer. You know I grew up with music day and night. From a business talk to a philosophy comment: Let’s be like a composer who knows that the space between the notes is as important as the notes themselves. Each one of us should realize that our silences could be as expressive as the words we choose. The result is greater harmony and effectiveness - also if I, as an expat deal with Filipinos in my surroundings.

About the Author:  Klaus is from Germany, but has been living in the Philippines since the late 1990’s. Klaus is a journalist by trade, having written for a number of newspapers, studied also Publishing House Management and Marketing and has also been a Radio Host here in the Philippines.