Speaking up at work is generally seen as a good thing, and the likes of Harvard’s Amy Edmondson have spoken and written at great length about the value of psychological safety at work. Speaking up could help to expose bias or prejudice, it could promote innovations that go against the status quo, or simply suggest strategies that differ from one’s line manager.
New research from the University of Pennsylvania explores why employees tend to be uncomfortable with speaking up, and what managers can do about it. Interestingly, the study suggests that the link between speaking up and staying silent is not as clear-cut as we might think.
“We find that the extent to which or how often a person speaks up with constructive ideas or issues at work (voice) is almost completely independent from the extent to which or how often they intentionally withhold ideas or issues (silence),” the researchers explain. “We saw that people quite often volunteer ideas in order to help their teams even as they silenced other fears.”
Safe place
Obviously, this represents a conundrum for managers as employees might feel comfortable speaking up on one topic but not another. This process of speaking up is referred to in the paper as “voice”, with the withholding of information referred to as silence.
The researchers analyzed 162 previous studies to understand what prompts people to speak up (or not), before then performing their own study involving 405 employees across multiple companies.
They found that we’re likely to speak up if we’re confident that our ideas will have an impact on our organization, and especially if we think they will have a positive outcome for ourselves and our team. By contrast, silence is more common if we’re not confident enough to take interpersonal risks at work or if we fear we’ll be shunned for speaking up.
Staying silent
The study went on to reveal that the differences between speaking up and staying silent extend to the consequences as well as the motivations. Silence enacts a clear toll on us that can contribute towards burnout as keeping our concerns to ourself harms our wellbeing.
“Suppressing issues can be painful. People get exhausted. They don’t get to be their authentic selves,” the researchers explain.
As such, it’s vital that managers are able to address both voice and silence sides of the coin, with each presenting them with their own set of challenges. For instance, cultivating voice requires effort to reinforce that speaking up will bear fruit, whereas eliminating silence requires the construction of psychological safety.
“In other words, organizations may need a voice system and a silence system with multiple practices in each to ensure that employees’ input is properly recognized and rewarded to sustain perceptions of impact, as well as to reduce employees’ perceptions of harm or risk to increase psychological safety,” the researchers explain.
Striking the right balance
Encouraging people to speak up often revolves around how any attempts to do so are handled. For instance, transparency around how ideas are considered and ample communication when those ideas are implemented can help highlight the value the organization places on ideas.
For instance, research from Rice University shows that the language leaders use when workers come to them with gripes or ideas for improvement go a long way towards encouraging or dissuading others from following suit. Indeed, the study suggests that even if the employee’s ideas are not implemented, if they’re handled in the right way, it won’t dissuade them from offering fresh ideas in the future.
The key is for employees to truly believe that their speaking up can have a positive impact on them, their team, and for the wider organization. If they lack this belief then it makes speaking up much less appealing.
Similarly, managers need to ensure that employees feel confident that they won’t suffer any negative repercussions from speaking up. They could implement anonymous suggestion boxes, for instance, with such strategies helping to reduce silence on issues that might otherwise induce fear among employees, such as the reporting of unethical behavior.
As the Rice study highlights, managers should also monitor how they react to ideas and suggestions, especially if they’re bad or on sensitive subjects. Their reactions play a significant role in the safety employees feel in speaking up again.
“A lot of times in team meetings, colleagues are discussing issues. If people don’t speak up, leaders assume they have nothing to say and all is well. In reality, leaders need to work harder to draw them out,
perhaps following up one-on-one with someone who didn’t say much, and ask, ‘Is there something you wanted to say?’” the researchers say. “It’s not just having airtime. It’s about having it in a context where you feel you do not need to hold back.”
It’s clear that if we want our employees to feel safer speaking up, then much more needs to be done to provide the environment and culture to support them in doing so.
