Article 2: Silence at work is not the same as having nothing to say

We tend to notice the conversations that happen at work. We notice the employee who challenges a decision, the manager who gives difficult feedback, the colleague who finally addresses a problem that has been building for months, or the person who tells their employer about a health condition and asks for support. These conversations are visible. We can hear them, respond to them and, sometimes, record what happened as a result. What I have become increasingly interested in through my research, however, are the conversations that never happen, because our tendency to treat silence as an absence of behaviour risks overlooking a considerable amount of psychological activity.

Someone sitting quietly in a meeting may genuinely have nothing to add. But they may also have spent much of that meeting deciding whether to challenge something they have heard. They may have formulated the words in their head, waited for an appropriate moment, considered who else is in the room and thought about how the most senior person present might respond. They may have remembered what happened the last time somebody challenged a similar decision, questioned whether it is really their place to say something and wondered whether raising the issue will make them appear negative, awkward or difficult. By the time the meeting ends, they have decided not to speak. From the outside, nothing happened. Psychologically, quite a lot did.

The invisible work behind silence

This is what I think we miss when we talk about employee voice and silence as though one represents action and the other represents its absence. Deciding not to speak can involve appraisal, anticipation, emotional regulation, rehearsal and an assessment of possible consequences. Someone may move repeatedly between wanting to say something and deciding against it, particularly when the conversation involves power, vulnerability, identity or an important relationship. Silence can therefore be the outcome of quite a complex decision-making process rather than evidence that no decision was made at all.

Consider something as apparently straightforward as telling a manager about a health condition. The observable conversation might eventually last ten minutes, but the psychological process preceding it could have lasted weeks. Someone may have been deciding how much to disclose, wondering whether the information will alter how they are perceived, thinking about whether they really need an adjustment and worrying about becoming emotional when they explain what is happening. They may have planned to raise it during a one-to-one and changed their mind because their manager seemed stressed, then decided to send an email before deleting it because the wording did not feel right. None of this appears in an organisational record, yet all of it forms part of the experience of that conversation.

The same process can occur around much less personal subjects. Telling a colleague that their behaviour is affecting you, questioning a decision, admitting a mistake, disagreeing with somebody more senior or saying that your workload has become unmanageable can all involve considerable internal negotiation. Long before anybody speaks, they may already be assessing the relationship, the power difference, the possible consequences and whether having the conversation is actually worth what it might cost.

We can measure speaking much more easily than not speaking

Organisations are understandably much better at capturing what employees do than what they nearly do. We can count grievances, complaints, disclosures, whistleblowing reports and requests for support. We can monitor participation in surveys, ask whether people feel able to speak up and record concerns raised through formal channels. What we cannot easily capture are the questions people almost asked, the feedback they decided not to give, the disclosure they repeatedly rehearsed, or the conversation they have been considering for the last three months.

That creates an important blind spot because the absence of expressed concern can easily become interpreted as the absence of concern itself. A major change is announced and nobody objects, so perhaps everybody supports it. A manager asks whether workload is manageable and receives a collection of nods, so perhaps everything is fine. Nobody has complained about a particular colleague's behaviour, so perhaps there is no problem. An organisation repeatedly tells employees that they can discuss wellbeing with their manager, but few people do, so perhaps they simply do not need that support.

Any of those interpretations could be correct, but silence alone cannot tell us that. Equally, we should not make the opposite assumption and decide that every quiet employee is harbouring an unspoken grievance. The point is not to reinterpret all silence as suppressed dissatisfaction. It is to recognise that silence is ambiguous, and therefore deserves curiosity rather than convenient interpretation.

What if the person does not need more confidence?

This is where I think some of our approaches to speaking up become uncomfortable. We regularly encourage employees to be courageous, challenge constructively, find their voice, ask for what they need and become more comfortable having difficult conversations. When they struggle to do those things, the response is often developmental: perhaps they need confidence building, assertiveness training, coaching, communication skills or a framework that will help them structure what they want to say.

Those things can absolutely be useful, but they begin with an assumption that deserves much more scrutiny: that the primary reason the conversation is not happening sits within the person who is not speaking. What if that person is already perfectly capable of articulating the issue? What if they know exactly what they want to say and how they could say it? What if they have simply concluded that saying it to this person, in this environment, about this particular issue is unlikely to end well?

That possibility changes where we locate the problem. Instead of immediately asking what skill, confidence or courage the individual lacks, we have to become interested in the information they are using to make their decision. Perhaps they previously raised something and nothing changed. Perhaps they have watched somebody else challenge a senior colleague and seen how that person was subsequently described. Perhaps they have noticed that disagreement is welcomed when it is polite and relatively inconsequential, but considerably less welcome when it challenges something important.

Perhaps they have seen someone disclose a health problem and then noticed subtle changes in the way that person was treated. Nobody needs to explicitly tell employees that certain conversations are unsafe if the organisation repeatedly demonstrates it.

People learn the unwritten rules of speaking

Workplaces teach us how to behave in ways that extend far beyond policies, values statements and formal procedures. People observe what happens around them and use those observations to make judgements about their own behaviour. A leader can sincerely describe themselves as approachable while becoming defensive when challenged. An organisation can promote openness while repeatedly failing to act on uncomfortable feedback. A team can describe itself as psychologically safe while certain people dominate discussions and others learn that disagreement creates tension they would rather avoid.

These experiences matter because every conversation potentially shapes the next one. When somebody takes the risk of raising something difficult and is listened to thoughtfully, they learn something about speaking. When they are dismissed, minimised, embarrassed or subtly penalised, they learn something too. Other people watching the interaction are learning at the same time. Gradually, employees develop a fairly sophisticated understanding of what can be said, to whom, about what and with what likely consequences.

This is why I find the idea of an "open-door culture" increasingly insufficient. A manager can genuinely have an open door and still preside over an environment in which employees rarely feel able to walk through it with anything genuinely uncomfortable. Providing an opportunity to speak is not the same as creating conditions in which that opportunity feels usable, particularly when the person considering using it has less organisational power than the person on the other side of the conversation.

Silence can be a judgement, not a failure

There is also a danger in assuming that speaking is always the desirable behaviour and silence is something we should eliminate. Sometimes deciding not to have a conversation may be protective. Someone may be protecting their privacy, professional reputation, an important relationship or simply their emotional capacity. They may decide that the likely outcome does not justify the emotional cost, or that this is not the right person, time or environment in which to raise the issue. They may be waiting until they have more information or greater support. None of this necessarily means they lack courage or communication competence.

Of course, persistent organisational silence can have serious consequences. Problems remain unresolved, poor decisions go unchallenged, harmful behaviour can continue and employees may disengage rather than raise concerns. Organisations need people to be able to speak when something matters, but if speaking carries meaningful personal, relational or professional risk, repeatedly encouraging individuals to become braver does little to alter the conditions shaping their decision.

If organisations genuinely want more open communication, then the responsibility cannot sit entirely with the person deciding whether to speak. We also need to look at how people are received when they do, whether uncomfortable information is genuinely welcomed, whether challenge can occur without reputational consequences, and whether speaking has any reasonable prospect of changing something. We need to pay attention not only to whether formal channels exist, but to whether people trust those channels enough to use them.

Perhaps we are asking the wrong question

There is good reason for organisations to be interested in why employees remain silent. Voice matters for learning, inclusion, safety, decision-making and organisational change. But I wonder whether starting with "Why didn't they say something?" too easily places responsibility on the individual and encourages us to search for deficits in confidence, communication or courage.

A more revealing question might be: What did they reasonably expect would happen if they did?

That takes us somewhere different. It makes us look at relationships, leadership, power, previous experiences and organisational culture. It asks us to consider not simply whether somebody technically had the opportunity to speak, but whether speaking felt worthwhile, possible and sufficiently safe in the circumstances they were actually navigating.

Silence at work is therefore not necessarily an empty space. Sometimes it contains an entire conversation that somebody has considered, rehearsed, evaluated and ultimately decided not to have. If we want to understand why important conversations are avoided, perhaps we need to become much less interested in telling people to find their voice and much more interested in what their workplace has taught them about using it.