Your Silence is Your Endorsement
“Silence, something about silent makes me sick.” - Zack De La Rocha, from the song Fistful of Steel, by Rage Against the Machine.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the words that we don’t say. About those feelings that we ignore. About the voice that we don’t use. There’s a whole lot of not great stuff happening in the world right now and many times it can be very overwhelming.
It can be hard to use our voice. There is after all a whole lot of risk involved with speaking up. There’s always a chance for backlash. There’s also always a chance that we are standing up for the wrong things. Personally, as my wife can attest to, I tend to have trouble not speaking up when I see something going wrong. Sometimes to my own detriment. But I wasn’t always that way.
The fact is that using our voice can be really scary. Sometimes we can even tell ourselves that it’s not worth using our voice — because what difference can we possibly make as just one person? Still, there are times when we need to forget all of that and use the voice that we have been privileged enough to be given.
Obviously, that applies to all that not so great stuff happening in the world right now. In those macro situations you should absolutely use your voice. But that isn’t what I want to talk about today. Instead, I want to focus on the micro. I want to talk about how this relates to your own work life. So here’s a story about what your silence really means. It’s something that really helped broaden my perspective.
I had a colleague in a situation several years ago where they found themselves working directly with an executive team. The team was pretty solid as a group. They had strong strategic foresight. They had good middle management in place and they knew how to get things done.
But everything wasn’t as good as it seemed. There was one executive who was actively wreaking havoc on the middle management and even the front line employees. At first, my friend thought that the other executives and the CEO didn’t see the behavior, but after some time it became abundantly clear that they did indeed see it but chose to ignore it.
My friend came to me and another coach friend of ours for advice. After they laid everything out to us, they backpedaled a bit and said that just because the CEO wasn’t saying anything about this bad behavior didn’t mean that they approved of it. They did after all like the CEO as a person, so they wanted to give the CEO the benefit of the doubt. That’s when my coach friend said something that will stick with me forever, “Their silence is their endorsement.”
This phrase really resonated with me. It’s so easy to think of ourselves as silent objectors. We see something bad happening and we think about how terrible it is, but we don’t use our voice. This phrase turns it on it’s head because argues that whenever you are silent about anything going wrong, then it’s no different than voicing your approval.
Sticking just to the subject of your work life, how many times have you let an injustice slide? How many times have you allowed unfair business practices keep happening? I’m willing to wager that for most of us, the number is more than zero. I am also hoping that in those situations you weren’t actually trying to show approval for those things.
Either way, the past is the past and now is the time to move forward. So let’s talk about the future starting with right now. So how do we be better going forward?
It’s not an easy question to answer. I acknowledge that we just can’t turn off the fear that has kept us from speaking up in the past. But I think a lot of that fear stems from one simple thing: the fear of having tough conversations. Or even more generally, the fear of conflict. It’s easily one of the top fears of leaders, which means it’s likely one of the top fears of humans in general.
Personally, I love conflict because when it’s used correctly, conflict gets stuff done. That said, I will admit that I probably can’t convince you to go from someone who avoids conflict to someone like myself who dives in with a single blog post. So instead, I will give you some tactics to handle conflict in a positive way.
Be Kind - If you approach conflict in a kind and respectful way, you will almost always get better results than if you approach it in a brash way that is demeaning to the other person. Use empathy and think about their feelings. Just because they are wrong doesn’t mean you cannot show them kindness as you help to correct their behavior.
Be Tactical - If you are using conflict to create positive change, then you need to ensure you are being tactical in how you use it. If there’s time before you must act, brainstorm the best way to approach the situation. Think about the when, the where, the who, and the how when designing your game plan.
Be Honest - Sometimes you’re going to speak up and then you’re going to realize that you were wrong. Admit it, apologize for it, learn from it, and then move forward.
I sincerely hope that these tactics will at least make you feel more comfortable using your voice and standing up when you need to fight for good. The world needs more of that and always will.
Just remember, your voice is a privilege. It’d be a shame to waste it with silence.
-Jason