Voice And Silence

I am a loud talker.
And a quick one.

If I look back on my childhood, I realize that my desire to be heard is directly connected to my family make-up.

I am the youngest child in a large family, so in order to be heard, you had to speak up.

Yet, speaking up could also be risky, especially with my two older brothers who weren't shy about making jokes about whatever you said.

Earlier this week, Tanja Murphy-Ilibasic and I co-hosted a session for hashtag#myfest24 using the Voice and Silence Framework, originally developed by Amy Edmondson and her colleagues.

According to the framework, there are 4 quadrants of voice and silence:

1. Productive voice, where you are contributing to collective intelligence
2. Unproductive voice, where you are disruptive to the group dynamic
3. Productive silence, where you are reflecting, listening, processing, etc
4. Unproductive silence, where you are purposefully withholding.

As a facilitator, it's important for me to be aware of each of these 4 quadrants and to ensure that how I design a session or space, moves as many people to being productive or constructive members of the group as possible.

I also have to be keenly aware of power dynamics and privilege (my own and those of individuals in the group) and how these dynamics can consciously or unconsciously push people into unproductive silence.

Sometimes I get feedback from people like me (quick talkers), that they want to move straight into breakout rooms, without taking the time to think and process a question.

What they don't see, and what many of us don't see, is that without that processing time, we can lose a lot of people to unproductive silence.

When I host a space, I want to be sure that I don't design it for me, but that I design it for people who aren't like me.

That I create space for engagement, in all forms that can take -- not just speaking into the circle.

For those of you who are managers, with quiet members on your team, perhaps it's worth considering whether they are being quietly productive and processing, or if their silence is something more.

Here is a list of "unproductive silence" behaviors that we came up with on Tuesday.

Do you see any of these within your teams or groups?

Originally posted on LinkedIn with comments.
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