February 29, 2024 • 39 mins
Sam Jayanti sits down with the dynamic coach and author Elaine Lin Hering to unravel the impact of silence in both personal and professional spheres. Dive into their conversation about unintentional self-silencing and discover practical strategies outlined in Elaine's upcoming book, "Unlearning Silence." The episode sparks a powerful dialogue on fostering a culture that celebrates every voice.
Subscribe to ideamix - Coaching, Performance, and Wellness, and stay tuned for new episodes every other Thursday. On ideamix podcasts, we speak with innovators and coaches to help you build the life, business, and career you want. ideamix is the go-to destination for individuals to find their ideal coach. Check out our website at www.theideamix.com. For comments, questions, podcast guest ideas, or sponsorship inquiries, please email info@theideamix.com.
Subscribe to ideamix - Coaching, Performance, and Wellness, and stay tuned for new episodes every other Thursday. On ideamix podcasts, we speak with innovators and coaches to help you build the life, business, and career you want. ideamix is the go-to destination for individuals to find their ideal coach. Check out our website at www.theideamix.com. For comments, questions, podcast guest ideas, or sponsorship inquiries, please email info@theideamix.com.
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(00:03):
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(01:07):
Thanks for listening and see you nexttime. Hi everyone, Welcome to Coaching
Performance and Wellness by a DMX Coaching. I'm your host today, Zamita Jayanti.
Joining us on our show today iscoach and author Elaine Lynn Herring.
She's a reformed lawyer who works withindividuals and organizations from a variety of backgrounds
(01:30):
across a range of industries to helpthem enhance their communication, collaboration, and
conflict management skills. Her upcoming book, called Unlearning Silence, is being called
an essential read because of its actionablepractical strategies. Elaine has a track record
(01:51):
of coaching professionals globally and is reallyall about breaking down barriers to give everyone
a voice, essential for anyone,a small or large team. Today,
we're going to dive into the whyand how of why we silence ourselves and
how to break that silence, bothfor ourselves, our colleagues, our families
(02:13):
and friends. Elene, Welcome tothe show. Thanks so much for having
me so Lene, I want tostart by defining what we're discussing today.
In some ways, it's very simple. We all know what silence is.
We all engage in it regularly,we watch others do so, but we
(02:34):
often don't think about it at adeeper level in terms of how it impacts
who we are and our behaviors,whether that's in a personal or professional context.
So I thought it would be usefulfor our listeners if I provide an
example from my own life which mightbe relatable to many of our listeners.
When I worked at pound Heer,a technology company, the culture was very
(02:59):
putarticular. I'm not sure that thatculture was by design, it was just
sort of by default in many ways, but there was an environment of what
I call sort of false transparency.And what do I mean by that?
Right, So you'd go to ameeting where you'd have an open discussion with
(03:20):
a group, and as a group, you'd come to some set of decisions
on the best path forward, andeveryone would sort of leave that meeting feeling
that they had clarity on that pathforward. And then a few days later,
one of the members of the teamwould be told to pursue a different
path and that was clearly sort ofpretty different from what it had been agreed
(03:46):
in the meeting, and that personmay or may not convey the reason for
the change, just that the changewas necessary. And so now we were
kind of on this new path right, And after this happened a few times,
you'd notice that many of the peoplein that group who had previously contributed
(04:10):
would stop speaking because they would eitherfeel that their voices weren't being heard or
weren't being valued based on that previouspattern that they'd observed and the lack of
communication around why a course of actionhad changed, not just that it had
changed. Right. Yep, someof our listeners might be wondering why that's
(04:33):
negative. So tell us why that'snegative, and so we can understand I
think, at a deeper level theproblem that we're really dealing with absolutely the
fact that midway through your story,I knew it wasn't yet the end of
the story started to signal that itwas problematic. We got to the meeting,
(04:53):
we had alignment, and then somethingchanged. So people often tell the
benefits of silence right meditative you canthink more clearly. There might even be
regeneritive brain cells. All of thatthat is great. The silence we're talking
about is when there is not enoughroom for your perspectives. The silencing as
(05:16):
a verb is when you share yourthoughts in this meeting. But then there
are signals and data points later onthat tell you your perspective doesn't actually matter.
And so in this case that you'veset up, if I go to
a meeting, I put my neckout, I am taking a stand.
(05:39):
On the surface, we all agree, but then it has no impact and
in fact things change in the meeting. After the meeting, why show up
at all? Why not just sitthere and nod because it's useless to speak
up anyways. So the silence thatwe're talking about is the ways that we
learn that our voices don't matter,our opinions don't matter, our insights don't
(06:03):
matter. And companies, in thisfalse transparency that you mentioned, say all
the right things. The values inthe employee handbooks say that we value collaboration
and innovation, but it seems likeonly some people's ideas matter or are celebrated,
and that's so exactly right. We'releft with what am I supposed to
(06:26):
do? Because if I continue topush for my voice to be heard,
I am labeled and branded as aggressiveor a troublemaker, or non compliant or
not a team maker, a teammember, team player. I have to
stomach all of the costs, andeach of us, particularly those of us
with marginalized identities, whether there's race, gender, class, education, able,
(06:53):
all of it. There are disproportionatecosts to continuing to push, and
so when leaders say things like Iam inclusive, my door is always open,
your voice really matters. All ofthose words are empty if your actions
don't back it up. And toooften, even well intentioned leaders, the
(07:14):
way they behave sends the message yourvoice doesn't matter. By the way,
we just need to get shit doneif I can say shit, and that
has a silencing effect. Essentially,you're building a culture of silence when you
purport to have a culture of voice, and that disconnect is really jarring,
(07:35):
disorienting, and damaging. Yeah,so well put. I think so many
companies suffer from this, right,And it's it's often not a conscious tone
that's being set, right, It'snot malicious or malintended, but it's sort
(07:57):
of an atmosphere that has been createdalmost as some sort of default from a
series of, as you said,behaviors that don't mirror or aren't consistent with
the intentions. However well articulated,those may be completely I mean, we
did hire a consulting firm to craftthose intentions and values for us, so
(08:18):
they must be well crafted right.What I love, Tamita about what you
said is the difference between default anddesign. That in the workplace environment you
were mentioning, it wasn't that someonedesigned this lack of congruence between what you
said and what you did, butit almost defaulted to that. And that's
(08:41):
one of the observations that I've hadacross industries and across leadership teams is that
when we do not actively design theculture, not just in aspirations and in
named values, but in how we'regoing to implement that, we default to
the culture that serves the people whoare ready in power, yeah, who
(09:03):
tend to be the people who holdthe dominant identities in the room. And
so when I think about design,it is thinking very tactically, things like
what communication mediums best support the voicesof the people on my team, what
time of day are they firing onall cylinders versus I'm firing on all cylinders.
(09:26):
If I'm a morning person, Inaturally default to thinking and scheduling high
priority, high value conversations in themorning. But if someone on my team
is not wired that way, whichtypically they're not because people are different,
I am essentially inclining them towards silence, even as I purport to invite them
to the meeting, and you knowwe've all got an equal say at this
(09:46):
table. Yeah, absolutely, Ithink you know this is such an important
point for anyone in any kind ofleadership role. And I mean that really
broadly, right, whether you're you'releading a tiny team to a big team,
to you're the parent and your family, whatever that may be. Because
(10:09):
I think as a leader, yourrole in a sense is to be part
coach and part caregiver and part kindof moderator, right, because you're the
only one empowered and positioned to thinkabout each of the individuals on your team
(10:33):
and what serves each of them tobring their voice and their best ideas to
a gathering and gives them the spaceand kind of the psychological safety. Right.
We talked a lot about this ona previous podcast episode with Professor Amy
Edmondson, to consistently bring their bestideas and their best selves to those interactions.
(11:01):
And you can't have psychological safety ifyou are unintentionally silencing people, right,
Absolutely so. In your experience andyou've worked with individuals and with teams,
how and when do you find peoplesilence themselves most commonly or most frequently
(11:22):
when my calculation tells me that it'snot worth it for me to use my
voice. And I'll say that forme defining voice because I am a recovered
Did you call me a recovering lawyer? Recovered? I reform, So I'll
go with that. I'm reformed.We still need to define our terms.
(11:43):
Voice is not just the words thatyou say in a meeting, but voice
is how you move through the world. Ye, So as a leader,
how do I create the space forpeople to do that? Knowing that each
of our voice is how we movethrough the world, the gifts that we
bring, the expertise that we haveis going to be different. But part
(12:07):
of the challenge is, as I'mdoing this calculation of whether it's safe and
worth it for me to use myvoice to move through the world the way
that I want, I have allthese data points from my past. So
when I walk into a new teamenvironment, I'm still thinking about and I
have the data set of the lastteam I worked in and whether that was
(12:28):
low power, high high power differential, whether that was actually only the leader
gets to speak. So part ofthe defaulting to a set of learned behaviors,
right, is what you're saying,Yeah, completely and understandably. So
yeah, because until I know differently, why would I test the waters to
(12:50):
find out the hard way. Thisis how employee silence is created because very
few of us want to test itout for ourselves. So when we're new
to an environment, we're looking aroundto see what other people do. Yeah,
and if other people stay silent,like I have intuited, I have
observed what the culture is, andI should probably play by those rules.
(13:11):
Right. So I want to takeyour example from earlier, which is,
you know a leader who says,well, my door is always open,
you know, everyone's welcome into thetent, and sort of just think about
the counter argument, right, becausethose are often people who say, well,
once I've conveyed that, it's kindof everybody else to sort of pick
(13:33):
up that gauntlet and go right andcome in and talk to me or voice
their opinion whatever that is. Andat the same time, so why isn't
that enough? First of all?Right, because there's a school of thought
(13:54):
that I think leaders often have,which is, hey, like I've done
all the right thing, yes totallyfor my part, yes, and like
if it's not working it's not myproblem or it's not my fault. Right.
It takes me a little bit backto what you said earlier of as
leaders, you are coach, youare a caregiver. You play all these
(14:16):
different roles, and I can imaginesome listeners bristling, I'm not a caregiver.
I'm a parent at home, butat work we are all grown adults.
So what is my role? Actually? I would argue that saying my
door is always open is insufficient forat least two reasons. One is,
it is only an expression of intent, and we all know that there's a
(14:39):
difference between intent and impact, soit is useful to articulate my door is
always open, or I am here, But it fundamentally underestimates how hard it
is to walk into someone's office.And if you don't understand the challenge of
walking into someone's office, that tome is a blind spot that needs examination,
(15:03):
right because it suggests to me thatyou have always had the privilege and
the welcome to walk in and havea positive experience, Which takes us to
our second reason, which is whensomeone comes into your metaphorical office, how
do you react or respond when someoneshares with you a question? A concern
a point of view. If yourreaction in the moment is to debate,
(15:28):
to get defensive, you are notliving up to this promise or this invitation
of my doors always open. Youare contributing to the case that it's too
costly for me to actually say whatI think show up how I intend with
you. Yeah, I mean it'sreally you know, certainly I had to
(15:52):
learn this in kind of growing intosuccessive leadership roles in the past, where
I think when you first become aleader, you're sort of under stressed to
perform, right, There's this kindof performative quality to it where you're like,
it means I have to know everything, and it means I have you
(16:14):
know, there are all these kindof misconceptions, right that are in your
head, which you I think quicklylearn are totally ill conceived and are super
counterproductive. Right, But then yousort of ask yourself the question of,
okay, well, so how doI kind of evolve to be a different
(16:34):
kind of leader? And you know, some of that obviously can happen through
coaching, and yet I think manypeople struggle to arrive at what you just
articulated, which is it's not aboutyou it's about what is the environment that
(17:00):
you are seeking to create, right, Like, I think so many people,
almost everyone has gone through this whereyou go into meetings and there are
always a couple or a few peoplewho are the loudest voices in the room,
and those are the voices that getheard, and the other ones just
sort of start to fade farther andfarther into the background over time. And
(17:25):
I think as a leader, itis up to you to hear every to
bring out every voice and hear everyvoice. Yes, you're going to make
a decision ultimately, because somebody hasto make a decision at the end of
all this, right, And Ithink people often are uncomfortable with the idea
of hearing all those views and thencoming to whatever decision they come to that
(17:51):
obviously is in disagreement with some ofthose views. Right, tell us a
little bit about that. It's sortof getting comfortable with the idea of hearing
lots of different points of view theymay often be opposing to, and then
getting comfortable with the idea of makinga decision and standing by that. Let's
break that down into two phases.One is, how do you even get
(18:15):
differences of opinion, because in thatroom, when you say, you know,
in a six person meeting, typicallytwo people do most of the talking,
and it feeds into this Babbel hypothesisof leadership, that quantity of airtime
signals leadership, and it is oftenperceived in that way. So how do
we even break that down? Thisis our role as leaders, as facilitators
(18:36):
to invite in different perspectives, buthow we do it also matters because just
to say, guys, tell mewhat you think. That seems like an
open again, magnanimous invitation. I'msaying I'm inviting you in. But if
I'm on the receiving end of thatstatement, I'm thinking, do you really
want to know? How honest shouldI be? The last time I was
(19:00):
really candid, it did not goover so well. So what I would
recommend, and what I coach peopleto do, is to use standard questions.
It could be what are the prosof this idea? What are the
cons of this idea? What aboutthis works? What about this doesn't?
From your perspective, What that doesis invite in the dissenting perspective without people
having to worry as much about beingdisagreeable. And also you're training your team
(19:26):
over time. Okay, I knowthat Samita's going to ask us what works,
what doesn't, pros cons good,bad, ugly. So those of
us who process differently and process betterwith time can sort of pre process and
show up with more of our insights. So that's one set, which is
(19:48):
how to even get those perspectives.The second is the construct I use most
in coaching, which is three buckets. In any situation, there are people
who are going to be informed aboutthe decision, they are going to be
people who are consulted about the decision, and then there are people who are
actually going to make the decision.And that is just how things work.
(20:11):
And we do a round robin ofsometimes you are making the decision and I'm
consulted or I'm informed, and sometimesI'm making the decision. So as a
matter of a leader, as aleader, if I can get clear which
decisions do I own, and letme be clear and transparent and everyone is
aligned, you're being consulted and consulted, means share your opinion, share your
(20:33):
best take on it, and let'sbe clear. At the end of the
day, decisions are not made byconsensus. They are made by this One
two or three people, but allowsus to show up fully and then to
also own the decisions that we have, and also to delegate the decisions that
are not ours to make, andto remember as a leader, if I've
(20:56):
delegated the decision to someone else,I am only a consult or, an
inform I need to back them upand not undercut them. Yeah, no,
absolutely, I think that's such agood point. I also think clarity
around who is making a decision justas important, I think is an evaluation
(21:21):
of past decisions and some honesty andsome honest discussion around hey, we got
that right, or I got thatright, or we also got that wrong,
or we could have done a betterjob, whatever that is, because
I think the lack of acknowledgement ofthe things that didn't work almost seems to
suggest that every decision has worked,and that's never the case, as we
(21:44):
know, for anybody, however brighter, whatever they are. And it really
SAPs the transparency and the openness ina group right to not have that acknowledgment,
because in the end, it's aleader not displaying their vulnerability completely.
And I would argue, as aleader, if you're not talking about those
(22:04):
things, what message does your silenceon that topic, on that failure,
on what did not go as well, or on what we learned from this?
What does your silence communicate? Yeah? And is it communicating the message
you actually want if not say somethingabout it? Ye, So you get
(22:25):
to craft the narrative and influence thenarrative rather than letting people fill in the
narrative of what you meant by thatsilence, Because maybe you didn't mean anything
by the silence, maybe you weretoo busy. But the message that's out
there is I guess we don't talkabout how we messed up here, We
just moved on, or they're justtrying to cover their own Yeah. So
(22:48):
Lene, as we're talking, I'mstruggling to reconcile something with the need and
the work that you do to helpindividuals and teams unlearned silence. You know,
we live in a world where opinionsare constantly being expressed in every medium,
(23:12):
even on matters that don't necessarily pertainto the individual expressing their opinion,
and often with sort of a lackof knowledge and facts, right Like,
we see this in the media,where so much reporting has become a series
of outbed pieces. We see itpervasively on every type of social media,
(23:34):
and so people don't have a problemexpressing opinions clearly, often even not fact
based ones. And yet even thoughthere's no silencing of themselves, there there
is often in a professional sphere.Help us understand that inconsistency. Well,
(23:56):
I'd argue that there's a couple moreof layers to it, because we love
complexity. One is, not everybodyis viewing opinions, so there is a
population that is very vocal, oftennot fact based. And then there's another
contingent of people who are like,I don't want to say anything, and
if I worry about saying anything makesme look like them. And I'd argue,
(24:18):
if you're in that camp, orhave that proclivity of worrying about whether
you are overbearing, taking up toomuch space to opinionated, you're not,
you're not. You can probably upthat anti but also thinking not just about
how do I share my opinion,but why am I doing it? For
(24:40):
what purpose? For what impact?And in what way can I communicate to
have the impact that I actually want? Because it doesn't mean tweeting everything.
Yeah, it could mean the oneon one conversation. It could mean you
know think again about your voice ishow you want to move through the world.
So I se see less of aninconsistency and I see more of the
(25:03):
challenge of so many different voices usgetting tired of the noise. How do
we cut through that noise and alsohow do we get different voices in the
mix because we know that the systemsaround us, Let's take corporate America for
example, tends to prioritize the waysthat white cis men communicate. Emotions are
(25:29):
really tricky territory. Vulnerability in andof itself, authenticity in and of itself
is really tricky territory for anyone whohas subordinated in identities because you are inherently
othered, or you stick out asa sore thrum, or your credibility is
already on the line. So there'sjust complexity to it, which to me
(25:53):
leads to this question of what arethe levers that we can pull and push
if what we care about is actuallybelonging, dignity and justice for every human
being, including in our workplaces.And my answer is one lever is let's
examine the ways that we silence ourselves, the ways that we have internalized the
(26:14):
messages that people have sent us,unintentionally or intentionally over time about our value,
our worth, our perspective. Secondleaver is what impact are we having
on the people around us? Inwhat ways are we silencing them? Even
as we talked about that well intentionedleader whose door is always open even when
we don't intend. And third wellis what ways do the policies and practices
(26:38):
that we have in place silence certainpeople while celebrating others? Yeah totally makes
sense. Yeah, totally makes sense. So I want to shift gears a
little bit. I think we've talkeda lot about why people silence themselves and
how environments matter. Right, let'stalk a little bit about some of the
(27:00):
practical, tactical strategies to unlearned thosebehaviors. You know, I'm reminded of
a coaching client that we had whowas, you know, super high performer,
kind of ascending the levels in theorganization. And one of the problems
(27:22):
that she identified was that she doesn'tfeel heard or and acknowledge that she doesn't
feel she can contribute to discussions inyou know, kind of the broader team.
And we talked about, you know, her coach worked with her on
(27:45):
kind of all the reasons why,which goes to your point of like,
what are the things in our backgroundand experience that kind of lead us to
that point? And I think developingself awareness around what those are then helps
us to think constructively about the pathforward. And her coach gave her a
really the practical tactical thing that thecoach gave her to do was she said,
(28:07):
you're going to go back and fromthis day on and you're going to
write this down every day in ainteraction of some kind that is more than
one on one, it's some kindof group setting. You're going to force
yourself to say one thing. You'renot going to think about how intelligent it
(28:27):
is, you know, whether it'sexactly right. You're not going to do
any of those things. You're justgoing to force yourself to say one thing
in each of those meetings, andyou're going to write down that thing that
you said. And it was sucha powerful thing for her, you know,
I mean it was it was Itreally helped her stick her toe into
(28:48):
a new behavior that was strange andalien at first, but then became more
and more familiar as she went on, and it launched her on this path
you on learning her own silence andfiguring out what her preferred mode was going
to be of engaging with groups.Yep, I only bring that up as
(29:12):
an example, but you know,you've worked with so many people tell us
about some of those practical tactical strategies. Yeah. I noticed my heart rate
going up a little bit when thecoach was saying, you have to do
this every day for the rest ofyour life, because no, no,
it was like, try it everyday for the next week. That was
okay, good, Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, that's what I
(29:32):
heard. I would recommend a timebound experiment, right, because we can
do something for a week, wecan do something for three weeks even,
but for the rest of your life. I know it's too infinite. Yeah,
yeah, too infinite. The otherplace I would start is why why
do you want to speak up?Not speak up for the sake of speaking
(29:55):
up or adding to the cacophony,But what is it you bring? What
is the person perspective or the valueor what do you think is missing from
the conversation. This is all ofthe change research, whether we're changing systems
or behaviors, but having to havea bigger why to anchor to so that
(30:15):
when the waves get rough, youcan anchor back to well, this is
why I'm doing it. On thepersonal front, this is because I want
a different life from my kids atwork, because representation matters or whatever it
is. What is your bigger whythat makes the ruffles if there are worth
(30:36):
it. The second is something Ifind in incredibly frustrating but necessary, which
is how do you connect the dotsbetween your pieces of data and your reasoning
to get to the conclusions? Andthis is Chris Archers and John Sean right.
But the rigor necessary because of howdifferently we see the world and the
(31:00):
differences in our life experience, isespecially in a global workforce. So that
rigor of I think this is obvious, obviously we should take this course of
action. Where is that coming from? Because it's not usually as obvious to
others. The third I would addis what are you specifically asking of the
(31:22):
other person? Are we clear whatwe're asking of them? Because if we're
not even clear for ourselves, howwill they understand what we're asking? And
this is the bigodous YouTube video ofIt's not about the nail, where it's
a it seems like a romantic partnershipand they people should just google, not
(31:45):
about the nail, but are weclear what we're actually asking the people?
And the fourth that I would add, and these four pieces are in chapter
seven of the book. The fourthis engage resistance. In an ideal world,
when we show up, we wouldbe welcomed with warm embrace. And
(32:06):
we don't live in an ideal world, and so often when we're met with
someone's defensiveness, someone's pushback, someone'ssilence, we get thrown off kilter and
that is often the end of ournegotiation or of our conversation, because we
need recovery time. But going inwith the mindset of yeah, there's going
(32:29):
to be resistance means that we're lesssurprised when it happens, and we're more
able to see resistance, friction,frustration, their concerns, their defensiveness actually
is information. Yeah, And thena question of what do you do with
that information? Right? How doyou have the patience and the wherewithal to
(32:50):
come back? How many rounds doyou go? And those are all really
important questions, but those four anchorstend to ground us in how do I
actually show up? Those are greatpractical, tactical things. I'm so glad
that you articulated it that way.Last question, You know, each of
(33:12):
us has some work to do onhow to bring ourselves into spaces, groups,
conversations, but equally sometimes our ownbehaviors inadvertently, as we were saying,
right, not consciously, are theresult of them is to silence others.
(33:39):
How can we develop some consciousness aroundwhen we're doing that? You know,
I think of in my family withthree children, you know, certainly
one is kind of often the loudestvoice in the room, and for me,
I've always tried to, you know, kind of encourage everyone to speak
(34:02):
right and make sure that each personis heard and not interrupted in all those
things. So talk a little bitabout that. How can we be conscious
about that? Yeah, that tome actually goes back to design rather than
default, which we started at earliertoday. Also knowing that voice doesn't have
(34:24):
to look like airtime, right,vo two very different things. So part
of the design is are there asynchronous ways or written type text based ways
that people can share their thoughts becausewe know essentially the awarenesses we're all wired
(34:45):
differently, which we know here aresome ways that we're wired differently. We're
wired differently in how we process inthe ease of communication, in the way
that we prefer to move through theworld. And how do we optimize for
voice, meaning is there some combinationof put things in slack or in email
(35:05):
or you don't have to speak inthat meeting and I can hear people's resistance
already happening. But that's just theway things work around here. Think about
whose voices come forward in those meetingsand how can you lower the barriers to
communication. And that may take somepre planning and some intentionality, but it's
(35:27):
really just forming different habits than theones that we have defaulted too. So
if we're having the meeting, dowe leave the decision at the end of
the meeting? Here's the placeholder,here's where we're at. Everyone go home,
sleep on it. For those ofus who are post processors, you'll
probably figure out in twenty minutes afterthe meeting what you really wanted to say.
(35:49):
And we want your genius to bein the mix to stave off the
crisis down the line. Can webuild that process in so that different voices
forward and their research and our experienceshows that that actually is to everyone's benefit.
It takes some unfront work, butthe awareness that we're all different and
(36:10):
that we can actually design differently ratherthan just defaulting is key. That's yeah,
I think that's it's so relevant.And you know, many times you
hear people say all these different channelsare a source of overwhelm for them,
(36:30):
right, because some people prefer toexpress themselves on Slack and other people do
it on the zoom call and somebodyelse goes into someone else's office, and
everyone's modality is sort of slightly different. Yes, but I think because of
the differences among us and because ofthe different comfort levels that people have with
(36:51):
the way that they want to communicate, and those can be different by individual
too, right, Like it's notas the one person just uses one way
all the time. It's it's sortof a reality I think of the workplace,
and I think it doesn't need tolead to overwhelm. Like because someone
slacks you doesn't mean that you haveto answered that slack at midnight. You
know, you can process that thenext morning and deal with it then,
(37:13):
right, Well, And what helps, though is clarity as to the norms.
Yeah, So one of my aimswould be, can we actually just
have a discussion, right, whatabout the ways we're communicating works and doesn't
work, is optimal or suboptimal,And you may find that actually everybody in
your team hates slack. Right then, why are we using it? Probably
(37:35):
because we assumed that someone else preferredit. Right now, what are the
norms around how quickly we need toreply, what it actually means? All
of those, if it is discussable, helps us optimize and also lowers again
lowers the barrier to entry for communicationbecause one of the fundamental challenges about speaking
(37:58):
up or using your voices, howam I supposed to get through to you?
Reply to my emails? I getlost in it. You keep canceling
our one on ones of texting,you feel a little too personal. But
have we had that thirty second conversationof Hey, if I wanted to send
you an urgent message, what's thebest way for the best way, what's
(38:20):
the best way? Because we spendso much time whack them all trying and
not knowing. Yeah, I wantto speak more efficient totally. WELLNN,
thank you so much for your thoughts, for your advice, and we look
forward to your book. Thank you, thanks for having me, Thanks for
(38:40):
listening. Please subscribe wherever you listenand leave us a review. Find your
ideal coach at www dot viidmix dotcom. Special thanks to our producer Martin
Mluski and singer songwriter Doug Allen.
Welcome to Idemics Performance and Wellness,where world leading coaches and scientists explain how
their research can help you achieve yourpersonal and professional goals. Foster hi It's
Sanjayanti, co founder and CEO ofIdemics Coaching. Coaching has played an important
role in my life. It's helpedme through my journey to become a powerful
(00:24):
leader, mother and wife. IDMXcoaches help you increase your self awareness,
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(00:46):
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(01:07):
Thanks for listening and see you nexttime. Hi everyone, Welcome to Coaching
Performance and Wellness by a DMX Coaching. I'm your host today, Zamita Jayanti.
Joining us on our show today iscoach and author Elaine Lynn Herring.
She's a reformed lawyer who works withindividuals and organizations from a variety of backgrounds
(01:30):
across a range of industries to helpthem enhance their communication, collaboration, and
conflict management skills. Her upcoming book, called Unlearning Silence, is being called
an essential read because of its actionablepractical strategies. Elaine has a track record
(01:51):
of coaching professionals globally and is reallyall about breaking down barriers to give everyone
a voice, essential for anyone,a small or large team. Today,
we're going to dive into the whyand how of why we silence ourselves and
how to break that silence, bothfor ourselves, our colleagues, our families
(02:13):
and friends. Elene, Welcome tothe show. Thanks so much for having
me so Lene, I want tostart by defining what we're discussing today.
In some ways, it's very simple. We all know what silence is.
We all engage in it regularly,we watch others do so, but we
(02:34):
often don't think about it at adeeper level in terms of how it impacts
who we are and our behaviors,whether that's in a personal or professional context.
So I thought it would be usefulfor our listeners if I provide an
example from my own life which mightbe relatable to many of our listeners.
When I worked at pound Heer,a technology company, the culture was very
(02:59):
putarticular. I'm not sure that thatculture was by design, it was just
sort of by default in many ways, but there was an environment of what
I call sort of false transparency.And what do I mean by that?
Right, So you'd go to ameeting where you'd have an open discussion with
(03:20):
a group, and as a group, you'd come to some set of decisions
on the best path forward, andeveryone would sort of leave that meeting feeling
that they had clarity on that pathforward. And then a few days later,
one of the members of the teamwould be told to pursue a different
path and that was clearly sort ofpretty different from what it had been agreed
(03:46):
in the meeting, and that personmay or may not convey the reason for
the change, just that the changewas necessary. And so now we were
kind of on this new path right, And after this happened a few times,
you'd notice that many of the peoplein that group who had previously contributed
(04:10):
would stop speaking because they would eitherfeel that their voices weren't being heard or
weren't being valued based on that previouspattern that they'd observed and the lack of
communication around why a course of actionhad changed, not just that it had
changed. Right. Yep, someof our listeners might be wondering why that's
(04:33):
negative. So tell us why that'snegative, and so we can understand I
think, at a deeper level theproblem that we're really dealing with absolutely the
fact that midway through your story,I knew it wasn't yet the end of
the story started to signal that itwas problematic. We got to the meeting,
(04:53):
we had alignment, and then somethingchanged. So people often tell the
benefits of silence right meditative you canthink more clearly. There might even be
regeneritive brain cells. All of thatthat is great. The silence we're talking
about is when there is not enoughroom for your perspectives. The silencing as
(05:16):
a verb is when you share yourthoughts in this meeting. But then there
are signals and data points later onthat tell you your perspective doesn't actually matter.
And so in this case that you'veset up, if I go to
a meeting, I put my neckout, I am taking a stand.
(05:39):
On the surface, we all agree, but then it has no impact and
in fact things change in the meeting. After the meeting, why show up
at all? Why not just sitthere and nod because it's useless to speak
up anyways. So the silence thatwe're talking about is the ways that we
learn that our voices don't matter,our opinions don't matter, our insights don't
(06:03):
matter. And companies, in thisfalse transparency that you mentioned, say all
the right things. The values inthe employee handbooks say that we value collaboration
and innovation, but it seems likeonly some people's ideas matter or are celebrated,
and that's so exactly right. We'releft with what am I supposed to
(06:26):
do? Because if I continue topush for my voice to be heard,
I am labeled and branded as aggressiveor a troublemaker, or non compliant or
not a team maker, a teammember, team player. I have to
stomach all of the costs, andeach of us, particularly those of us
with marginalized identities, whether there's race, gender, class, education, able,
(06:53):
all of it. There are disproportionatecosts to continuing to push, and
so when leaders say things like Iam inclusive, my door is always open,
your voice really matters. All ofthose words are empty if your actions
don't back it up. And toooften, even well intentioned leaders, the
(07:14):
way they behave sends the message yourvoice doesn't matter. By the way,
we just need to get shit doneif I can say shit, and that
has a silencing effect. Essentially,you're building a culture of silence when you
purport to have a culture of voice, and that disconnect is really jarring,
(07:35):
disorienting, and damaging. Yeah,so well put. I think so many
companies suffer from this, right,And it's it's often not a conscious tone
that's being set, right, It'snot malicious or malintended, but it's sort
(07:57):
of an atmosphere that has been createdalmost as some sort of default from a
series of, as you said,behaviors that don't mirror or aren't consistent with
the intentions. However well articulated,those may be completely I mean, we
did hire a consulting firm to craftthose intentions and values for us, so
(08:18):
they must be well crafted right.What I love, Tamita about what you
said is the difference between default anddesign. That in the workplace environment you
were mentioning, it wasn't that someonedesigned this lack of congruence between what you
said and what you did, butit almost defaulted to that. And that's
(08:41):
one of the observations that I've hadacross industries and across leadership teams is that
when we do not actively design theculture, not just in aspirations and in
named values, but in how we'regoing to implement that, we default to
the culture that serves the people whoare ready in power, yeah, who
(09:03):
tend to be the people who holdthe dominant identities in the room. And
so when I think about design,it is thinking very tactically, things like
what communication mediums best support the voicesof the people on my team, what
time of day are they firing onall cylinders versus I'm firing on all cylinders.
(09:26):
If I'm a morning person, Inaturally default to thinking and scheduling high
priority, high value conversations in themorning. But if someone on my team
is not wired that way, whichtypically they're not because people are different,
I am essentially inclining them towards silence, even as I purport to invite them
to the meeting, and you knowwe've all got an equal say at this
(09:46):
table. Yeah, absolutely, Ithink you know this is such an important
point for anyone in any kind ofleadership role. And I mean that really
broadly, right, whether you're you'releading a tiny team to a big team,
to you're the parent and your family, whatever that may be. Because
(10:09):
I think as a leader, yourrole in a sense is to be part
coach and part caregiver and part kindof moderator, right, because you're the
only one empowered and positioned to thinkabout each of the individuals on your team
(10:33):
and what serves each of them tobring their voice and their best ideas to
a gathering and gives them the spaceand kind of the psychological safety. Right.
We talked a lot about this ona previous podcast episode with Professor Amy
Edmondson, to consistently bring their bestideas and their best selves to those interactions.
(11:01):
And you can't have psychological safety ifyou are unintentionally silencing people, right,
Absolutely so. In your experience andyou've worked with individuals and with teams,
how and when do you find peoplesilence themselves most commonly or most frequently
(11:22):
when my calculation tells me that it'snot worth it for me to use my
voice. And I'll say that forme defining voice because I am a recovered
Did you call me a recovering lawyer? Recovered? I reform, So I'll
go with that. I'm reformed.We still need to define our terms.
(11:43):
Voice is not just the words thatyou say in a meeting, but voice
is how you move through the world. Ye, So as a leader,
how do I create the space forpeople to do that? Knowing that each
of our voice is how we movethrough the world, the gifts that we
bring, the expertise that we haveis going to be different. But part
(12:07):
of the challenge is, as I'mdoing this calculation of whether it's safe and
worth it for me to use myvoice to move through the world the way
that I want, I have allthese data points from my past. So
when I walk into a new teamenvironment, I'm still thinking about and I
have the data set of the lastteam I worked in and whether that was
(12:28):
low power, high high power differential, whether that was actually only the leader
gets to speak. So part ofthe defaulting to a set of learned behaviors,
right, is what you're saying,Yeah, completely and understandably. So
yeah, because until I know differently, why would I test the waters to
(12:50):
find out the hard way. Thisis how employee silence is created because very
few of us want to test itout for ourselves. So when we're new
to an environment, we're looking aroundto see what other people do. Yeah,
and if other people stay silent,like I have intuited, I have
observed what the culture is, andI should probably play by those rules.
(13:11):
Right. So I want to takeyour example from earlier, which is,
you know a leader who says,well, my door is always open,
you know, everyone's welcome into thetent, and sort of just think about
the counter argument, right, becausethose are often people who say, well,
once I've conveyed that, it's kindof everybody else to sort of pick
(13:33):
up that gauntlet and go right andcome in and talk to me or voice
their opinion whatever that is. Andat the same time, so why isn't
that enough? First of all?Right, because there's a school of thought
(13:54):
that I think leaders often have,which is, hey, like I've done
all the right thing, yes totallyfor my part, yes, and like
if it's not working it's not myproblem or it's not my fault. Right.
It takes me a little bit backto what you said earlier of as
leaders, you are coach, youare a caregiver. You play all these
(14:16):
different roles, and I can imaginesome listeners bristling, I'm not a caregiver.
I'm a parent at home, butat work we are all grown adults.
So what is my role? Actually? I would argue that saying my
door is always open is insufficient forat least two reasons. One is,
it is only an expression of intent, and we all know that there's a
(14:39):
difference between intent and impact, soit is useful to articulate my door is
always open, or I am here, But it fundamentally underestimates how hard it
is to walk into someone's office.And if you don't understand the challenge of
walking into someone's office, that tome is a blind spot that needs examination,
(15:03):
right because it suggests to me thatyou have always had the privilege and
the welcome to walk in and havea positive experience, Which takes us to
our second reason, which is whensomeone comes into your metaphorical office, how
do you react or respond when someoneshares with you a question? A concern
a point of view. If yourreaction in the moment is to debate,
(15:28):
to get defensive, you are notliving up to this promise or this invitation
of my doors always open. Youare contributing to the case that it's too
costly for me to actually say whatI think show up how I intend with
you. Yeah, I mean it'sreally you know, certainly I had to
(15:52):
learn this in kind of growing intosuccessive leadership roles in the past, where
I think when you first become aleader, you're sort of under stressed to
perform, right, There's this kindof performative quality to it where you're like,
it means I have to know everything, and it means I have you
(16:14):
know, there are all these kindof misconceptions, right that are in your
head, which you I think quicklylearn are totally ill conceived and are super
counterproductive. Right, But then yousort of ask yourself the question of,
okay, well, so how doI kind of evolve to be a different
(16:34):
kind of leader? And you know, some of that obviously can happen through
coaching, and yet I think manypeople struggle to arrive at what you just
articulated, which is it's not aboutyou it's about what is the environment that
(17:00):
you are seeking to create, right, Like, I think so many people,
almost everyone has gone through this whereyou go into meetings and there are
always a couple or a few peoplewho are the loudest voices in the room,
and those are the voices that getheard, and the other ones just
sort of start to fade farther andfarther into the background over time. And
(17:25):
I think as a leader, itis up to you to hear every to
bring out every voice and hear everyvoice. Yes, you're going to make
a decision ultimately, because somebody hasto make a decision at the end of
all this, right, And Ithink people often are uncomfortable with the idea
of hearing all those views and thencoming to whatever decision they come to that
(17:51):
obviously is in disagreement with some ofthose views. Right, tell us a
little bit about that. It's sortof getting comfortable with the idea of hearing
lots of different points of view theymay often be opposing to, and then
getting comfortable with the idea of makinga decision and standing by that. Let's
break that down into two phases.One is, how do you even get
(18:15):
differences of opinion, because in thatroom, when you say, you know,
in a six person meeting, typicallytwo people do most of the talking,
and it feeds into this Babbel hypothesisof leadership, that quantity of airtime
signals leadership, and it is oftenperceived in that way. So how do
we even break that down? Thisis our role as leaders, as facilitators
(18:36):
to invite in different perspectives, buthow we do it also matters because just
to say, guys, tell mewhat you think. That seems like an
open again, magnanimous invitation. I'msaying I'm inviting you in. But if
I'm on the receiving end of thatstatement, I'm thinking, do you really
want to know? How honest shouldI be? The last time I was
(19:00):
really candid, it did not goover so well. So what I would
recommend, and what I coach peopleto do, is to use standard questions.
It could be what are the prosof this idea? What are the
cons of this idea? What aboutthis works? What about this doesn't?
From your perspective, What that doesis invite in the dissenting perspective without people
having to worry as much about beingdisagreeable. And also you're training your team
(19:26):
over time. Okay, I knowthat Samita's going to ask us what works,
what doesn't, pros cons good,bad, ugly. So those of
us who process differently and process betterwith time can sort of pre process and
show up with more of our insights. So that's one set, which is
(19:48):
how to even get those perspectives.The second is the construct I use most
in coaching, which is three buckets. In any situation, there are people
who are going to be informed aboutthe decision, they are going to be
people who are consulted about the decision, and then there are people who are
actually going to make the decision.And that is just how things work.
(20:11):
And we do a round robin ofsometimes you are making the decision and I'm
consulted or I'm informed, and sometimesI'm making the decision. So as a
matter of a leader, as aleader, if I can get clear which
decisions do I own, and letme be clear and transparent and everyone is
aligned, you're being consulted and consulted, means share your opinion, share your
(20:33):
best take on it, and let'sbe clear. At the end of the
day, decisions are not made byconsensus. They are made by this One
two or three people, but allowsus to show up fully and then to
also own the decisions that we have, and also to delegate the decisions that
are not ours to make, andto remember as a leader, if I've
(20:56):
delegated the decision to someone else,I am only a consult or, an
inform I need to back them upand not undercut them. Yeah, no,
absolutely, I think that's such agood point. I also think clarity
around who is making a decision justas important, I think is an evaluation
(21:21):
of past decisions and some honesty andsome honest discussion around hey, we got
that right, or I got thatright, or we also got that wrong,
or we could have done a betterjob, whatever that is, because
I think the lack of acknowledgement ofthe things that didn't work almost seems to
suggest that every decision has worked,and that's never the case, as we
(21:44):
know, for anybody, however brighter, whatever they are. And it really
SAPs the transparency and the openness ina group right to not have that acknowledgment,
because in the end, it's aleader not displaying their vulnerability completely.
And I would argue, as aleader, if you're not talking about those
(22:04):
things, what message does your silenceon that topic, on that failure,
on what did not go as well, or on what we learned from this?
What does your silence communicate? Yeah? And is it communicating the message
you actually want if not say somethingabout it? Ye, So you get
(22:25):
to craft the narrative and influence thenarrative rather than letting people fill in the
narrative of what you meant by thatsilence, Because maybe you didn't mean anything
by the silence, maybe you weretoo busy. But the message that's out
there is I guess we don't talkabout how we messed up here, We
just moved on, or they're justtrying to cover their own Yeah. So
(22:48):
Lene, as we're talking, I'mstruggling to reconcile something with the need and
the work that you do to helpindividuals and teams unlearned silence. You know,
we live in a world where opinionsare constantly being expressed in every medium,
(23:12):
even on matters that don't necessarily pertainto the individual expressing their opinion,
and often with sort of a lackof knowledge and facts, right Like,
we see this in the media,where so much reporting has become a series
of outbed pieces. We see itpervasively on every type of social media,
(23:34):
and so people don't have a problemexpressing opinions clearly, often even not fact
based ones. And yet even thoughthere's no silencing of themselves, there there
is often in a professional sphere.Help us understand that inconsistency. Well,
(23:56):
I'd argue that there's a couple moreof layers to it, because we love
complexity. One is, not everybodyis viewing opinions, so there is a
population that is very vocal, oftennot fact based. And then there's another
contingent of people who are like,I don't want to say anything, and
if I worry about saying anything makesme look like them. And I'd argue,
(24:18):
if you're in that camp, orhave that proclivity of worrying about whether
you are overbearing, taking up toomuch space to opinionated, you're not,
you're not. You can probably upthat anti but also thinking not just about
how do I share my opinion,but why am I doing it? For
(24:40):
what purpose? For what impact?And in what way can I communicate to
have the impact that I actually want? Because it doesn't mean tweeting everything.
Yeah, it could mean the oneon one conversation. It could mean you
know think again about your voice ishow you want to move through the world.
So I se see less of aninconsistency and I see more of the
(25:03):
challenge of so many different voices usgetting tired of the noise. How do
we cut through that noise and alsohow do we get different voices in the
mix because we know that the systemsaround us, Let's take corporate America for
example, tends to prioritize the waysthat white cis men communicate. Emotions are
(25:29):
really tricky territory. Vulnerability in andof itself, authenticity in and of itself
is really tricky territory for anyone whohas subordinated in identities because you are inherently
othered, or you stick out asa sore thrum, or your credibility is
already on the line. So there'sjust complexity to it, which to me
(25:53):
leads to this question of what arethe levers that we can pull and push
if what we care about is actuallybelonging, dignity and justice for every human
being, including in our workplaces.And my answer is one lever is let's
examine the ways that we silence ourselves, the ways that we have internalized the
(26:14):
messages that people have sent us,unintentionally or intentionally over time about our value,
our worth, our perspective. Secondleaver is what impact are we having
on the people around us? Inwhat ways are we silencing them? Even
as we talked about that well intentionedleader whose door is always open even when
we don't intend. And third wellis what ways do the policies and practices
(26:38):
that we have in place silence certainpeople while celebrating others? Yeah totally makes
sense. Yeah, totally makes sense. So I want to shift gears a
little bit. I think we've talkeda lot about why people silence themselves and
how environments matter. Right, let'stalk a little bit about some of the
(27:00):
practical, tactical strategies to unlearned thosebehaviors. You know, I'm reminded of
a coaching client that we had whowas, you know, super high performer,
kind of ascending the levels in theorganization. And one of the problems
(27:22):
that she identified was that she doesn'tfeel heard or and acknowledge that she doesn't
feel she can contribute to discussions inyou know, kind of the broader team.
And we talked about, you know, her coach worked with her on
(27:45):
kind of all the reasons why,which goes to your point of like,
what are the things in our backgroundand experience that kind of lead us to
that point? And I think developingself awareness around what those are then helps
us to think constructively about the pathforward. And her coach gave her a
really the practical tactical thing that thecoach gave her to do was she said,
(28:07):
you're going to go back and fromthis day on and you're going to
write this down every day in ainteraction of some kind that is more than
one on one, it's some kindof group setting. You're going to force
yourself to say one thing. You'renot going to think about how intelligent it
(28:27):
is, you know, whether it'sexactly right. You're not going to do
any of those things. You're justgoing to force yourself to say one thing
in each of those meetings, andyou're going to write down that thing that
you said. And it was sucha powerful thing for her, you know,
I mean it was it was Itreally helped her stick her toe into
(28:48):
a new behavior that was strange andalien at first, but then became more
and more familiar as she went on, and it launched her on this path
you on learning her own silence andfiguring out what her preferred mode was going
to be of engaging with groups.Yep, I only bring that up as
(29:12):
an example, but you know,you've worked with so many people tell us
about some of those practical tactical strategies. Yeah. I noticed my heart rate
going up a little bit when thecoach was saying, you have to do
this every day for the rest ofyour life, because no, no,
it was like, try it everyday for the next week. That was
okay, good, Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, that's what I
(29:32):
heard. I would recommend a timebound experiment, right, because we can
do something for a week, wecan do something for three weeks even,
but for the rest of your life. I know it's too infinite. Yeah,
yeah, too infinite. The otherplace I would start is why why
do you want to speak up?Not speak up for the sake of speaking
(29:55):
up or adding to the cacophony,But what is it you bring? What
is the person perspective or the valueor what do you think is missing from
the conversation. This is all ofthe change research, whether we're changing systems
or behaviors, but having to havea bigger why to anchor to so that
(30:15):
when the waves get rough, youcan anchor back to well, this is
why I'm doing it. On thepersonal front, this is because I want
a different life from my kids atwork, because representation matters or whatever it
is. What is your bigger whythat makes the ruffles if there are worth
(30:36):
it. The second is something Ifind in incredibly frustrating but necessary, which
is how do you connect the dotsbetween your pieces of data and your reasoning
to get to the conclusions? Andthis is Chris Archers and John Sean right.
But the rigor necessary because of howdifferently we see the world and the
(31:00):
differences in our life experience, isespecially in a global workforce. So that
rigor of I think this is obvious, obviously we should take this course of
action. Where is that coming from? Because it's not usually as obvious to
others. The third I would addis what are you specifically asking of the
(31:22):
other person? Are we clear whatwe're asking of them? Because if we're
not even clear for ourselves, howwill they understand what we're asking? And
this is the bigodous YouTube video ofIt's not about the nail, where it's
a it seems like a romantic partnershipand they people should just google, not
(31:45):
about the nail, but are weclear what we're actually asking the people?
And the fourth that I would add, and these four pieces are in chapter
seven of the book. The fourthis engage resistance. In an ideal world,
when we show up, we wouldbe welcomed with warm embrace. And
(32:06):
we don't live in an ideal world, and so often when we're met with
someone's defensiveness, someone's pushback, someone'ssilence, we get thrown off kilter and
that is often the end of ournegotiation or of our conversation, because we
need recovery time. But going inwith the mindset of yeah, there's going
(32:29):
to be resistance means that we're lesssurprised when it happens, and we're more
able to see resistance, friction,frustration, their concerns, their defensiveness actually
is information. Yeah, And thena question of what do you do with
that information? Right? How doyou have the patience and the wherewithal to
(32:50):
come back? How many rounds doyou go? And those are all really
important questions, but those four anchorstend to ground us in how do I
actually show up? Those are greatpractical, tactical things. I'm so glad
that you articulated it that way.Last question, You know, each of
(33:12):
us has some work to do onhow to bring ourselves into spaces, groups,
conversations, but equally sometimes our ownbehaviors inadvertently, as we were saying,
right, not consciously, are theresult of them is to silence others.
(33:39):
How can we develop some consciousness aroundwhen we're doing that? You know,
I think of in my family withthree children, you know, certainly
one is kind of often the loudestvoice in the room, and for me,
I've always tried to, you know, kind of encourage everyone to speak
(34:02):
right and make sure that each personis heard and not interrupted in all those
things. So talk a little bitabout that. How can we be conscious
about that? Yeah, that tome actually goes back to design rather than
default, which we started at earliertoday. Also knowing that voice doesn't have
(34:24):
to look like airtime, right,vo two very different things. So part
of the design is are there asynchronous ways or written type text based ways
that people can share their thoughts becausewe know essentially the awarenesses we're all wired
(34:45):
differently, which we know here aresome ways that we're wired differently. We're
wired differently in how we process inthe ease of communication, in the way
that we prefer to move through theworld. And how do we optimize for
voice, meaning is there some combinationof put things in slack or in email
(35:05):
or you don't have to speak inthat meeting and I can hear people's resistance
already happening. But that's just theway things work around here. Think about
whose voices come forward in those meetingsand how can you lower the barriers to
communication. And that may take somepre planning and some intentionality, but it's
(35:27):
really just forming different habits than theones that we have defaulted too. So
if we're having the meeting, dowe leave the decision at the end of
the meeting? Here's the placeholder,here's where we're at. Everyone go home,
sleep on it. For those ofus who are post processors, you'll
probably figure out in twenty minutes afterthe meeting what you really wanted to say.
(35:49):
And we want your genius to bein the mix to stave off the
crisis down the line. Can webuild that process in so that different voices
forward and their research and our experienceshows that that actually is to everyone's benefit.
It takes some unfront work, butthe awareness that we're all different and
(36:10):
that we can actually design differently ratherthan just defaulting is key. That's yeah,
I think that's it's so relevant.And you know, many times you
hear people say all these different channelsare a source of overwhelm for them,
(36:30):
right, because some people prefer toexpress themselves on Slack and other people do
it on the zoom call and somebodyelse goes into someone else's office, and
everyone's modality is sort of slightly different. Yes, but I think because of
the differences among us and because ofthe different comfort levels that people have with
(36:51):
the way that they want to communicate, and those can be different by individual
too, right, Like it's notas the one person just uses one way
all the time. It's it's sortof a reality I think of the workplace,
and I think it doesn't need tolead to overwhelm. Like because someone
slacks you doesn't mean that you haveto answered that slack at midnight. You
know, you can process that thenext morning and deal with it then,
(37:13):
right, Well, And what helps, though is clarity as to the norms.
Yeah, So one of my aimswould be, can we actually just
have a discussion, right, whatabout the ways we're communicating works and doesn't
work, is optimal or suboptimal,And you may find that actually everybody in
your team hates slack. Right then, why are we using it? Probably
(37:35):
because we assumed that someone else preferredit. Right now, what are the
norms around how quickly we need toreply, what it actually means? All
of those, if it is discussable, helps us optimize and also lowers again
lowers the barrier to entry for communicationbecause one of the fundamental challenges about speaking
(37:58):
up or using your voices, howam I supposed to get through to you?
Reply to my emails? I getlost in it. You keep canceling
our one on ones of texting,you feel a little too personal. But
have we had that thirty second conversationof Hey, if I wanted to send
you an urgent message, what's thebest way for the best way, what's
(38:20):
the best way? Because we spendso much time whack them all trying and
not knowing. Yeah, I wantto speak more efficient totally. WELLNN,
thank you so much for your thoughts, for your advice, and we look
forward to your book. Thank you, thanks for having me, Thanks for
(38:40):
listening. Please subscribe wherever you listenand leave us a review. Find your
ideal coach at www dot viidmix dotcom. Special thanks to our producer Martin
Mluski and singer songwriter Doug Allen.
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