Silence is NEVER Golden

Anti-Impression Management new practice: I wrote a book called “People Before Tech: Psychological Safety and Teamwork in the Digital Age” and you can find a discount for it at the bottom of this page, and we make software that measures and improves Psychological Safety in teams. If you care about it- come talk to us. . 

As a general rule, I try to keep the snarky or up-in-arms content for my other newsletter “The Future is Agile” and attempt to keep the space here for theoretical-discussion-only on Mondays and practical tips through the video on Tuesdays, but today will have to be different despite how it’s European/UK book launch week and we have so much bigger fish to fry and topics to discuss- around the immense HumanDebt and the mixed signals from the market around hybrid work, etc- but I have to put a pin in all that because of this article that circulated over the weekend named “Quiet People in Meetings Are Incredible”. 

What’s wrong with it? 

It’s irresponsible drivel. 

Chances are that any grown-up to have read it, would have dismissed it as sensationalist nonsense from someone too young or inexperienced to know any better, but since it’s not poorly written and it touches on a very important topic, and seeing how there is a chance that some people are too tired and burnout after the 2020 madness to be forensic about content there is a chance they will let some of the silliness in it legitimise a behaviour of non-engaging which they know in their hearts of hearts to be wrong. 

To save you having to read it, the theme -if it can be called that- is that some times it’s the quietest of people in the meeting who are learning the most and have the most valuable contributions once in a precious while and they ought to be respected not called to participate. 

It ought to be evidently childish and easily dismissible twaddle but if you look at the amount of LinkedIn professionals who have engaged with it, this “enfant terrible” poppycock complete with a nonchalant picture of a famous TV narcissist (Mad Men’s Don Draper) clearly resonated with some disturbing as that is.

What the author basically does in this piffle is something very serious in fact, make no mistake about it, because he glorifies impression management and advises we get more of it, effectively advocating a lack of openness and courage to get ahead in one’s career, and if anyone of a sane mind were to listen to him the consequence would be compounded interest on the HumanDebt at an organisation level and a steep drop in performance. 

Let me spell something out evident as it should be: there is NO instance when playing the strong silent type is a smart idea for a professional. None. 

It would evidently never contribute to the team’s success and contrary to what the inexperienced author would like to have you believe, it won’t contribute to some form of a contrived sense of personal brand that would result in professional advancement either. 

Thankfully, in the real world, even if not properly analysed or effectively measured, our ability to be an important part of the performance of the team is the cornerstone to our professional reputation and one can never contribute to any success while attempting to pass as deep, silent and precious because some Medium article said it was the cool thing to do. 

Aside from the evident loss to the team - how can we count on any progress if any one member of the team doesn’t offer their thoughts no matter what they are?!?- the main reason why being quiet is never a winning idea, even to the individual who wrongly thinks “strong and silent” will further their career, is because in a team environment we all recognise plentiful communication as an act of courage that is necessary for collaboration and we respect the risk-taking, not the crippling fear disguised as aloofness.

At PeopleNotTech we tend to speak more about the positive behaviours of Psychological Safety and spend time dissecting Flexibility, Resilience, Learning, Emotional Bond, Trust and Openness and Courage (which are also measured in our software alongside IM), only reserving part of our time to speak about the negative side of things - the bad behaviour of individuals in teams that quickly decimates Psychological Safety - engaging in Impression Management (the lack of participation for fear of appearing ignorant, incompetent, negative or intrusive) but of late we have been speaking about IM incessantly and that’s probably because it’s more needed than ever. See all of our other articles on Impression Management and what to do to avoid it and speak up here and here and here and so on.

The needle is starting to move. People are starting to observe the behaviour and notice the instances when they aren’t speaking up both in themselves and others and that observation alone is gold-dust as it will minimise the instances where we do that over time if we learn to catch ourselves doing it. 

That’s massive progress and fundamental. None of us can afford to let tripe like this derail us and make us undo that hard work.

All of this is the case in a work context and even before we consider what any advice towards staying silent means in the midst of the mental unwellness epidemic. 

The extreme irony of this article is that the only reason it’s even being circulated is that it is loud and brash and unexamined and that indeed in this instance, being heard wasn’t a testament to value and if there was any instance to have stayed silent, this should have been it. 

Again, chances are anyone reading this would have dismissed it as it comes from extreme inexperience and we all know better that we need extreme speaking up cultures because they are necessary both for the business and the individual, but just in case it legitimised anyone to be un-brave and stay silent at any point, it’s worth spending the time to reiterate that silence is NEVER golden and always an act of fear and a glaring one at that. 

Don’t fall for this gibberish, be courageous and loud! Stay the course, stay strong, stay open and keep unmuting yourself! You need it, we all need it. 

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The 3 “commandments of Psychological Safety” to build high performing teams are: Understand, Measure and Improve

Read more about our Team Dashboard that measures and improves Psychological Safety at www.peoplenottech.com or reach out at [email protected] and let's help your teams become Psychologically Safe, healthy, happy and highly performant.