Good advice?
Conversation is how we get things done and is something we can take for granted in the business of our work lives. Most of the time our conversations work; we collaborate and get the work done safely and efficiently. When things go wrong, it pays to examine how our conversations enable some and silence others. A useful line of inquiry is to investigate the silences that punctuate our talking. The spaces around the words also have meaning.
Handbook 1 describes different types of silence and assumes silence too be an intervention that has purpose and not to be assumed to signal consent or agreement. Noticing the different types of silence, as we chair a meeting, can help us to think about how safe some people feel to speak their mind. Information that can help modify our behaviour to make it safer for people to share their know how.
Integrating a willingness to notice and work with silence and to deliberately act to make it safer to speak, is a powerful leadership skill. One that is augmented when we understand how we move from silence to speaking. We become that leader, manager, colleague who doesn’t just talk about psychological safety and speaking up, you know how to make it happen.
Often, when we decide people have failed to speak, we tell them what they already know. That they should speak up. The people I have worked with, given this advice say – we know and we would if we could. We silence ourselves when we need to protect ourselves from real and imagined harms if we were to speak. It is a move that is only partially successful. What we have noticed, that has triggered our concern, remains. We face a dilemma – to speak to what we know, given our role and experience and keep ourselves safe.
Sometimes, the sensible thing is to be quiet and wait for a better moment. When you have the support of more able colleagues, the presence of more confident managers. This is silence as evidence of a commitment to stay in role, to do one’s job. Observing and still thinking. That it is ok to wait because what you know, noticed, needs saying. This is silence as evidence of confidence in one’s insights and knowledge. That one knows one’s own mind best, despite others telling you how you have misunderstood, you are ill-informed, don’t know your own mind.
Interviewing people able to resist being silenced showed a nuanced sense of confidence. While they were confident about what needed saying, they tried to avoid a silencing, over emphatic assertion of being ‘right’.
Their confidence emerged from a private conversation in their head. A conversation to consider why this issue, this situation, mattered to them. To examine, given their role and experience the cost of not speaking up. If they spoke it was to be intentionally ‘awkward’. To dislodge others certainties, to question prevailing understanding. They spoke to be intentionally ‘constructive’. To hear what others had to say and to manage any adverse reactions people might have when they felt questioned. They tried not to assume theirs was the only interpretation of events. They assumed that meaning, understanding and valid action emerges from conversation that is both argumentative and collaborative.
To be constructively awkward, to question, is hard cognitive and emotional work. this means simply telling people to ‘speak up’ is inadequate advice. Inadequate for three reasons. First, no attention is paid to why some people in authority find it so hard to listen. Second, why some work cultures are intimidating and silencing. Third, because there is no understanding how real people speak up in the real world of work. Any useful advice has to take account of all three.
If I were asked to state that advice, I would say something like this:
Help people with their private deliberations by making it plain you do want to hear diverse views and different voices; to come to an understanding about what is going on and the best course of action. Tell them that this is why they are here today; you think they have the experience and know how relevant to the issue that needs managing.
As you initiate a conversation or open a meeting, you tell people what sort of conversation you are seeking and why. You differentiate between instrumental and inquiry conversation (see Handbook 2).
When someone challenges your thinking, you acknowledge this and express your curiosity about why you may have initially not wanted to listen. That there is something that is hard for you to hear and maybe hard to hear by others in the wider organisation. You are curious why that is and how your apparent this difficulty in listening is silencing some voices and opinions.
You do not open a conversation or meeting with your views or stay so quiet that people fear contradicting you. You understand people’s behaviour in any engagement in the conversation is partly determined by evolution and the anxiety about being excluded for not agreeing with those in authority. You pay attention to the silent and ask for their thoughts. You confront those who seek to silence others. Finally, you keep people to time and task and you thank people when done.
It’s incomplete advice. It does not address the fact that any conversation, is also determined by the conversations had (and omitted) in the past. Conversations where certain behaviours and ways of thinking have become solidified into the work culture. Some of which are enabling and some need to be questioned and modified because of how they silence certain voices and certain topics (see Handbook 3).
