Comments on an interesting article, “Sounds of Silence”, in Stern Business by Morrison and Milliken.

The article is about the ubiquitous situation in which employees know about certain issues and problems that their organization faces but do not dare to speak the truth to their superiors. The article likens this to a CEO who has no clothes and the employees, instead of mentioning it to the CEO, instead compliment his fine dress. The CEO takes pleasure in receiving the complimentary comments about how he dresses well and only the foolish or naïve dare speak truthfully (in public anyway) about the situation. And those who do are viewed as troublemakers by the CEO and often dismissed.

From the mindset of the employee, they often think that they will suffer negative consequences (which is often true) if they speak truth to power and that speaking up would not make a difference anyway (which is often also true). From management’s perspective, we need to figure out how to encourage employees to speak up and express opinions lest we lose out on one of our best opportunities for making our organizations better. Employees are often on the front lines of a business and experience first-hand how things work and see the problems that exist and can often make very good suggestions about how to improve things. Even just pointing out that problems exist is a good thing. The danger with not having “speaker-uppers” in an organization (and let’s face it: the environment created by management certainly goes a long way to encourage or discourage this behavior) is that organizational learning and change is hampered. Organization errors tend to persist and possibly magnify.

The fundamental attribution error can be a contributing source of organizational silence conditions and should be guarded against. For example, when employees do speak up about problems, take a hard look at what they say and don’t automatically dismiss it as self-serving for the employee or that they have a personality or something. We do tend to make the fundamental attribution error when explaining the behavior of others and being aware of it can help organizational behavior in many ways including helping to guard against creating a culture of organizational silence.

To do list:

• Work hard to counteract the natural human tendency to avoid negative feedback
• Work hard to build an open and trusting organizational climate
• Send messages with actions not just words