Helping teach basic CISM last week, I was struck by the relationship between allowing silence and giving up control during a debriefing. One of our team’s informal slogans is “When in doubt, stick a sock in it,” to remind us to allow times of silence. That’s hard because we (debriefers and responders) tend to be people who like to feel as though we are in control – which applies to debriefings as much as anything else.
I’m fairly sure that the extent to which I fail to allow silence during a debriefing, I’m failing at the fundamental goal of giving the group back a sense of control. My silence tells them that they choose who participates, when to speak and what to talk about. They own the debriefing, I just facilitate, saying as little as possible.
So one of the questions I’m going to be more deliberate about asking myself when being debriefed after a debriefing is “How much silence did I allow?”
There is another benefit to allowing silence. In a group of people who are care-givers, there are going to be those who, despite our efforts, will not participate because they put everyone else’s needs ahead of their own. If there is a sufficiently long silence, they may finally given themselves permission to speak… if only because they think that’s best for the group!
Nick Arnett has been part of the Bay Area CISM Team since 2005, has led or help lead dozens of defusings and debriefings for first responders, schools and communities, including the Haiti earthquake, and assists in CISM training and events. He was a paramedic in the Pittsburgh, Pa. area in the late 1970s and 1980s, where he also headed the volunteer program for the