The Great Unheard at Work: Understanding Voice and Silence in Organisations

249 Pages·2023·6.713 MB·English

by  Mark Cole, John Higgins

THE GREAT UNHEARD AT WORK
Silence always has something to say – it’s never neutral and speaks volumes
if people are willing to hear. Our response to silence is often to dismiss or
end it, to block it out with noise. Instead, silence needs to be taken seriously.
This book explores the importance of understanding silence and shows
how we can move from merely listening to truly hearing those around us.
The interplay of voice and silence in organisational life is not straightforward.
We can feel pressured to speak and compelled to keep our silence. Knowing
how to read silence, to make sense of its generative and degenerative capacity,
is a rarely developed skill among managers and leaders at all levels – who have
been brought up to see silence as evidence of compliance or a weakness to be
addressed. But it is a critical skill for managers and employees alike. Written by
two experts in organisational development, this book explores different types
of silence and their implications for organisational practice, digging into the
theoretical roots and engaging with real stories and voices. It provides every-
one at work with an understanding of the different meanings of silence and
how to engage well with it. When to stay with it, when to join in with it, and
when to be struck by what’s not being said and do something about it.
The Great Unheard at Work is essential reading for corporate leaders, HR
professionals in all sectors, business students, professionals, and anyone
interested in leadership development.
Mark Cole has over 30 years’ experience working on development in organ-
isations. His book, Radical Organisation Development, was published by Routledge
in 2020. More recently, he co-authored with John Higgins Leadership Unravelled:
The Faulty Thinking Behind Modern Management (Routledge, 2022).
John Higgins is an independent researcher, tutor, and coach specialising in
how people use and abuse power throughout the workplace and society. He
is widely published and has written extensively alongside the faculty and
students of the Ashridge Doctorate and Masters in Organisational Change.

THE GREAT UNHEARD AT WORK
Understanding Voice and
Silence in Organisations
Mark Cole and John Higgins
Cover image: © Getty Images/z_wei
First published 2023
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2023 Mark Cole and John Higgins
The right of Mark Cole and John Higgins to be identified as authors of
this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Cole, Mark, 1960- author. | Higgins, John, 1962 June 27– author. |
Higgins, John, author.
Title: The great unheard at work : understanding voice and silence in
organisations / Mark Cole and John Higgins.
Description: New York, NY : Routledge, 2023. | Includes bibliographical
references and index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2022047418 (print) | LCCN 2022047419 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781032283975 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032284026 (paperback) |
ISBN 9781003296683 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Leadership. | Silence—Psychological aspects. |
Communication in management.
Classification: LCC HD57.7 .C6438 2023 (print) | LCC HD57.7 (ebook) |
DDC 658.4/092—dc23/eng/20221128
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022047418
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022047419
ISBN: 978-1-032-28397-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-28402-6 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-29668-3 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003296683
Typeset in Joanna
by codeMantra
CONTENTS
Foreword vii
Megan Reitz
Acknowledgements x
Part I Seven shades of workplace silence 1
1 An introduction to the seven shades of silence 3
2 The seven shades of silence in action 7
Part II Creating and sustaining climates
of silence and voice 33
3 On silence 35
4 The meaning of silence 48
5 Silence as ritual 55
6 Self-silencing 61
vi CONTeNTS
7 Silence at work 69
8 Silence is a password 99
9 Lessons for corporate life (on sustaining climates of
silence and voice) 119
10 Silence descends 135
Part III Thirty-five voices… and beyond 141
11 Thirty-five voices 143
12 Some notes on method and practical application 171
Part IV Dialogue retethered 193
13 Putting dialogue to work 195
Postscript – notes from an authorial process 215
Index 225
FOREWORD
MEGAN REITZ
How I show up, affects your voice.
Speaking up and staying silent happen in relation. However, particularly
in workplace settings, they are so often regarded as the product of indi-
vidual bravery or cowardice respectively.
The popular invitation (or is it a command?) to “Speak up” and “Bring
your whole self to work” is often pointedly aimed by those higher up in the
hierarchy to those lower down it, in a desperate attempt to secure innova-
tion, compliance, agility, or “talent” retention. It is made as if there exists a
simple decision toggle that’s operated solely by the would-be speaker.
That fallacy is the reason why many “Speak Up” campaigns in organisa-
tions go precisely nowhere and leave in their wake an even more deeply
cynical workforce.
A while back, interviewing “them” (the would-be speakers) at the behest
of a leader who told me that “they” needed to show some courage and just
speak up more, I was told in hushed tones, ‘but last time someone spoke up
round here, they disappeared!’
The speaker does not make decisions to speak or stay silent in a void.
Speaker and listener are engaged in a constant dance of gesture and response,
each impacting and being impacted by the other and both situated in a web
of conditions that construct power and expectations which in turn mould
perceptions of risk that coerce their conversation.
viii MeGAN ReITZ
In a long running and ongoing survey examining speaking truth to
power in the workplace, currently standing at 13,000 respondents, around
one third expect to be ignored in their organisation if they speak up with
a problem. So, silence pervades. This raises phenomenally important ques-
tions: “what is the experience of being listened to?” “What is happening
that leads these respondents to feel ignored and what would lead them to
feel heard?”
Most agree that listening is not a matter of the other managing to rein
themselves in from interrupting until you finish the sentence – although
this in itself would be a marked improvement. Being heard requires a cer-
tain quality of attention and a felt sense of intention.
Our attention and our intention are the most remarkable gifts we can
give both to ourselves and the other. When we show up with deep curios-
ity, empathy, and the energy of someone who just knows there is some-
thing to be created, to be learnt in between those in dialogue, the other
finds their voice.
Dialogue.
That’s another term carelessly used in organisations.
‘Let’s have a dialogue’.
For many I work with, the word conjures up some sort of harmonious,
pleasant, well-behaved conversation between smiling participants experi-
encing leisurely heart rates, having a cup of tea.
Dialogue is profound meeting where voices emerge through the qual-
ity of attention and intention of those present. In the moment of dialogue,
power differences in the labels of those present do not disappear, but they
are acknowledged and the unlabelled power of human creativity becomes
central.
Dialogue can be messy, conflicted, vulnerable, unchartered territory at
the limits of our knowledge and experience. To invite another ‘into dia-
logue’ is to put down our relentless need to control, to perform and to live
up to socially constructed expectations.
So, it is rare.
A certain relief washed over me when I read this book that finally
Pandora’s box that is ‘silence’, ‘listening’, and ‘dialogue’ has been opened
and opened with utter humility by the authors.
FOReWORD ix
John and Mark guard against the simplification of silence and the blithe
use of the word ‘listen’ and rather immerse themselves, and the reader, in
the power-laden complexities of what gets said and who gets heard.
And rather than lecture this topic, they practise reflexively in this book’s
pages for all to observe. Through pausing to inquire in the moment of ‘lis-
tening’ to thirty-five voices recorded in their research, they give the reader
an insight into just how much of our history, upbringing, world view and
personal fears and hopes weave into how we interpret and ‘listen’ to the
other.
The never-ending simplification of ‘how-to’s’ and ‘five easy steps’ con-
tained within numerous books on the topics addressed in this one can on
occasion be helpful as first impulses towards change. But if our engagement
stays at that level, our workplaces just get more and more inhospitable, if
not downright diminishing for the human spirit.
To flourish and to lead requires us to acknowledge the complexities of
power and inquire into the spaces we create between us where we choose
to enact old, damaging scripts or develop new, uninhibited, unimagined
ones. It requires us to find spaces where we can pause, reflect and safely
admit that we simply don’t know and things simply aren’t simple.
This book creates one of those spaces and as such I recommend it whole-
heartedly to you.
Megan Reitz
Professor of Leadership and Dialogue,
Hult International Business School
Author of Dialogue in Organisations,
Co-author of Mind Time and Speak Up, and
TEDx speaker
Ranked by Thinkers50 as one of the top 50 global business thinkers and
ranked in HR Magazine’s Most Influential Thinkers listing