I'm your host, Andrew Soren, and today I'm joined by Elaine Lynn Herring, the author of unlearning how to speak your mind, unleash talent, and live more fully. In our conversation, Elaine and I explore the impact of silence in the workplace, how it influences employee experience and also business outcomes, and why it's so important to recognize when to be silent and
when to speak up. Elaine offers a whole whack of insights on the cultural and societal factors that contribute to our silence, especially at work, and provides practical strategies for individuals and managers of people who want to create environments where every voice can be heard. Take a listen to this episode so that you can dive into a conversation that is all about the complexity of silence as well as the potential for change through awareness
and action. Doing both can truly help us make meaningful work matter. Welcome to the meaningful Work Matters podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Soren, founder of Udaemonic by Design. On this podcast, we'll dive into the world of meaningful work, explore its complexities, and examine its impact on people and the organizations they're a part of. Each episode features insightful conversations with cutting edge experts who are successfully navigating the challenges
of meaningful work. We hope to offer you ideas, frameworks, and tools to unlock potential and design work that's fulfilling, impactful, and supports everyone's well being. Subscribe or follow us now, and let's make meaningful work matter. Elaine Lynn Herring, it is such a pleasure to be able to have you on this podcast. Thank you so much for coming on here. And I am really excited to have a good conversation about your new book, unlearning silence today, amongst many other
things. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I'm thrilled to be here. Why don't you start by just telling us a little bit about you yourself and what makes your work meaningful. I love that question. I feel like I'm already in therapy. Thank you. I am Elaine Lynn Herring. I am a recovering attorney turned accidental author, and my life's work has felt like, how do we actually talk better together,
talk better with each other? And that's the sort of five year old version that I'm riffing on with my kid in how do we he's like, what do you do? Why do you just stare at a screen all day? Why do you talk with people? And I was like, well, I'm trying to help us talk with each other.
And what makes my work meaningful is the opportunity, the opportunity for healing, the opportunity for people to feel seen, known and heard the opportunity for each of us to actually show up more like the versions of ourselves that we intend, rather than the versions that end up showing up in the workplace. And what a tremendous honor to get to do that work. It is an honor to be able to help people show up with authenticity. And it is also really
hard work. It is really hard work for a whole lot of reasons that you do a very good job of elucidating in your book, which is a great, wonderful book that I hope that listeners to this podcast will, will listen to, will read, will be able to consume in however they want to. But tell us a little bit about the book and why you decided he wanted to write a book. It's a great question why anyone would even write a book now that I've done it exactly once,
precisely once. So let's maybe go there first. I spent more than a decade teaching skills, doing corporate education, leadership development skills for negotiating, having difficult conversations, giving and receiving feedback, all tools and frameworks out of the Harvard negotiation project that my colleagues had created.
Really good work. And we notice that even with tremendous financial and energetic investment, some people still didn't negotiate or have the difficult conversations or give and receive feedback, no matter how much intellectually they understood this was a good thing to do and ask. The question, what gives?
And what I landed on is many of us have learned to stay silent, both in needing to bite our tongues in not rocking the boat, but also that the very well intentioned leaders and colleagues around us, their behaviors actually silence us, make it incredibly difficult and disincentivize us to actually share our thoughts, ideas, or of ourselves. So unlearning silence is this acknowledgement that as much as we might want to tell each other, just speak up, or you should have
told me. Why didn't you tell me? There's another layer that we have to discuss, which is to acknowledge. What role does silence play on our teams? In what ways have I learned to stay silent, been rewarded for it? Benefited from it? Does it still serve me? In what ways, even if I don't intend? Might I be silencing the very people I lead or at home that I love? And let's have a more honest assessment of what's actually
going on here. Because the problem with telling someone to just speak up is it puts the onus all on them. If you can go fix yourself, essentially, have more confidence, have more courage, then we might hear you, then we might promote you. And there's a whole bunch of reasons why that doesn't work, including there's no accountability for leaders of what are you contributing to this relational
system? What behaviors are you actually incentivizing not to talk about the silences baked into the systems that we're all a part of. So writing this book really was, hey, I think we've got it wrong. Can we talk about silence? Talk about this thing that organizational psychologists have long researched, that we have not brought into them mainstream, that actually undercuts our ability to show up, as most of us intend.
And the really damaging part of as we're not talking about the role of silence or how we've been silenced or acknowledging that reality, we are gaslighting each other. We are saying, you're the problem. And if you carry any minoritized identity, so often you internalize the message of I'm not good enough, the problem is me and how incredibly damaging and what a horrible way to go through life. So a book was a way to engage in that conversation in
a more intellectually honest way. People have said it reads compassionately, and rather than an angry book, which I'm delighted by. But how do we wrestle with this as fellow human beings, particularly if we're trying to show up well for each other? There's a lot in what you just said that I'm excited to unpack over the course of this conversation, and it very much stems from the work that I've been able to do in organizations around employee experience throughout my career in different facets.
And something that you said right at the very beginning around helping people be able to speak up in their most authentic ways or show up in their most authentic ways at work, and how connected that is to this topic of meaningful work. And what often makes work meaningful for us is that we get to show up as our most whole and complete selves, that we get to be able to do work that is really important, that we get to be able to try to work in ways that feel very aligned to our values.
And in the context of doing that, this topic of when do I speak up? What do I speak up about? What are the consequences of speaking up? Often hit us in very
unexpected ways. And I have tremendous amount of respect for what you have done in this book because I think that you have approached this topic with a lot of compassion and a lot of nuance that I think is often missed in so much of our efforts to create speak up cultures and so much talk about things like psychological safety and things that really advocate for people to advocate for themselves in different ways without necessarily acknowledging
the challenges, the trials, the tribulations, and ultimately, the tremendous amount of emotional and existential labor that gets invoked when you actually have to choose to not be silent. So let's. There's a lot there, but let's just. Yeah, yeah, please. Costs, the real and perceived costs. And that to me, is the opportunity of, does it really have to be so costly? Yes, there is that emotional labor. There's all of. And we're not just talking
about the words we say or don't say in a meeting, right? Do I bring this part of myself to work that is part of the existential crisis that can, that so many people experience and how we receive each other, how we hold space for one another. When someone takes the risk to share an idea, how we receive that idea fundamentally changes the calculus as to whether it is incredibly costly, slightly costly or no big deal to bring forth that part of yourself. And I
know we'll get into it. Well, so let's do that. Let's. You know, your book is called unlearning silence. Let's. Let's go through each of those two words. Let's start with silence. So when you are talking about silence in this book, what does that represent?
Silence is when you feel like there's not enough room, enough space for your ideas, your insights, your needs, goals, hopes and concerns in the relational system, whether that be a work relationship or a personal relationship, but certainly on a team, usually the priorities, the aims of the most senior leader or the person with the biggest personality take precedence over everyone else. Silence is when you feel
like you're not going to be well received. And so the outcome that makes more sense is to keep your mouth shut. Silence is also wanting so much for people to be able to come and work and lead authentically, but you can't quite figure out how to do it because everything you're trying isn't working. And that's the silence we're talking about. There's the meditative silence, the self aware silence, the pause between stimulus and response. Yes to all of that. And I'm talking about the
shadow side of silence. In what ways do we need to censor or edit ourselves, and in what ways do we make it such that it seems like other people have to do that as well? And of course, all of that impacts business outcomes in terms of groupthink, in not being able to address issues early enough. In addition to employee experience,
employee satisfaction. And engagement, what are some of the most common places that you've encountered silence, or that you encounter silence in the context of the book that you think listeners might not necessarily always think about. The meeting after the meeting. Why does that exist? If we are spending our time to engage in a multi party or one on one constellation of engagement, but in that space, it doesn't feel like you can actually say the things that matter most. Why are
we having that meeting at all? And then we click out of the zoom call or we leave the meeting room and then we go have the real conversation. And it's frustrating for everyone. And triangulation, talking to other people instead of talking to each other happens. So what's actually going on there? Because one solution, one problem is, oh, people don't know how to have difficult conversations. So let's do some difficult conversations. Training. Well, been there, done that. Why?
Right. Let's ask the bigger, harder question. Why do people feel the need to censor themselves? Why don't people feel comfortable, confident, able to share? What are the dynamics actually at play? That to me is the most common pain point. But we also talk about, and I really, I'm candid, wrestle with authenticity at work because it can feel like such a privilege that not everybody has, particularly when you carry subordinated
identities. Can you tell us more about that? Yeah. Some of my favorite research that was so illuminating is every organization, every team has a dominant culture. And it is driven by the people who carry that identity, whether that is male. And so if you are female, and we know all the statistics about how many females are in these executive C suite contexts, that if you carry the subordinated identity, meaning not the dominant, you are inherently pushing uphill.
It is an uphill battle because you are inherently othered, more likely to be doubted, more likely to be left out. And it's not that folks who carry the dominant identity are intending to silence you, but for you to bring your authentic self when the backdrop is different than you. I mean, that's a dynamic that we're not examining there. It begs the question, what can
we do? I mean, that's why difference of perspectives, the ability to listen across difference, the holding everybody of status, that you may see it differently and your view is legitimate and limited, just like my view is legitimate and limited. I mean, all of those are the micro actions that create the psychological safety that result in whatever identity you
carry. You might be able to genuinely bring that instead of, in order to be accepted in this dominant culture, you have to assimilate, that, you have to silence and hide those parts of yourselves. And of course then you don't get the benefits of diversity and diverse thinking and teams that outperform, etc. Etc. So it is this hard work to do that people can like, we have to drive the strategy, and that's not in the spreadsheet. How are we supposed to do this on top
of everything else? And to me that's the how do we integrate that into how we show up? Because for me to choose to listen to you even when I'm triggered and annoyed and don't see it your way, that's choice. That's a choice that we forget could be a choice because we're so used to going through the motions of this is how things work on this team. This is how we operate. One of the invitations of unlearning silence and then we'll get to the unlearning part is, could we choose a different way?
Do we even remember that it is a choice rather than just going through the motions? Tell us more about that choice. Its a part of why I ended up calling it unlearning silence when that dominant conversation is speak up, speak up culture, because you could continue to add on skills,
be more assertive. But if the foundation on which you're building that skill set is fundamentally unsound or contains assumptions that don't serve you well, let's excavate and let's examine what assumptions do you hold about who gets to speak, whose voice is valued or not? And what might we need to unlearn, undo, rather than just build a top, right. You know, I fundamentally don't assume that my voice matters, but let me throw some assertiveness skills
on top of it. If we talk about authenticity, it's not going to be authentic, it's not going to be powerful. So how do we peel back the layers to say, all right, do I have agency? Do I have agency to choose? What is my voice? I mean, I will acknowledge it as the harder work to do because you could just go through the motions at work, tick the boxes, get the paycheck, and we know from your research, not as satisfying, not as impactful, not as purposeful, greater likelihood of burnout over time.
So to me, it's a question of where's the investment? Do you want to do the work now or do you want to do it later? I am excited to get into the conversation that sometimes I think there are costs, there are real costs of speaking up. There are real costs of choosing to voice over, remaining silent. And sometimes those costs are real
costs to your wellbeing and to your authenticity. But I feel like before we can get there, I feel like we still need to unpack more of this kind of construct of unlearning silence. So just even based on what you've described so far, it seems like there's so much that cultural context, cultural backgrounds, societal context, societal conditioning, ultimately lay a foundation around that make this idea of unlearning silence so complex. Can you try to unpack a little bit more of that for us?
Start with my own story, because we each have a story. I am the youngest daughter of an immigrant family from Taiwan to the United States. I grew up in the christian church. I share all of those pieces of data because it explains my own relationship with voice and with silence. Being the youngest daughter from a family from Taiwan, a lot of asian cultures, patriarchy is the backdrop. So daughters are inherently less valuable than sons. And,
you know, we're going back hundreds of years, right? But let's. It's still there, even as we might try to disrupt it. Being the youngest means that to respect your elders is to defer to them. So asking a question, even one generated out of curiosity, is threatening to the hierarchy, is threatening to the respect system. And if that's how you grow up and layer on the christian church, turn the other cheek, be the bigger person, ignore your needs, the injuries. And again, we can
have a different theological debate. But all of those things say, shut up. Stay silent. And what's been fascinating to me as I talk with different people about unlearning silence is learning how deep it goes in different cultures. So some of my hispanic sisters saying, play, dita te vas mas bonita, which essentially is a. Is a phrase they grew up being told and translates to, you're prettier when you shut up. If you shut up, you're prettier or you catch more flies by keeping your mouth
shut. Right? And if you're. That's repeated over and over and over for decades, and it's just part of how you respect the people that you most love, how can you not bring that into the workplace, even if it's in the back of your mind? And so, for me, some of that work is just naming what is in the background. How did we get here? What are minds? And I know so many people will say, look, I've always been that person who speaks up. Okay, well, what parts of yourself are you actually
able to bring to work? What parts of yourself, implicitly, has the team or the workplace told you that you need to check at the door? Because apparently, if you do speak up, then you are labeled aggressive or angry. And anger is only preserved for some people with certain identities versus the ones that you carry. And so this is what we're up against. But the reason I want us to talk about it is because we each play a
role in each other's silence, right? If your manager is, when someone else says they're just being angry in a dismissive way, and your manager says, no, I think they have a really good point. We need that voice on our team. How different an experience. So there's a ton of cultural context and life history. And I obviously write from the perspective of being cisgender, female, and also talking with men over time. Who. What does masculinity look like right now? Which parts of myself am
I able to share? Not able to share. And I was like, oh, shoot, I thought this was just us problem, and it is more of a human problem than I realized. So how do we show up for one another? Because the beauty of it is we each can either support or silence
each other's voices by the way that we show up. So then what does it mean to unlearn some of those cultural patterns and behaviors and identity challenges that are part of just who we fundamentally are, especially in the context of a workplace, what does that mean to unlearn that silence? So the book is set up in two main awareness and action. And I think that gives us a roadmap for what does it mean to unlearn? Number one is awareness.
Are you even aware of what assumptions you hold about the value of someone's voice who gets to give feedback? I flash back to a taxi driver I had an interaction with last week where I got in the car and it was rushing, in my defense, and must have closed the door a little too hard. So the taxi driver said, can you not close it that hard? It's like, hold on here. Aren't I the customer? And I'm the one paying you money, so why
are you giving me coaching? I mean, just notice the embedded assumptions there that I will fully own in my finer moments. I don't actually believe that the customer is always right, but how much of that is embedded? Do we notice the assumptions that are there? Because, of course, assumptions are mindset drives behavior, which drives outcome. That's what double loop learning has told us over time. So are we aware of the assumptions that we hold that may have served us over time?
And, of course, I've dedicated an entire chapter to when silence makes sense. Because of that complexity, unlearning silence does not mean saying everything everywhere, all the time, to everyone. The world is far too noisy for that. But are you aware when you're choosing silence. Are you aware of what could be in terms of trust, in terms of understanding one another, in terms of greater information flow? Or have you resolved that, you know what, work is just painful and
horrible, and that's just what it is. Let me punch in. Let me punch out. And then, of course, action is, well, do I interrogate those assumptions? Where did those come from? Do they still serve me? Do they still serve who I want to become? And if not, what might I try
instead? And there's a whole second half of the book that we can get to in terms of actions, but a combination of that interrogation, small experiments, not doing it alone, building a team around you that is working toward that culture of voice, that on a team, we're actively looking to build a culture of voice rather than a culture of silence and not going it alone. All those things fundamentally change how we interact with each other at work and change our experience of work.
As I listened to you speak, reflecting about some of the other people who have come onto this podcast in the past and talked a lot about what gives meaning to our work. And theres a lot, I mean, theres a lot within that. I think most often we view our work as meaningful when we think that it is significant, when we think it is worthwhile, when we think that we are contributing something in ways that allow us to feel like we matter, were able to add value, were able to
feel value. And one of I think, the big ways that people find meaning in their work is through advocacy, through activism, through being able to stand up for things that they believe in, that are allowing them to be able to advance deeply held values that they care about, personal purposes or missions, especially work that is fundamentally deeply meaningful in and itself. People are coming to work because of that
desire to be able to make a difference. And then they often get into situations at work where they feel really stifled, or I even more so, where there's this kind of incongruence, this gap between what everyone's saying and what everyone's doing that can whittle away at people, can even create moral outrage
in the way in which they view the world. And I'm curious, just based on everything that you've just described, how some of the things that you are talking about in this book apply to that, those ways in which incongruence, those gaps between what we are saying and what we are doing, ultimately, where does silence fit into that? Where does unlearning silence fit into that? Yeah, I mean, you raised earlier, it can be really costly to speak up and I would say yes,
and of course yes. And it can be really costly not to speak up. And what I mean by that is so many of us in that fact pattern youve just described, go into work, you know, we're optimistic going to change the world, and then the red tape comes in, or why do we need to put this into a spreadsheet? Seriously, and all of that
and just the motions of day to day life. Are we in those moments acting out of agency, that remembering the values, the things that we are, we even aware of what it is we care about, when it feels like we need to align ourselves with an organization or an institution? And so my existence becomes, how do I champion the organization, toe the party line instead of
without my values? And over time, in your performance review, you're measured against OKRS objectives, key results that align with the organization, not how well did you, Andrew, live into your values or work toward your values? Today, in an ideal world, your personal values and the organizational values align or align sufficiently. But as we're approaching work, to think about voice, voice is, what are my values?
How can I bring that to life in the world that so often takes second string to the organization? And so, day to day, we're not thinking, what do I think? What do I want? What impact do I want to make on the world? We're thinking, what would my manager want me to do? What does the organization want me to do? And if we're not intentional about that reflection and analysis, then over time you actually
can lose yourself and not realize it. And that losing of self is this, I would say, is the silencing of needs, goals, hopes, concerns, values, and agency. Unlearning silence, then, is, how do I ground myself in wait, do I have a voice? Is it okay for me to have personal values when the organizational values are the ones in that PDF or on the wall that no
one necessarily follows even? Right. And I see the incongruence there, and I say this from personal experience, have woken up after a couple of decades being like, do I actually have a voice? Because it seems like my job on this hamster wheel is to perform on said objectives to further someone else's cause. So that to me is a huge disconnect and then a reorientation to say, yeah, I do have a voice. What might it look like? And is there an integration between my current workplace and my values?
And if not, and I have one life to live, what do I want to be doing with the time and energy that I have? And of course, there are real realities particularly with caregiving and bills and sort of that resignation of I guess my day job isn't the thing that's going to give me meaning or fulfillment in life. It just needs to tick enough boxes, and that's all an internal negotiation that we don't have time for or feels like we don't have time for. And yet as time is going on, that is our life.
Trey sometimes I feel like there can be too much meaning that
we have at work. And Weve had various researchers come onto this podcast and talk about the ways in which, for example, when you have an incredible amount of passion for the work that you do, you tend to look at people who seem less passionate in very detrimental ways, like you will actively work at trying to take down somebody who's working alongside of you, who doesn't seem to show up with the same amount of love and care and passion in their work, even if they're maybe doing that because they
have other priorities in their lives, they're coming from a different cultural background. They don't tend to just show that kind of effusive love and passion in the work that they do. There's other people who come to work for very utilitarian reasons. They are there because they have passions and meaning and love that they are pursuing outside of their work. And work is a vehicle for them
to be able to achieve those things. There's all sorts of reasons why people show up and why people might speak up and also why people might be silent. And I feel like there's something really valuable about the ways in which you in this book talk about the times when it actually might make sense to be silent. I'm wondering if you can say a little bit more about that. Chapter three is my favorite chapter of the book, and it's titled when silence makes sense.
Because so much of speak up culture is, you got to be out there, you got to be loud, you got to say the thing. And of course, these days, politically, silence is violence, silence is complicity. And we're not all equally situated. Each of us has a different set of factors. Work plays a different role. And to me, to hang on to that agency of, you know, what this is to pay the bills, and I'm pursuing art in the after hours or whatever it is,
or I need the visa to keep my family here. We each have a different purpose and to let that be okay and not judge one another for how we show up in the workplace or what role works place in our lives. And silence is so often a matter of survival it is necessary for self care and silence in the form of, I'm not going to choose to fight that battle today because I just do not have it in me. I'm fighting these three or four, and that one's
not going to make the cut. And to take the pressure off of ourselves to say it feels like we need to be fighting everything or we're on the wrong side of history. And that so often leads to burnout. I mean, there's no way to do it. I think of Ankari Williams, work of micro activism, how to make an impact in this world without a bullhorn. And she says, you get two things, you get two causes. And I'm like, really? Because that doesn't seem like a lot. But each of us picking two things consistently
over time does matter. So what may look like silence and people have different narratives and judgments about it, and I would argue, is strategic. It's a strategic allocation of energy and effort toward, presumably, the values you care about and the nuance there is a are you living into your own values? Are you living someone else's life? I often cite my mother here. I'm decades into life, and I still think she said, and so I'm living in sort of fear of that judgment.
But am I okay with it because it's actually who I am? And do I have agency? I'll note that the difference between silence that is additive or strategic and the silence that is oppressive is agency, and it cuts both ways. Right?
If am I staying silent because that's the boundary I'm setting and that that is going to serve me, or I'm not ready to talk about it, or I don't have enough spoons for it, that's driven by my own agency and choice, and I stand by all the pros cons of it, and I'm owning that narrative, or am I staying silent when I don't even realize it, or it feels like the only option in order to keep my job, I've got to bite my tongue. I can't actually say
this or bring this part of myself. It's a really different experience. And the same thing is true of voice, right? Hey, Andrew, you've got to be speaking up on this issue, that issue, that issue. Or you're a bad person versus you saying, nope, this is what I want to champion. This is what I want to put my energy toward. And so, really going back to agency, do we get to choose? Do we get to live the way
we intend? And everyone else will have a different narrative about it, but that clarity for ourself is key. You're choosing agency, you are choosing action, and you've built the self awareness first, which I think is an appropriate way of thinking about all of this. What are some of the top recommendations that you're going to offer in terms of somebody who's going to choose to act around unlearning silence? Yeah.
Let me go back to if you're early in that journey, like many of us are after, we're on the hamster wheel for quite a while and say, do I even have a voice? Right. I'm pretty sure I know what my manager would want me to do. I'm pretty sure I know what my loved ones would want me to do. Is there really a me inside? I would go back to the internal work, and that can be fairly straightforward, meaning, as you're listening to a podcast like this one, or sitting in a meeting, asking yourself simply,
what do I think? Not what does my manager think? Not what does my spouse think, but what do I, as a sovereign individual, think? Does this make sense? Does this resonate? Does it not resonate? What holds? What's missing from the conversation? What do
I think and what do I need? And over time, repeatedly asking those questions reminds you that there is a self, there is an individual with unique experiences and insights, and it makes it really hard then not to want to share or advocate for what you need, because you have that awareness. So I'm a big proponent of starting with the internal work, rather than you need to go negotiate for that raise right now, or you're not living up
to your full potential again. Even that negotiation about a raise is, where do you want to spend your chips? Where do you want to spend your energy? We only have so much to go around. Which battles are you fighting? And in terms of action, I would start with small experiments. And in the book, I talk about this experiment that I ran. Apparently all my examples are with taxis today, but we'll go with it,
right? I'm sitting in the back of a cab. I've just done multiple flights, so I've just like, airplane airport air in me, and I really want to open the window, but as I press the window, child lock or something must be on. I'm in a cab. The GPS says there's 22 minutes left. We're sitting in bumper to bumper traffic, and I'm thinking, you know what? It's fine. It's fine. It's not that big a deal. I can suck it up, right?
Like, I'm a tough person. I can deal with not having fresh air for 22 minutes and then thinking like, this is ridiculous. Elaine, you're a paying customer. You should be able to at least ask. And they can say no, but does it? And then, of course, well, it's a populated area, so even if they get really pissed and, like, kick me out of the car, you know, that's where my mind goes. And so finally decided I'm going to approach it as an experiment. Because the beauty of an experiment
is that you're not attached to a particular outcome. You're doing an experiment to try to learn something. And flashing back to 7th grade science, what happens when you put baking soda in the two liter soda bottle and shake it with vinegar? And so I asked, sir, you know, can you open the window? And he didn't say anything, but the window opened. And I was like, oh, my God, this worked, right? But that's. And it's such. It feels so silly to talk about that.
And yet, as readers come back to me, that is actually one of the stories that resonates most of. I do that, too. How often have we been acculturated to make do, to make ourselves small, to suck it up and associate that with, I've got grit, or I'm resilient. You can have those things and be those things and not need to draw upon it. Grit and resilience shouldn't be a replacement for equity. Anyways, that's a whole separate conversation.
But where are you in terms of using your voice, honoring your needs, communicating those to the people around you, and what might you try? And, of course, making that time bound so, you know, it could be for the next three weeks, in our one on one, I'm going to ask for coaching in this area. And the beauty of an experiment is not just the learning, but, yeah, okay, I tried that. Tried it on, felt it, didn't love it? Or do I hate it because I hate it, or do I
hate it because it's new? You can sort of suss through that discomfort, that initial discomfort that comes with trying a new behavior so time bound. And there's a ton of other thoughts there, including, how do you build a team around you? Because trying to do this alone is not just reinforcing the social isolation that can be so damaging, but also, we need each other. We need people who believe in us when we don't or find it hard to believe in ourselves and who want to help us become the people
we want to become. And so how are you building your team, and particularly in a workplace, when it feels like you're the odd person out. I would encourage us to broaden our definition of team. Team is anyone who's in your ear, what podcasts are you listening to,
what books are you reading, who's in your feed. All of those voices influence you and can, particularly if you're the first, the few, or the only, help you stay the course when it feels like there's such gravity to go back into the role that was given me or the box that they have
drawn from. Let me ask you kind of the complementary question to that which I would assume, especially in the leadership or in an organizational context, leadership is probably one of the most important levers of choosing silence or not choosing silence. So what guidance. What's kind of the most important guidance that you would give to a manager of people, a manager of projects, anybody who's ultimately responsible for other people in terms of helping them think
about silence. Choose silence. Choose agency around unlearning silence. Don't assume that everyone is like you. And it seems so simple. And yet my work across industries, hierarchy, culture, geography, human nature, if we're not conscious and aware, is to assume that other people are wired like us. So if I would speak up in a meeting without being asked or invited, why aren't you doing it? That's my embedded assumption, much to my chagrin. You come
from a different culture. You come from a different family. Your last manager shooed you out for speaking out of turn, and I don't know that it goes also to the communication modes and mediums of what are our expectations. If we expect everyone to look and sound like us, which is a natural human phenomenon, that makes it easier for us to digest the information. We are creating barriers to other people engaging in the conversation. So often in workplaces, good, effective communication is
three succinct bullet points. No, just the right amount of emotion to show that you care, but not too much that you lose credibility, particularly if you're female. If that's what we're requiring everybody to do, what brilliant insights are we missing out on from the person who communicates more easily, more effectively by typing than talking or asynchronously versus real time? And I highlight those differences,
morning person versus night owl. All of these are the embedded assumptions that we tend to operate on when we assume that other people are wired like us versus. Let's talk about some of those differences. If you are managing a project. Managing people, do you know what makes it easiest for people to share their candid thoughts? If not, that is a prime question for your next one on one or your next team meeting. And there's guidance in the book about those different communication modes
and mediums. But let's design again, design is a word of agency and an action of agency. Let's actively design the way, communicate the way we communicate and the way we work, rather than default to the patterns and the preferences of the people either with the most organizational and institutional power or longevity within an organization. I've talked with teams who are like, this meeting sucks, and no one's engaged at 09:00 a.m. in this whatever.
And it's like, well, why is it a meeting? Why is it at that time? And if it shouldn't be a meeting or it shouldn't be at that time, why not move it? And it's this aha moment. Can we do that? Sure, why not? You inherited this project plan and this rhythm from someone else who's not even at this organization anymore. And if it's not working, why wouldn't we try something else again?
We so often forget that there could be a choice because we assume that if it's the way it's been done or we haven't thought that we could challenge it, that we could try something new. So as a manager of anything, don't assume people are like you. And what are you going to try next? It makes me think of one of my favorite new hire interventions, which is this idea that every new hire has this opportunity to be a culture detective.
Those 1st, 90 days, that first period of time where everything is new and you haven't taken for granted anything. You haven't been acculturated into the way that we just normally do things. All of the unspoken rules of an organization, which is what onboarding is ultimately all about, is helping people become embedded into a culture. But while that's still new, you have this wonderful moment to be able to see and question all the things that happen that everybody else has just taken for
granted. Ask with them, challenge them, you know, have a, have a, have a curiosity about them, a transparency about them that so often we just completely become silent about. Yes. So do I as the new hire, view that as the opportunity. And does the organization receive me as that? So often, onboarding is. Let me teach you the ways, young one versus. There's such a, you are new to this with your fresh eyes. Help us see what we can no longer see. So both and
both. And, and if you're on probation, then how likely are you to be honest and express curiosity because you don't want to look dumb because you want to fit in, because you want to culturate. So there's an incredible opportunity that requires clear communication and framing of that opportunity and seeing it, receiving it in that way from both sides. Is there any other kind of last big message that you want to leave
people with? As we wrap up this podcast, I. Think the big message is the way that we have gone through life. Well worn patterns that we have in our work relationships and our personal relationships don't have to be that way. If it's not working well for you, what might you be able to do in terms of awareness of your own values, awareness of your own agency? Trying experiments to see what might help? And also, we're co creating cultures
and everyone owns it. So what is my role in creating a space where each human being experiences dignity and belonging at work and is able to do their best work? That how I receive my colleagues in their questions, whether they're onboarded, whether they're a long timer, it matters. And so taking it apiece at a time to really show up with intentionality, let's not forget that we have the option to choose what we're building
together. Thank you so much, Elaine. For everyone who has been listening to this, you can probably already tell that this book, Elaine's book, unlearning silence, is chock full not only of personal stories, but also really useful guidance around what we can do in all sorts of contexts to build that awareness, to bring action towards these questions around when do we
want to unlearn silence? When do we want to choose silence? When do we want to think about all of the nuances of what it might mean to both be in organizations to lead people in organizations? It's a truly wonderful book. We will make sure that we link to it in the show notes for this episode. Elaine, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with us today. Thanks for having me. Thank you for joining us for another episode of meaningful work matters.
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