Is silence on your dynamic risk assessment checklist? One would think that all of the media attention on the topic of speaking up in the workplace to prevent errors and failures, has reached everyone in a position of authority. Yet, repression of free expression remains the biggest psychosocial hazard. Irrespective of the popular slogan, silence kills, a silent workforce isn’t on any hazard watch list.
We are talking about expression of ideas, suggestions and questions to prevent errors. The reaction to these are often similar to the reactions one might get from insulting or aggressive comments. We might surmise that asking questions is a form of disrespect.
This thought was reinforced by a list of employee behaviors compiled by Tucker and Edmondson[1] shown on in Table 1, Comparison of traditional and learning views of desirable employee behaviors. It seems a good explanation of how managers inadvertently reinforce the habit of not speaking up.
TABLE 1. Comparison of traditional and learning views of desirable employee behaviors
When the employee is faced with a problem situation |
"Ideal employee" behaviors that are counterproductive to learning |
Employee attributes that promote learning from failure |
Problem with supply of materials, information, etc. |
Adjusts to shortcomings in materials and supplies without bothering managers or others |
Noisy Complainer:Remedies immediate situation but also lets the manager and supply department know when the system has failed |
Errors and problems committed by other people |
Seamlessly corrects for the errors of others – without confronting the person about their error. |
Nosy Troublemaker:Lets others know when they have made a mistake with the intent of creating learning, not blame. |
Errors and problems committed by the employee him or herself |
Creates an impression of never making mistakes. |
Self-aware error-maker:Lets manager and others know when they have made a mistake so that others can learn from their error. Communicates openness to hearing about their errors discovered by others. |
Improvement opportunities with overall system |
Committed to the current way of doing business – understands the “way things work” around here. |
Disruptive questioner who won’t let well enough alone:Questions why do we do things this way? Is there a better way of providing the service to the customer? |
Glance at table 1 and be honest with yourself. Would you rather have “ideal employees” or employees that learn from failure? I heard managers and supervisors say that they know things are going well if they don’t hear anything. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Essentially Tucker and Edmondson argue that we don’t learn from failure because our “ideal employees” are covering up the gaps in the system. I suspect that most supervisors and managers do not perceive the behaviors in column two as a problem not those in column three as contributing to performance.
Being a person who speaks up is exhausting
In my experience, being a person that speaks up to prevent failure or to advance new ideas is exhausting. Only recently did I learn that my brain used an inordinate amount of energy to manage my unconscious fear when I disagreed or proposed an alternative. That is because past experience taught me that there are potential costs like being removed from a project. Even when allowed to stay the other team member’s reactions communicate that they would rather complete the task than consider alternatives.
The title of this paper asks if silence is on your dynamic risk assessment list. Are employees filling in the gaps with duct tape so that they don’t have to bother you? Are smart, creative employees silent because they are no longer motivated to offer ideas?
Never, until now, have I been certain that I should be heard. What makes me so sure? Bear with me. There are two recent insights that drive my insistence. First, I’ve only recently discovered and accepted that I am intelligent. Sure I survived a racist all-white high school and attended an Ivy League university in the early 1970s. I published many articles with ideas I introduced in the 1990’s. But I relied on the recognition of others to define my relevance. Since I heard none I assumed I had to work harder.
"Silence is the residue of fear" Clint Smith
Decades passed. Then, I experienced a serious car accident. My insurance company demanded multiple neurological and psychological exams to test the extent of my injuries. So literally, by accident, I discovered I am brilliant. It sounds quite strange even as I write this. Until one day while writing about the importance of inclusion and belonging to encourage learning and change I realized the irony of it all. I am an intelligent being. I have 30 years of experience successfully working with employees to prevent accidents, and consistently offered creative ideas. Yet that was not enough to gain the right to be heard at the management table. Suddenly I saw the true scope of unused potential lying fallow in our organizations. It dwarfs the size of the field of potential being used.
The second insight concerns the content that I would like for people to hear and discuss. Building a community where people express themselves freely regardless of social differences (gender, education, wealth, roles) is not a project. Building a bridge is a project. Changing the way people relate and communicate is a social process. That means either enlisting the support of those in power or shifting the locus where power resides. Self-directed work teams are an example of the latter.
An initiative to create the conditions for people to speak up and be heard will fail if it does not first address the need for power. Most of the time when I bring this up there is no response. It is as if I had said nothing. This leads me to conclude that even the act of suggesting that the CEO’s active support is needed is too costly. This point is what makes the seven-step change management formulas so it irrelevant. Not one of them recognizes or can tell you how to mitigate the silence hazard.
Hazard: something that could potentially cause harm. Risk: the degree of likelihood that harm will be caused.
Silence could potentially cause harm so it is a hazard. What are the risks? There are risks to the individual who doesn’t speak up and for the organization.
Table 2. The personal and organizational risks of silencing voice in the workplace
| Individual Risk | Organizational Loss Risk |
| Shame | Innovation |
| Pain | Process improvement |
| Fear | Competitiveness in the marketplace |
| Stress/ Burnout | Medical errors |
| Discrimination | Data breeches |
| Unrealized potential | Unrealized potential |
| Loss of identity/ Self | Accidents/ Disasters |
The list of individual risks on Table 2 describe the feelings that run through my brain when I am in disagreement or proposing alternatives. If my ideas are not discussed, rejected out-right or not even responded to, those feelings grow in strength. That is why it is such an exhausting process to present dissenting points of view.
The cycle of learned helplessness
When people experience rejection or lack of responsiveness over time they learn to stop speaking up or trying to change things. While I am aware these feelings are self-generated based on past experience and I am able to manage them to some extent. That does not mean I am only imagining being ignored. It means that lack of acknowledgement does not have to trigger shame, pain, fear, etc. Thank you Viktor Frankl for that inspiration.[2]
My current ritual to shake hopelessness is to leave the meeting and go through my internal process of self-talk. “This is not personal. It doesn’t mean that I am not respected or not seen as competent if my ideas aren’t heard or accepted.” I do my breathing exercises and meditation to break the negative self-talk cycle and usually by the next day I'm ready to take action on another opportunity. This process helped me arrive at a point where I can ask for direct feedback from individuals one-to one. Consequently, I received coaching on how to approach engineers, which represents most of the people in operations. I am in the process of trying that out and look forward to reporting on my progress.
People who do not have to go through this process have a lot of free energy they can spend on productive pursuits. This speaks to my earlier comment that the field of human potential being leveraged in the workplace is far smaller than the field that would be available if people felt psychologically safe. To ponder why that constraint on human potential exists we have to explore the realm of power and politics.
Back to the question of power
You may experience some of what I am communicating here or you may be wondering how it is possible for an intelligent person to get lost in this way. That is a subject for another time having to do with childhood trauma. An interesting book on that topic is Gabor Mate’s The myth of normal. [3] Suffice it to say that I am not alone in this experience. Current research indicates that there is a social hierarchy of people who feel that they are included and feel comfortable bringing up dissenting points of view. In both cases those most comfortable are white males. But, all males are more comfortable than any females. And, White females are the most comfortable with Latinas and Black women at the 50 percentile of comfort.
As I sort through all of this I am having experiences where I am successful in communicating my ideas and others where I am not making progress. It is worth looking at what it takes to communicate effectively with people who think quite differently than I do. That is something I will continue to study and experiment with. One thing I already know is that liberating myself from the negative self-talk instilled in me as a child was a critical step. Without that weight I can float like a butterfly as Mohamad Ali did. I don’t want to sting anyone like a bee, just want to know I am heard.
Workforce training and development to end the silence
Self-responsibility and self-development is obviously important for an adult to free themselves of social constraints that keep them from speaking out. Organizationally, however, this can only be of benefit if it is coupled by the support of peers and managers. That this is possible is demonstrated in the stories of individual teachers whose students perform far above the average even if they are from lower social economic status. Those teachers created the generative social fields described by Otto Schramer, Peter Senge, and Bette Moller. This methodology adopted to adults can produce superior business results.
- Build psychological safety at the most senior group level. This will lead to strategic alignment on business results and the importance of organizational psychological safety.
- Introduce 1-1 conversation skills and monthly meetings between leader and direct reports. Agree on set of measures for success.
- Evaluate progress and develop structured conversation framework to guide next level down.
- Introduce the conversation skills for monthly meetings at next level down.
- Accountability is maintained by each boss asking their direct report for feedback on the conversations and giving assistance as needed.
- Quality is maintained via the reporting on 1-1 conversations based on the previously agreed upon measures.
[1] Frankl, V. (1946 ). Man’s search for meaning.
[2] Tucker AL, Edmondson AC. (2003). Why hospitals don't learn from failures: organizational and psychological dynamics that inhibit system change. Calif Manag Rev. 45(2):55–72
[3] Mate, Gabor. (2022). The myth of normal: trauma, illness, and healing in a toxic culture. Avery.
