Silence means yes / no / nothing

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So, does everyone agree with this plan?

Some nods, mostly silence.

Does this mean you have an agreement?

What if the question was posed in an email? In chat? In Confluence?

The meaning of silence depends… on political history

A long long time ago, a professor at university asked my class the question: Does silence mean agreement or disagreement? The class voted - and we had an almost 50:50 split.

It turned out that the difference was almost entirely due to where we, the students, came from:

• Students who had come from what used to be West Germany interpreted silence as agreement.
• Students who came from what used to be East Germany overwhelmingly voted that silence means “no”.

Why? Because a mere generation before, voicing disagreement was an acceptable part of political discourse on one side of the inner-German border. On the other side though, not agreeing with the leading party could put your and your family’s life at risk. An entire population learned to keep their criticism silent, resorting to more subtle ways of resisting.

Adding written communication to the mix

So, silence can mean either yes or no. When it comes to written communication though, silence (or the lack of a reaction) can also mean I haven’t seen the page.

If you’ve ever written a discussion document (on Confluence, in Google docs, in Notion, in Slite) to then listen to the sweet sound of crickets - you know exactly what I am talking about. It’s frustrating, especially if you’ve @-mentioned people.

Depending on the tool you are using, you may be able to see statistics about how many people have accessed the page, maybe even who accessed it. However, you have no idea what they think.

Reactions and responses: the bare minimum

Here’s my recommendation if you plan to succeed as a distributed team:

Lead by example: If you’ve been @-mentioned in some kind of written communication, as a bare minimum, react with an emoji to show that you’ve seen it.

[Obviously, if you’ve missed the notification, that’s a whole different scenario. That’s why it’s so important to react. Because otherwise, how will people know that you didn’t miss it, but chose to ignore it?]

If someone sends you a link to a document to review it for them or to get your input, signal them that you’ve taken the time to look at it. Acknowledge the work that they’ve put in, the vulnerability it takes for some to put out their opinions and ideas to be scrutinized.

And if you do not agree, but you don’t feel comfortable putting it down in writing, talk to the author on another channel. Ignoring a request for feedback or input is equivalent to ignoring someone who’s talking to you at your desk. It’s rude and I know you wouldn’t do it in real life.

Acknowledge the work of others to support them in what they do. And expect the same from them.

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