And no one dared disturb the sound of silence

On the 4th Oct 2018, President Trump climbed out of his limo up the steps and onto Air Force One on his way to a rally in Minneapolis. As he headed up the steps, what looked like a piece of toilet paper was seen flapping on his heel. The question on everyone’s lips was – How does that happen in the presence of such a large entourage? Why didn’t someone point it out? Why did no one say anything?

There is no doubt that organisations of all stripes, would perform better if more voices were raised, and heard. The high performance and engagement we seek is inhibited when there is a perception of much to lose by making hard and challenging observations and apparently much to gain by unquestioning obedience and staying silent to avoid conflict or worse still, a belief that speaking up would be futile. In these cases, individuals and teams surrender to the status quo which means concerns are not aired and leaders blissfully carry on believing all is well. When this happens, problems and issues remain unresolved given its impossible to resolve a problem which everyone refuses to acknowledge.

Perceived Risks of Speaking up

There is always an inherent fear about speaking up – we all weigh up the risks and consequences of so doing. It doesn’t matter at what level of the organisation you are – the CEO will weigh up what is said to the board, the board may be afraid of the media reaction, and even in our personal lives where we have the most security, we consider what we can and can’t say. Can we send that text in a group chat, how can we say something so it’s not misunderstood? But we shouldn’t let that stop us from speaking up and speaking out. Leaders can inadvertently silence others through being blind to their relative power or failing to acknowledge the effect of their words/actions.

Open Secrets

One of the changes in the last couple of years, escalated by the pandemic, has been the death of the informal meeting. A virtual meeting simply ends when it’s scheduled to end. Face-to-face meetings extend or move on to informal follow-ups at our desks or on the way out of the meeting room, over coffee or in the pub after work - saying the things we were too cautious to say in the meeting. This no longer happens because in a virtual world, catch ups and meetings have become formalised and the personal and social aspects have disappeared.

In these and other situations, certain things can remain open secrets in our organisations and communities - where multiple people know about a problem or a concern, but no one publicly brings it up for discussion.

Ironically, as issues become more common knowledge, the willingness of any individual to speak up about them decreases. We get caught up in a sort of bystander trance waiting for others to act rather than do something ourselves. Individual knowledge confers responsibility but when everyone knows, no one is individually responsible. In this case, it’s easier to assume that someone more senior, smarter, more powerful, more articulate, or simply bolder should bear the responsibility. Everybody could be responsible, but nobody is. No one person is thought to be accountable and given there is already a reticence to speak up, this acts as a diffusion of the burden and a dilution of individual responsibility.

Given this perspective, it starts to make sense why certain problems and maybe even major scandals like Emissionsgate (VW emissions) or ‘Partygate’ can be allowed to career on for so long without anyone acting. The silence in these situations prevents issues from percolating up to more Senior levels and instead of tackling this we conduct more and more employee surveys with the attendant cost, time and energy when perhaps some of our organisational issues would be better addressed if :-

a. Managers tell employees that their voices are not redundant and that they need to share their opinions even if others have the same information. Put simply, managers might adjust the now-familiar injunction as follows: “If you see something, say something (even if others see the same thing).”

b. We make sure we find ways of hearing the voices of everyone and to reward rather than punish openness. Let’s make it easy to be open! So many issues become a bigger deal if they are suppressed.

c.?Solutions are made as individual as the individuals in our organisations – large forums, 1-2-1, small subgroups etc

d. Improvement is seen as both top down and bottom up as we engender an open and listening culture throughout our organisations

The bystander effect occurs because some work cultures encourage blending into the crowd rather than individual responsibility. Engagement should not just be about the periodic engagement survey, we should each become fully signed up organisation citizens and accept the range of behaviours that promote the social environment of the workplace, being team players, volunteering to help or support others, and speaking up. These behaviours aren’t always codified but it is incumbent on all of us to adopt them.

These and other steps will help us avoid the burgeoning of “open secrets” and of unresolved yet commonly known problems that no one seems to do anything about.

We must avoid the paralysis of inaction otherwise we will muzzle the voices of dissent and if we are not careful, we will slide towards inequality whilst outwardly working towards Equality and believing we are progressively achieving it.

Silence is Complicity

There is a disconnect. Consider the example of knowingly continuing to carry out valueless activities because we are not brave enough to have candid dialogue: weekly reports that no one reads, that employees complain about to their peers but do not question the relevance or interest with the recipients. Employees hide behind assumptions that managers are ‘too busy’ to talk about changing the way things are done. Similarly, managers hide behind an often false or unquestioned assertion that people are empowered to raise issues proactively just because the manager says they are …

We are all culpable – managers and subordinates alike. While it’s easy to blame others, the reality is that it takes two parties to communicate and if there is a logjam or truncation of the dialogue it’s up to both parties to address it.

These situations partly stem from the assumptions made. For the most part, this happens unintentionally. Managers assume that their people feel comfortable enough to initiate conversations and because their intention is to be approachable, we have a blind spot in relation to the subtle messages that suggest unapproachability. Managers need to look in the mirror to see the dragon. Likewise, people make assumptions about what they can and can’t talk about and overestimate the consequences of challenge. The truth is we all share a tendency towards inaction aligned with a tendency to rationalise our inaction.

Whether subordinate or manager, the key for all of us is to take some sort of action to increase the candour and flow of dialogue in our organisations. If we do nothing we are reinforcing unproductive patterns and encouraging subjugation. On the other hand, speaking up can trigger a cycle of increasing self-confidence and higher performance — and create a much more pleasant place to work.

I cannot remain silent because to do so is to be complicit ….. Audrey Lord

We have a duty of candour as well as a duty of care to each other.

The social virtues of silence are reinforced by our survival instincts. Many organisations send the message—not always verbally —that falling into line is the safest way to hold on to our jobs and further our careers. This insecurity makes a lot of us slip into quiet submission where people feel its ?pointless and perilous to speak out.?

Silence like a cancer grows

Silence is costly to both the organisation and the individual. At an individual level it can result in feelings of anger, resignation and resentment which may then contaminate every interaction, inhibit creativity and innovation which in turn undermine productivity. How can we feel authentic if there are things inside us that need to be spoken out but never are? At an organisational level it can result in complacency, sterility and eventually regression.

?The Reign of Silence (People talking without speaking; People hearing without listening)

In recent years, organisations have begun to recognise the value of diversity and the richness that comes from the variety of experience, backgrounds, thinking styles and the temperaments that come with it. What we must also realise is that attendant to these differences is an inevitable difference in opinions, ideas, and views. The truth is that although we are intrigued by difference ultimately, we reject it for the comfort of conformity. However, if we choose not to understand and confront our differences, to cover up differences rather than to try to discuss them, then the cost to us as individuals and the organisations we work for will be particularly pernicious.

The pressures to conform and present unanimity can prevent us from exploring the value inherent within difference. We know that groups of people are better problem solvers than individuals but this is only true if the individuals contribute to the group bringing different insights, thinking styles and experience.

Silence Spiral

I love spiral staircases. They are a perfect analogy for business, space saving, direct and therefore cost effective but also aesthetically pleasing and innovative. There is a sense in which progress up or down a spiral appears faster, the spiral tricks the mind into believing the route is shorter. I love the way it doesn’t take up a lot of room, its efficiency – but we ned to beware of spirals in our organisations. The pressure to go faster and apparently more efficiently can be detrimental.

If in our bid to become more efficient at decision making, we exclude the views and input of others. Those whose views are ignored, will eventually become more defensive and fearful that if they speak up they will be embarrassed or rejected. Insecurity grows and more silence follows, which only brings more defensiveness and more distrust. A downward spiral is set in motion.

What starts out as an attempt to preserve relationships becomes a toxic spiral and each time we do not speak up our discomfort grows until our ability to work together is destroyed. The attempt to preserve the relationship very quickly has the unintended effect of increasing the distance between us.

We delude ourselves if we aspire to having a collaborative workforce but do not attend to the need for openness. Each time workers remain silent in the face of ‘conflict’, they keep new ideas to themselves and leave alternative courses of action unexplored. Important information that could enhance the quality of decisions, improve the work for the individual and the organisation is withheld, and quality is compromised. ??

Back to the business analogy. Spiral staircases were conceived not only to save space but also as a defence against intruders with the direction of the spiral leaving the sword arm free to defend against those attacking from below.?The silence spiral has the same effect, leaving the managers best placed to repel challenge, innovation, and improvement.?

Courage to End the Silence Spiral

There are so many silences to be broken. Organisations need to create the context in which people value the expression of differences. Regardless of the historical context where people may have felt either explicitly or implicitly silenced, we need to slowly build an environment of trust where people feel comfortable to speak up.

Resolving this problem cannot be left just to the leaders or managers. We are all part of the problem. Everyone at every level needs to fight the urge to stay silent or to foster silence. This takes courage. Too often we are individually and collectively paralysed into silence. Passivity feels safe. Ironically, if one person dares to speak out, there is a chance that another or several others will find the courage to speak out too. This is how #MeToo came about. Let us choose to break cultural norms by asking questions where previously there was an unquestioning acceptance of decisions made by senior management and building purposeful collaborations with others. This not only means strength in numbers and collective courage, but it is also more likely to result in a better framing and approach to the problem than we can achieve singularly.

We are sure to regret our silences at an individual and an organisational level. All too often, behind failed projects, broken processes, and mistaken decisions are people who chose to hold their tongues rather than speak up. Breaking the silence can bring an outpouring of fresh ideas from all levels of an organization—ideas that might just raise the organisation’s performance to a whole new level. Whatever the costs of speaking out, the costs of not speaking out will always be too high. The weight of silence will choke us – Let us not allow this to happen! There are some possible solutions some of which we are employing at Centrica

1. Reverse mentoring – relationships that overturn the hierarchy by allowing junior employees to explicitly tell senior leaders what is going on in the organisation and how policies and decisions and the managers who make them are perceived. In order for this to succeed, candour, vulnerability and strong listening skills are required.
2. We need to break down any hierarchy that exists especially in relation to raising concerns. It is everybody’s responsibility. Safety to raise concerns and to challenge will only come about if anyone and everyone can say what they see even though that may uncover the fact that we misunderstood what we saw maybe because we had incomplete information
3. Devils’ advocates – one member of a group acts as devil’s advocate. This not only allows that individual to develop their critical thinking by asking awkward, tricky questions but also results in consideration of points of view that may not otherwise have been considered and helps to challenge embedded assumptions.

In conclusion, we would do well to remember that silence is complicity. We need to find the most skilful and appropriate way of speaking up - there is a time and a place. There are situations where challenging in a group may be the wrong thing to do which call for one on one dialogue. There are also situations where building a coalition of allies may be a subtle way of ensuring that more voices are heard.

It’s easy to stand on the sidelines and scary to stand up and speak up but we ought to be concerned if ideas are not challenged and objections are not raised. ??Changes for the better are contingent on our ability to speak up to enable action towards organisational and personal goals. Let us be the people that get off the sidelines and into the arena.