Elaine Lin Hering discusses why to stop censoring yourself at work—and how to strategically do that.
You’ll Learn
- The massive costs of keeping quiet
- The fundamental question that helps you speak up wisely
- The subtle ways we silence others—and how to stop
About Elaine
Elaine Lin Hering works with organizations and individuals to build skills in communication, collaboration, and conflict management. She has worked on six continents and facilitated executive education at Harvard, Dartmouth, Tufts, UC Berkeley, and UCLA. She is the former Advanced Training Director for the Harvard Mediation Program and lecturer at Harvard Law School. She is the author of the USA Today Bestselling book Unlearning Silence: How to Speak Your Mind, Unleash Talent, and Live More Fully.
- Book: Unlearning Silence: How to Speak Your Mind, Unleash Talent, and Live More Fully
- Website: ElaineLinHering.com
Resources Mentioned
Elaine Lin Hering Interview Transcript
Pete Mockaitis
Elaine, welcome.
Elaine Lin Hering
Thanks so much for having me.
Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m glad that you’re breaking the silence here on How to be Awesome at Your Job. I’m excited to dig into this wisdom.
Elaine Lin Hering
We have all the secrets ready to go.
Pete Mockaitis
All of them.
Elaine Lin Hering
Oh, no, let me rewind. Some of them, let’s reset expectations accordingly.
Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Some of the secrets. Well, how about you kick us off with one of the secrets, a particularly surprising or counterintuitive or extra fascinating discovery you’ve made while putting together Unlearning Silence.
Elaine Lin Hering
Well, I think that Unlearning Silence actually is the discovery because so often, at work, the advice given us, and that maybe we’ve given to other people, is just speak up.
Pete Mockaitis
Just.
Elaine Lin Hering
Speak up. Just speak up. Speak up more clearly. You need more courage. You need more confidence. You need to be more direct. You need to be less direct. You need to smile more. You need to smile less. The list goes on. And I gave out that advice as someone in leadership development for more than a decade, where I received it.
And I found it wholly unsatisfying, because “Just speak up fails” to consider all the reasons that we don’t speak up, that continue on, things that we’ve learned, which I term the silence we’ve learned, and the ways that other people continue to silence us. So, to me, the insight is, instead of telling people just speak up, we actually need to solve for silence on our teams and in our orgs.
Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, that sounds important. Elaine, could you unpack exactly how important and why? Like, what’s really at stake here if we masterfully unlearn silence?
Elaine Lin Hering
Yeah, if you haven’t come across it already, Google a Time Magazine article on how self-silencing is killing us, it’s focused on women, but basically health is at stake, lives are at stake, which sounds really radical and like too far out there. But if we are not getting our needs met in basic respect, in being able to communicate the things that we think are important, or the insights we have, there’s the value proposition from a work perspective, like less employee engagement, like quiet quitting.
But it also, the messages we internalize about the parts of ourselves that we need to censor, or that we need to leave at home when we go to work, really leads to loneliness and social isolation, as well as internalized messages of self-doubt. So, this whole conversation about imposter syndrome, the “Go fix yourself” is some version of imposter syndrome. And, to me, we’re asking the wrong question.
So, silence is when we’ve learned where and when it is welcome for us to share what we really think, which parts of us are allowed or acceptable, appreciated at work or not, and therefore what parts of ourselves we need to leave out of the equation. And what’s tricky is so many managers at the same time are saying, “Tell me what you really think. We need new innovative ideas.” And you can’t have innovation, and you can’t actually have real collaboration, if people feel silenced, and also many of us learned silence along the way of “bite my tongue,” “you want to be easy to work with.” Be a good team player, so often translates into don’t rock the boat. And so, to me, health is at stake, collaboration is at stake, business impact is at stake, engagement, wellbeing at work and in work life is at stake.
Pete Mockaitis
Okay, a whole lot.
Elaine Lin Hering
That’s a lot of doom and gloom right there.
Pete Mockaitis
I hear you. And so, for the health, just to review the mechanism, it’s sort of like if we are doing a lot of the silencing, then we are not having as close of relationships, and we’re feeling lonely, and then we’re missing out on the healthy stress-buffering goodness associated with the relationships, and then that leads to potentially our early demise. Is that kind of like the biochemical pathway we’re looking at?
Elaine Lin Hering
Biochemical pathway in addition to if you feel like you need to edit out parts of yourself, then your nervous system is on chronic high alert. Our nervous system is useful in being on high alert. But high alert is not supposed to be normed. It’s not supposed to be every day. So, cortisol levels, stress, all becomes internalized, and that ends up leaking out in physical manifestation in hives, in hair loss, in loss of sleep, weight gain, etc. in addition to this epidemic of loneliness, of thinking, “It’s just me.” That’s the biochemical addition there.
Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. Well, it’s intriguing how it sounds like a utopia to just, “Hey, bring your whole self to work, Elaine. Just share.”
Elaine Lin Hering
Oh, it’s such BS.
Pete Mockaitis
“You do you. Just let it roll, and say what’s on your mind anytime.” That feels comfy, that feels free, and yet, in like most utopias, the reality is not so rosy, like meetings would go on forever, you’d say, “Wow, there are a lot of really weird things unfolding, and that was inappropriate, and that was offensive, and my feelings are hurt.”
And so, it’s really a tricky one in terms of my sense is, and you tell me, Elaine, is that we’d be better off if we were less silent and more courageous in putting forward more than we are now, generally speaking. Is that fair to say?
Elaine Lin Hering
So, I’m trained as a lawyer, so let me be as explicit as I can. Unlearning silence does not mean saying everything, everywhere, all the time to everyone. The world is far too noisy and complex for it. So, your point about utopia, we still live in reality. So, chapter three of my book is when silence makes sense. There are some instances where it does not make sense for me to share what I think because I’ve seen what happens to people who really say what they think. Or, I don’t have it in me. I don’t have the bandwidth today.
You don’t know what’s really going on. You don’t know who I’m caretaking at home, the sandwich generation, I’ve got kids, I’ve got parents, and you want to debate me on that strategic direction that’s really going to change in three months anyways. I might just sit there quietly because you know what, it’s all going to change anyways.
So, to me, though, the difference between silence that is additive or strategic, or is damaging and the health impacts that we’re talking about is agency, “Am I choosing, when I stay silent, how much I disclose? Or, do I feel like staying silent is the only option?” And there are a bunch of traps that our brains fall into, like not being able to distinguish between our current manager and current work situation, and our last manager and last work situation.
We all have baggage that we walk into a relationship with of, “If my first manager shot me a look or told me that my work product was crap, I am likely to be more tentative going forward in pushing back.” I have that datapoint that says, “Oh, that didn’t go so well. So, how do I avoid negative consequences now?” And so, our brains also trick us into forgetting what is present versus past, over-indexing on short-term costs.
Like, if I give feedback to my manager right now, I have to go have the conversation, I have to feel the sweat in my palms and my heart palpitations, I don’t have time for that. Versus if I don’t say something now, what happens three months, six months from now? So, we over-index on the short-term costs versus the long-term impact.
And, frankly, when it comes to group dynamics, why should I have to take the hit? Because if I say something, I may or may not benefit, but I do have to deal with the cost and the potential cost of the blowback in the moment, versus the policy change benefits everyone who comes after me, maybe, if it comes to fruition. So, that voice silence trade-off is one that our brains calculate all the time, often poorly, and most certainly subconsciously. And my argument is let’s just bring that calculation into the conscious so that we show up more intentionally rather than living on autopilot.
Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, it feels like there is a lot of complexity and consideration, ins, outs, what-have-yous, to deal with here when we’re navigating this. So, Elaine, help us, are there some key guiding lights, principles to simplify this?
Elaine Lin Hering
Yeah. When it comes to silencing ourselves, there is this notion that researchers call the “illusory truth effect.” And what that means is, if I have beef, I’m frustrated with one of my colleagues, I’d probably go to talk with another colleague about it, probably go home and talk with whoever I live with about it, might even tell my manager about it. And in repeating that narrative, our brains start to think, “Oh, I’ve actually talked with the actual person about it,” when we haven’t.
So, when we think about silence, there’s just a check of, “Have I actually had the conversation with the person who is concerned by or with whom this issue is of concern?” rather than our brains tricking us into thinking, “Yeah, I’ve had the conversation,” when, really, I’ve had the conversation with everyone else in my life except for that person.
Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s a good tip. We may very well fall for that.
Elaine Lin Hering
We may fall for that. Another concept, mitigated speech. You can look at pilot training for this, but, essentially, we as human beings don’t tend to be as clear as we think we are. So, for example, particularly across lines of power and power dynamics, your boss says, “This is what we’re going to do,” and you’re thinking, “That is never going to work. I know that we don’t have the resources for it. We don’t have the budget for it. We don’t have the right skills that’s in place.”
And you might say something like, “Do you really think that’s a good idea?” to which, if you take that question on face value, they could say, “Yeah, of course,” and then end of conversation, and you’re like, “Oh, my boss totally doesn’t get it.” Notice the gap between what you actually said externally versus what you’re thinking, “It’s a horrible idea. It’s not going to work,” to “Do you really think it’s a good idea?”
And so, there’s a whole range of directness that we could leverage to say, “I have concerns about that direction. Here are some of the concerns,” or, “Here’s what I’ve observed of other teams who have gone down that path.” All of those things are more clear in actually communicating, “This is a horrible idea,” than, “Do you really think that’s a good idea?” or, “Have we thought this one through?” And so often we mitigate our speech without actually noticing that we’re doing it. So that’s another way that we silence ourselves or dull the impact and the clarity of our message.
The third idea that I probably should have started with is, fundamentally, do you believe you have a voice? Because so often in the workplace it’s, “I don’t have a voice. I’m a cog in a wheel. I play this project management role. That’s what I get paid to do. And so, my job is to literally channel the thoughts of whoever my leader is, whoever is giving me direction, or that the company has decided the voice of the brand.”
And, over time, it makes us a really good worker, but it dulls our sense of whether I have agency to think for myself. So, that very quick check of, “Do I believe I have a voice? And if not, why?” Notice that. And the reason I’m saying I should have started with that is double loop learning. So, this idea that if you want a result to change, you don’t just look at the behavior. You actually have to go back one more loop to look at the mindset that drives the behavior that then drives the result.
So, if your mindset is, “I don’t have a voice. I don’t have agency,” it changes how you show up at work, versus, “I have unique value-add thoughts of my own,” leads to different behaviors, which leads to different results.
Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. Well, Elaine, help us unravel this. Let’s say we’re saying, “Okay, there are times when I don’t feel like I have a voice, what do I do about it?”
Elaine Lin Hering
I’m taking a deep breath there because there are so much of it really depends on the context. I don’t know who your manager is, I don’t know what the stakes are, I don’t know if you’re on a work visa here, and so the stakes are all different. The thing I would do is to start with the distinction of, “Do you know what your voice is?” versus how you use it. So, let’s break it down there.
If you are wondering whether you have a voice or what your voice sounds like, because you’ve just been so focused on doing whatever you think your manager would want, or your mother would want, or whoever role model of how you think you should show up would want, I would start by asking two questions. In a meeting, listening to this podcast, engaging with any sort of content, be asking, “What do I think?” not “What does my manager think?” not “What does my brother think?” not “What does my mother think?” but, “What do I think?” And what that does over time is remind you that you actually have unique thoughts of your own.
Second question is, “What do I need?” Because so often silencing is also suppression of our needs, our desires, our wants. And so, “What do I think? What do I need?” reminds you that you actually are an autonomous individual with needs, goals, hopes, concerns of your own. In negotiation theory, we would call those interests. So, that would be my advice on rediscovering or finding your voice. And then begs the question of, “How might you use it? And when might you use it?” which is the more situationally dependent one.
Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I love it. It’s so simple, and yet so easy to just fly right past it.
Elaine Lin Hering
Because we’re on autopilot. Yeah, and we’re moving to the next thing and the next thing, and this is how we’re used to operating, and also the advice given us is, “Well, just speak up. You need to have more courage.” So, we’re down this rabbit hole of trying to figure out how to be more courageous versus, to me, speaking up and using your voice is actually a matter of calculation, “Does it make sense? Is it worth it for me to speak up, which the way that other people interact or react to me profoundly matters and impacts whether I want to share what I think and what I feel?”
Pete Mockaitis
It does. And what I find interesting is that question, “What do I think?” can sometimes take a little bit of time to really develop. Because sometimes, “What do I think?” it’s like, “I don’t actually know what I think yet. I don’t have thoughts yet. I just have feelings. I feel a general sense of unease and trepidation about those things you just said, and I don’t even know why yet.”
Elaine Lin Hering
Yeah. And, by the way, based on your identities, feelings may not be appropriate for you to have at work. So then comes the suppression of, “Let me not even engage with that sense. Let me just do what the group or the dominant norm seems to want to do here because it’s far easier and not necessarily a better outcome in the short or the long term.”
Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And then I guess, as you sit with it longer, in terms of, “What do I think?” if we only have a feeling, you got to dig into that a little bit. And sometimes it can just be like, “Oh, this kind of reminds me of another situation I had that went poorly. So let me examine to what extent is this really similar versus was there some surface level similarity that’s really not applicable to this that I could just be like, ‘Oh, okay. Well, this is a totally different manager, different situation, different project, different client. So, okay, that’s probably not a thing I need to worry about.’” As opposed to, “Well, no, these similarities really do surface that there is some extra risk here, or there are some difficult things I’m not so sure we’ve all thought through that probably need thinking through before we barrel down this path.”
Elaine Lin Hering
Yes. And, by the way, there’s no time, or it feels like there’s no time at work, because we’re already behind schedule, we’re already behind the eight ball. I love what you said about sometimes it takes some time to even realize what you think because that is a difference in processing style and wiring that most modern corporate workplaces do not account for.
So, what I mean by that is, in organizations, particularly corporate America, it seems like there is one particular style of communication that is held up as effective leadership. It often sounds like three succinct bullet points with no ums, just the right amount of emotion to show that you care, but not too much emotion that you lose credibility, particularly if you present as female.
And so, those of us who are post-processors, and I’ll define that in a minute, are at a distinct disadvantage because we’re not as “quick on our feet.” So, two major styles of processing: real-time processing, where the more we talk it out in the moment, the more clear the idea gets; and post-processors, who are the type of, you know, if you’ve ever been in a meeting, you can’t quite figure out what to say, about 20 minutes after the meeting, you’re like, “That’s what I wanted to say.” Welcome to being a post-processor.
And that, to me, is just a difference in wiring, whereas, many workplaces consider that a weakness, “You need to be quicker on your feet. You need to be able to do the rebuttal. You need to be able to input your insight and expertise now or you’ve missed your shot.” And I want to believe that communication is not a Hamilton musical where you’ve got to shoot your shot, and if you don’t, then life has moved on.
Pete Mockaitis
In rap format, which makes it…
Elaine Lin Hering
Yeah, and wearing really cool clothes.
Pete Mockaitis
Certainly.
Elaine Lin Hering
So much as we could actually design to account for those differences in wiring and that time to figure out what we think. So, in a meeting, for example, you still have your meeting, so the real-time processors can have their conversation. And at the end of the meeting you say, “All right, it seems like this is where we’re headed, but everybody sleep on it. As you post-process, share whatever comes up in your post-processing in a Reply-All on this email thread, or put it in Slack.”
You’re doing a couple things there. One, you’re normalizing that we’re all wired differently, and if we really want to hear the best ideas, not just the loudest or the fastest ideas, then we need to design the way that we communicate to leverage those different styles rather than penalize.
Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. It also makes me think about how it is even more so a fine idea to share slides or notes or documents or whatever in advance of the meeting so folks already had a chance to ponder, “What do I think about this? What do I need with regard to this?”
All right. So, within the complexity of “Do I speak up or do I stay silent?” could we summarize what are some…because in a way there’s this whole emotional element too, in terms of there may be a rational, optimal thing to do. But I might not even be seeing that clearly because I’m scared of what’s going on.
So maybe, first at the rational level, can you give us the pro speaking up indicators and then the con? “No, maybe stay silent” indicators in terms of what seemed to have the most impact, the biggest punch, and come up the most often as a consideration we should be working through?
Elaine Lin Hering
In terms of the pros, is it worth it to you? Is it worth it to you? Meaning, you care enough about the issue, the stakes seem high enough, “Can you live with yourself?” is probably the anchor I go back to. Can you live with yourself if you don’t say something? And if the answer is I can’t, then that would be pro-say something.
The don’t say something is you’re not yet sure what you think, you don’t have bandwidth, and you are unwilling or unable to stomach the costs of speaking up. Oftentimes, the greatest fear is like, “If I say something, if I give feedback, I’m going to get fired.” And there are some people who say, “Well, that’s a really extreme example. Who gets fired for giving feedback?” And for many of us, we know that it does actually happen. Sometimes it’s not overnight, although I spoke to someone yesterday who was let go for giving her boss feedback.
It doesn’t happen overnight, but do you stop getting the invites to the meetings? Do you stop getting the juicy projects at work? There are real costs, which is what makes it complex, but that takes me back to, “Can you live with yourself if you don’t say something? How much does it really matter to you?” The other way I’d answer the question, and you can decide what you want to keep, Pete, is in Chapter 3 of the book.
The questions that we tend to ask are, “What are the costs of speaking up?” and our brains tend to over-index on the costs, real and perceived, meaning, “If I say something, I’m going to get fired. Maybe that’s what happened at my last job, but that’s actually not the cultural environment that I’m in right now at this current job. So, what are the costs of speaking up?”
And our brains focus on the benefits of staying silent, like, “I don’t have to deal with it right now,” and we tend to assume that, “If I don’t have to deal with it, I haven’t heard about it, maybe it’ll fix itself. Maybe it’s going away.” Spoilers. Doesn’t usually. And so, that begs the third question of, “In light of the costs and benefits, what makes sense for me?” And this is why I really struggle with doing a hard line of, you must speak up in these contexts and don’t speak up in these contexts because I’m not you.
I don’t know what you’re carrying. I don’t know what you’re healing from. I don’t know what you are holding for your family or households. I don’t know what the stakes are for you. And that point, to me, takes us back to agency, of you getting to decide is the difference between silence that is strategic or that, frankly, is oppressive or is damaging.
The place that you’ll notice we didn’t explore, there are, “What are the costs of staying silent? And what are the benefits of using your voice?” And so, I would be looking in those four arenas, rather than focusing just on the costs of speaking up and the benefits of staying silent, also adding to your analysis, “Well, what’s it cost me if I don’t speak up? And what are the potential benefits, even if they’re not guaranteed, of speaking up?”
Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s good. And what’s intriguing with the fear and the notion of over-indexing on the short-term, like, “Oh, this is going to be really uncomfortable,” it can be fascinating how sometimes, if you’re the only one speaking up and providing the contrary opinion, it does happen that folks are annoyed that you spoke, “Hey, you want to get out of this meeting earlier? We were almost all wrapped up. We had close to consensus, and then you just had to throw this thing in here. So that’s kind of annoying.”
And so, it does feel like you lose a little bit of street cred or social capital or whatever in so doing that. And yet, at the same time, it is so case by case, there are some leaders who will just be absolutely delighted, like, “Here, at last, is someone who’s giving me a perspective I’m not hearing elsewhere, things I need to be worried about, making sure I’m not blindsided, giving me a heads up. This one has high potential and a bright future.”
And so, it’s interesting that those, I don’t know if we know what proportion of managers fall into what camp, that’s sort of hard to know, but if you know it, Elaine, drop some stats on us. But I think that might be an example of something we might undervalue or under-index for as we’re assessing this stuff, is you might discover that you have the potential to be differentiated as a super valuable person that your manager loves, loves, loves, and trusts you, and wants to run more and more things by you because they’re not getting that perspective elsewhere.
Elaine Lin Hering
Yeah, because you’re not just plus one-ing everything else. You actually have a value-add because you’re offering a different perspective. I actually want to do one better because I don’t want to get us to the point where we’re at the end of the meeting and then you have to be contrarian. That cost is too high emotionally, socially, the social threat of speaking up.
So, what I tend to coach leaders to do is instead of leaders…leaders in a very, very well-intentioned way, saying things like, “What do you think?” or don’t even ask the question. It’s, just leaders assume, because they would do it.
Pete Mockaitis
“Sounds like we all love this idea.”
Elaine Lin Hering
Yeah, if you have something to say, you’re going to say it, versus using standard questions, “What about this works? What about this doesn’t work? What are the pros? What are the cons? What about this resonates? What concerns do you have?” If those are the questions that we, as a team, use to evaluate an idea, I don’t need someone to muster up the courage to offer a contrarian view or play devil’s advocate because it’s baked into how we’re doing the work, how we’re having the conversation, and it’s just the next agenda item, “Okay, we’ve talked about the pros. What are the cons?”
And that takes the pressure off of everyone, rather than, “Okay, Pete, muster up the courage now, take the risk.” We’re lowering the barriers to engaging in conversation and engaging by adding your perspective.
Pete Mockaitis
Yes, that sounds like a wise best practice, to just go ahead and do that, when discussing decisions and options and considerations. Any other top do’s and don’ts you’d put forward?
Elaine Lin Hering
Oh, so many. So many. Let me start with the leader. So, we as human beings tend to assume that people, other people are wired like us. It’s just human nature. So, unless we stop and intentionally realize, “Oh, there are some people who are post-processors. Well, I’m a real-time processor? Okay, then what do I do about it?”
The first reason I articulate in the book that leaders end up silencing the people they lead, the people that they genuinely want to thrive and want to unleash their talent, is that they fundamentally underestimate how hard it can be for someone to speak up. If your voice has always been welcome, if your ideas have always been well received, you forget that other people could have different life experiences, and this is just a cognitive awareness of, “Oh, it could be hard for someone not because they’re weak or deficient, but because they’re different than I am.”
And so, the “don’t” is don’t assume everyone is like you. The “do” is figure out what makes it easiest for people to share their thoughts and feelings. Some people are typers. Some people are talkers. Some people communicate best real-time. Some people it is asynchronous. Some people are morning people, evening people. Can you understand what makes it easier for someone to communicate so you, as a a colleague, lower the barriers to people telling you what you really think?
Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s great. What else?
Elaine Lin Hering
I’m like, I could just go down the table of contents.
Pete Mockaitis
I’m down.
Elaine Lin Hering
You’re game.
Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, let’s hear it.
Elaine Lin Hering
Okay. So let me do one more on leaders as a pet peeve, and then I’ll go from the how to speak up perspective. One of the most subtle things that we end up doing that silences other people is, when they finally take the risk to share what we think, what they think, we change the topic, and it’s really subtle, but we change the topic from their concern to my reaction to the situation.
So, example. They come and say, “Hey, Pete, I don’t think we’re going to hit the deadline.” And your reaction is, “What the hell? Why didn’t you tell me about this earlier?” It seems like we’re talking about the same thing, the deadline and our inability to hit it, but you’ve actually changed the topic to your own reaction or the process of why they didn’t tell you earlier versus focusing on, “Why do you think we’re not going to hit the deadline?”
In that moment, it’s a subtle shift of topic, but it actually signals to the other person, “Oof, they didn’t really want to hear me. We’re not going to address the thing that I finally mustered up the courage or taken the risk to share.” So, watching out for whether you are staying on the person’s original topic rather than changing the topic in the moment is one way of maintaining the open lines of communication.
Pete Mockaitis
That’s really good. This reminds me of land-lording.
Elaine Lin Hering
Oh, no, that’s a whole ball of wax.
Pete Mockaitis
A tenant will tell you that something’s wrong and like your first reaction is like you’re mad, like, “What? How long has this been going on? What’s the problem? Why are you doing this?” And I’ve learned though, I had another friend who had a rental property, and she had this horrific rat situation brewing for months.
And so, she actually did ask politely, “Okay, so how long is this going on? Okay. So, why didn’t you mention that earlier?” They said, “Oh, we didn’t want to burden you or inconvenience you or whatever.” And so, I just sort of installed in my internal habit that, just no matter what you’re feeling, you say, “Thanks for letting me know.” Because I do, I want them to let me know early when there’s one or two rats, before there are dozens of rats or whatever the issue is, whether it’s a physical property or like an intellectual, algorithmic thing we’re doing in a white-collar environment. I want to know, so thank you for letting me know.
Elaine Lin Hering
Yes, and have you been explicit with your team or your renters about your hope and expectation? Or, is that an unspoken norm because that’s how you would prefer the world to work, that’s what you would do? Have we made the rules explicit? Meaning, tell me early, tell me often, come to me right away when there’s one or two rats or even when you see some rat poop. Let’s be really explicit versus the “I didn’t want to burden you. We thought we could fix it by just putting out some traps. You’re so busy.”
There are a thousand reasons why people don’t say things, and from a really well-intentioned perspective, but have we also communicated to them how we would prefer, what we’re inviting in from them, what the operating norms are, and making those explicit rather than implicit, and then getting frustrated when they get violated.
Okay, from a speaking-up perspective. You can find your voice by asking those questions, “What do I think? What do I need?” But then there’s this question of using your voice. And using requires action, and action can feel vulnerable. So, in order to see whether it really is my voice or whether it is worth it to me to say something, I’m going to have to take actions over time to experiment.
And so, I’m a big fan of small experiments. If you’re someone who tends to overthink, spiral and overanalyze, you can get out of that over-analysis by trying something, and I would recommend a low-risk environment. Meaning, if you are just starting to practice the muscle of giving feedback, you wouldn’t necessarily go to your boss right away and tell them everything that you think is wrong with them. Maybe it’s when you are at a coffee shop and the barista gets your order wrong. Do you say something in the moment?
And maybe you don’t really care if it was iced coffee or hot coffee, and maybe you really do, but say that you don’t. That’s actually a great time to practice because, if they don’t respond well, if they’re too busy to change the order, whatever it is, you don’t really care. So, practicing on strangers is a great way to build that muscle of sharing your thoughts.
Another context would be with a group of friends, and this whole debate of, “Okay, what are we going to have for dinner?” Do you practice having an opinion, expressing an opinion at a time that you don’t really care? So, “Hey, what about Thai? What about Thai food?” And they’re like, “No, I really feel like burritos.”
You’re like, “Okay.” But you at least get that datapoint that says, “I expressed a point of view, an opinion, and the world didn’t fall apart,” which, for many of us who hesitate to speak up, to use our voice, we don’t have that dataset that says, “I expressed an opinion, and it was okay. I have that dataset that is glaring in my head of, ‘I said something, and I got cut out of that team.’”
Or, that relationship never recovered. Or, “Maybe I’ve never tried, because in my family of origin, it was whatever dad says goes and no one ever challenged that. I never tested that out.” So, trying things out with strangers where you don’t really care about the relationship or it’s not a long-term relationship, trying it out where the stakes are low of things you don’t really care about, to get different data points that tell you, “It’s okay to express an opinion. It might actually be helpful.”
Pete Mockaitis
And what’s so interesting is as you do that, I think you go really just determine, discern some patterns associated with what kinds of things do I find difficult to say. Just yesterday, I noticed I needed someone to spot me in the gym for a bench-press situation, and I was so nervous to ask someone, which I thought, “This is a fairly normal request. Most of the time I don’t hear it, but it’s not a freakish thing.”
And then it’s really true, but my mom mentioned in a conversation like, “Well, Pete, you really do hate putting people out.” I was like, “I really, really do. You’re right, mom.” And it’s like I’ve seen this real time. And, at the same time, and so I did, I did, I asked for a spot. I was pleased with the bench performance, if anyone’s wondering, and it’s really cool to be able to practice in that environment.
And even if I got a disgusted response, “I have a lot of work I need to do here, and I have to be out of the gym in six minutes. Absolutely not.” Like, that’s the worst it could possibly go. And that’s fine, and I have grown those muscles as a result of having gone there.
Elaine Lin Hering
Yeah. I also want to be really explicit that the framing of “This is what I’m trying on” is important. Because if you’re just trying it on, it’s like trying on clothes before you’re going to buy them, “Does this fit? Does this not fit?” And it may fit in that instance of, “Oh, yeah, that was fine. It was part of the normal course of being at the gym, and I’m still alive.” And you may say, “You know what? I did that.” And it doesn’t feel like me. It doesn’t feel right to me. Great. Try something else.” But the point of an experiment is not to get to a specific outcome. The point of an experiment is to learn something. So, this stance of, “What might I learn in testing a hypothesis I have, in expressing an opinion, in trying something on?”
Pete Mockaitis
Lovely. Well, Elaine, tell me, anything else you really want to make sure to mention before we hear about some of your favorite things?
Elaine Lin Hering
I’ll say one last thing, which is, oftentimes, when we are thinking about expressing our points of view, we’re waiting for other people to give us permission, and that is a trap that I find many people falling into, which is why I’m naming it here. You think about school systems and you have to ask to go to the bathroom. At work, you have to submit for time off to take the PTO that is rightfully yours, and so there’s a lot of baked in “I’ve got to ask for permission.”
And in what ways might we be waiting for others to give us permission when we could give ourselves permission to experiment, to share an opinion, to try something on? That is, I’m always looking for, “What can I do, unilaterally, because if I’m waiting for the other people in my life to start showing up in a different way, I’m probably waiting for a really long time? But if I can do something differently myself, then I might be able to get to a different outcome faster.”
Pete Mockaitis
All right. And how about a favorite study or experiment a bit of research?
Elaine Lin Hering
Oh, babble hypothesis of leadership. So, number one in a six-person meeting, two people end up doing 60% of the talking. And more interesting, that leads to the babble hypothesis of leadership, is that people code frequency or quantity of verbal contribution as a sign of leadership or high leadership potential. It has nothing to do with the quality of the contribution, so much as, “How much are you talking?”
And so, the babble hypothesis of leadership, to me, is something for us to guard against, that just because someone’s talking a lot, actually listen for the substance, and that if we want to have healthy workplaces, we need to create space for different models of leadership. This one dominant norm that’s very chatty but maybe, at times, lacking in substance has gotten us to where we are, and the question is “Where are we going from here?”
Pete Mockaitis
All right. And could you share a favorite book?
Elaine Lin Hering
I’ll do recency bias. The one in front of me right now is Micro Activism by Omkari Williams, “How to Make a Difference in the World Without A Bullhorn.”
Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?
Elaine Lin Hering
Turning off email, 5:00 p.m., no longer load work email onto my phone, because there’s got to be some semblance of sanity.
Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite habit?
Elaine Lin Hering
Leaving my phone. Apparently, I have a complicated relationship with my phone. Leaving my phone in a different room when I sleep.
Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a key nugget you share that’s really resonating with folks that they quote yourself back to you often?
Elaine Lin Hering
“In what ways are you silencing yourself to preserve the comfort of other people?”
Pete Mockaitis
And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?
Elaine Lin Hering
ElaineLinHering.com.
Pete Mockaitis
And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?
Elaine Lin Hering
Try something. Try something. The ruminating, the overthinking, the spiraling, you can get out of that by trying something. Because by trying something, you will learn something. So instead of waiting for the next perfect step, start by taking a step.
Pete Mockaitis
All right. Elaine, this has been enriching. I wish you many optimized silences and un-silences.
Elaine Lin Hering
Thanks, Pete. To a life lived fully to you.
