When Silence Isn’t Golden
Compliance Corner – Issue 2.7
“Put a sock in it.”
“Mum’s the word.”
“Keep it on the downlow.”
In their 1964 song, “Silence is Golden” Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons considered the virtues of keeping quiet. The protagonist of the song reasons that if he tells the girl he loves that her boyfriend cheats on her, she’ll accuse him of lying. As a result he tells himself, “Mind your business, don’t hurt her, you fool.”
Someone else who recently compared people who speak up to fools was popular Wharton School professor Adam Grant. In response to an article entitled “How strategic silence enables employee voice to be valued and rewarded” (September, 2022), Grant tweeted: “It isn’t always best to speak up right away. Strategic silence can amplify your voice. Evidence: people are more likely to be heard when they wait until (a) the issue is relevant, (b) they’re ready, and (c) the audience is responsive. Fools rush in. Wise people bide their time.”
Responses to this Tweet ran the gamut from people who agreed with Grant to those who disagreed to those who wanted more clarification. Many wanted to know how to tell when an issue was relevant, or an audience was at its most responsive. Still others were concerned that Grant’s suggestion might keep more people from speaking up.
In her article, “Why Our Best Employees Don’t Speak Up” (November, 2022), ethics and compliance consultant Courtney Sander admitted that in addition to “fear, futility, disengagement and deviance,” some employees might be keeping quiet out of strategic silence.
Sander says we’ve been conditioned to choose our battles and pick our moments: “We avoid speaking up because we know it can be disruptive, take time away from the projects and tasks at hand…Quite frankly, being that person hasn’t historically looked good.” Further complicating things is the perception that employees who are good at this – staying strategically silent – are the ones who are rewarded, and women, according to Sander, “feel the burden to stay strategically silent even more so than men in order for their voices to be valued.”
But is it always best to hold back until the time is “right”?
What if everyone stayed silent, waiting for the stars to align to create the perfect moment? Or, as Grant proposed, for the issue to be relevant, the reporter ready and the audience responsive? My guess is the number of people speaking up would trend down, the number of investigations into misconduct would nosedive and the culture in the workplace would collapse. The danger in practicing strategic silence is that by waiting for the perfect moment to speak up, it might never come.
So, what’s the play?
Speaking up even when the moment isn’t right.
If you’re an employee, this means that even though it might not seem relevant, you might not have all of the facts, and your manager might not seem available, you should speak up, anyway. That feeling you have that something isn’t right is enough. This is where, if you work for an organization with a high quality ethics and compliance program, you can trust the process. You can contact the helpline and they’ll take it from there. This is not to say you shouldn’t think strategically about how to speak up effectively. According to UVA’s Giving Voice to Values guru Mary Gentile, the key question is, “If [I] were to act on [my] values, what would [I] say and do?” So, go ahead and get your ducks in a row, but say something.
If you’re a manager, you need to send the signal that employees should speak up even though they aren’t ready to deliver their concerns in a fully-developed presentation, tied-up with a bow, and the moment might not be “right.
If you’re a manager, you need to send the signal that employees should speak up even though they aren’t ready to deliver their concerns in a fully-developed presentation, tied-up with a bow, and the moment might not be “right.” Borrowing from Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson, you can create psychological safety for your employees by inviting them to speak up whenever they feel the need, and by giving them access to channels for doing it, then thanking and supporting them when they do.
So, don’t put a sock in it, mum is not the word, and by all means, don’t keep it on the downlow. While some say silence is golden, and others see it as a strategy, we shouldn’t celebrate it when ethics, integrity, safety and compliance are on the line; doing that is truly foolish.
If you’ve been wanting to speak up but felt that you didn’t have all the facts, or the moment wasn’t right, please consider contacting the Integrity & Compliance Office (ICO) at (804) 828-2336, or the VCU Helpline at vcuhelpline.com or (888) 242-6022.
Sources:
Edmondson, A. C. (2018). The fearless organization: Creating psychological safety in the workplace for learning, innovation, and growth. John Wiley & Sons.
Gentile, M. C. (2012). Giving voice to values: How to speak your mind when you know what’s right. Yale Univ. Press.
Michael R. Parke, Subrahmaniam Tangirala, Apurva Sanaria, Srinivas Ekkirala, How strategic silence enables employee voice to be valued and rewarded, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Volume 173, 2022, 104187, ISSN 0749-5978, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2022.104187. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0749597822000760)
Sander, C. (2022, November 3). Why our best employees don’t speak up. Corporate Compliance Insights. https://www.corporatecomplianceinsights.com/speak-up-best-employees/