VOICE & SILENCE

CRITICAL PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY CONCEPTS




WHAT'S VOICE?

"Voice" is essentially an employee's willingness and ability to share their perspective - good, bad or ugly. From a behavior analytic perspective, I like to think about this as having a motivating operation to share information. 

But… what does share information mean? Well, from a psychological safety perspective it can mean: 

SAYING THE THING SOMEONE NEEDS TO HEAR, BUT DOESN'T WANT TO 
ADMITTING YOUR MISTAKES 
ADMITTING WHEN YOU MISSED SOMETHING, OR FAILED. 

Let’s be multi-disciplinary though. If we pull in a super helpful concept from Organizational Change Management (OCM), it also means being a “critical friend”. We’ll talk about that more in a later post, but for sake of time and effort, a critical friend is someone who really gives a sh*t, their heart is in the right place, but they don’t like that’s going on. They’re usually vocal, and really want to tell you why they don’t like what’s going on.

Voice may look different for every person, and at every company.

Don’t be too rigid about it. If behavioral scientists know anything, it's that understanding the context is critical! But here are a few things to look at to understand how "voice" may operate in your organization: 


THREE WAYS TO LOOK AT "VOICE"

  •   What are the norms here? Some companies are very professional – some, more formal. Behavior goes where reinforcement (and modeling) flows, so voice is likely to occur in ways that align with your company culture, good, bad or otherwise.

  •   Does it occur in groups? Individually, or both?

  •   What systems do you have? Is there a formal feedback system? 360 reviews? PIPs? HR Complaints? Look at the data, and look for gaps, holes and opportunities.



THE SILENCE IS DEAFENING. 

Silence is “conscious withholding of information, suggestions, ideas, questions, or concerns about potentially important work- or organization-related issues from persons who might be able to take action to address those issues” (Morrison, 2011, p. 377). Some forms of silence also look like knowledge hiding; the siloing of information or making it increasing difficult for others to do their jobs. 

KNOWLEDGE HIDING 

Leaders and managers frequently think about having “helpful redundancies” – aka if I get “taken out of commission” tomorrow, is there someone around who can pick up the pieces of my work and keep it going?

It may not be at the same quality. They may not have the same competency or fluency, but there should be:

1. SOMEONE THERE WHO CAN DO THE WORK
    AND/OR
2. DOCUMENTATION ON HOW TO DO THE WORK 

Despite understanding why managers may want that, I’ve frequently seen evidence of people act like sharing information with a peer is a rattlesnake hiding in a bush, about to jump up and bite your ankle.

WHY KNOWLEDGE HIDE? 

I cannot emphasize this enough – Knowledge Hiding is a symptom of organizational dysfunction, not a cause. As we delve into discussing the four types of knowledge hiding, it’s easy to place blame or judgment on the individuals who engage in these behaviors. But, that is a mistake.

Taking punitive or harsh corrective action against employees who are knowledge hiding is a loosing battle. It’s highly likely to make them feel MORE psychologically unsafe.

We use this information to identify whether this is happening (a symptom), and then work backwards to determine the root cause. Knowledge hiding, and silence, don’t occur in a vacuum. People learn to engage this way as a sort of “coping mechanism”. The same way we wouldn’t put a bandaid on a gunshot wound, treating knowledge hiding as a cause will only slow the bleed, but for how long? 

FOUR TYPES OF KNOWLEDGE HIDING

 Research has identified four types of knowledge hiding. Some are obvious, but some are more subtle and harder to identify.

But, when you're empowered with knowledge, you can start to analyze root cause, identify research-based behavioral interventions, and start to make meaningful change. 

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AN IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT PROCRASTINATION:

We all procrastinate at certain points. We aren’t talking about run of the mill procrastination here. Really think about about the why. What’s the purpose of the procrastination? Is it that the person needs a deadline to get motivated to get moving? Or is it to purposefully obfuscate the work we are trying to do, taking us away from our mission, vision and values? 


“What’s the bad thing that will happen?”, we may ask ourselves when we see knowledge hiding occurring. It seems easy enough to just share! But, when an organization has a history of failed psychological safety the answer is a resounding probably a lot. 

Why? Because their experiences within the organization have taught them that speaking up (that’s “voice”!) will result in bad things. They observe others do the same, and also receive consequences they’d rather avoid. Or, it may be that just nothing good happens from speaking up.

If nothing good happens when you ”voice”, you might stop voicing. But, here’s the really insidious part – not “voicing” is not the same as silence.

When people stop using their voice, it's a warning flag that you're approaching silence. Treat it as such. But, if you're seeing silence, here are some ways you can proceed: 


THREE WAYS TO LOOK AT "SILENCE"

  •   Exit Interviews. Do you have them? Great. Analyze the data and see what the trends are. If there are things you’re surprised you never heard about – that’s a pretty good indication that you have a culture of silence. Don’t have them? Establish them, and in a way that makes it easy and confidential for employees who are leaving the company.


  •   Adopt truly anonymous measures. If it can be tied back to people, they’re still not going to answer it. That means thinking creatively, and may mean going “old school”. If your IP address can be collected and traced back to you, why would they continue to not be silent?


  •   Look for discrepancies across org levels.

    This can be really telling. If non-managerial staff are voicing their concerns, but middle management isn’t, what does that tell us about leadership? A whole lot of a different picture than if people won’t voice to their direct supervisors.


WANT TO LEARN MORE? 

Whether you're a behavioral scientist, BCBA, clinical director, or doing Organizational Behavior Management (OBM) consulting, our 4-week intensive will teach you research-based strategies to increase voice, and decrease silence. When you increase psychological safety in your organization, you can get back to the things that matter. 

Live course starts 3/21/2024, with asynchronous version to follow!