Silence: Let It Do the Heavy Lifting in Coaching

Strength is built in the pause between effort and release—silence works the same way.

There's a barbell resting on the the floor at the gym. It looks deceptively still—motionless, waiting. But anyone who’s trained knows the truth: strength isn’t built in motion alone. It’s built in the pauses—those deliberate moments of tension, breath, and steady focus between the lift and the release.

Silence in coaching works the same way.

As coaches, we often feel responsible for guiding clients toward clarity—making sense of their words, offering reflections, connecting dots they may not yet see. But here’s the paradox: the harder we work to make sense of things for the client, the less space they have to make sense of it for themselves.

When we “let silence do the heavy lifting” (to borrow a principle from Fierce Conversations by Susan Scott), we step back from performing insight and instead trust the client’s innate capacity to think, feel, and know. Silence strengthens the muscles of awareness. It’s resistance training for the mind and soul.

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