Harvard Business Review on Communicating Effectively by Harvard Business Review

Author:Harvard Business Review
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Harvard Business Press
Published: 2011-02-24T06:00:00+00:00

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Idea in Brief

Many times, often with the best of intentions, people at work decide it’s more productive to remain silent about their differences than to air them. But as new research by the authors shows, silencing doesn’t smooth things over or make people more productive. It merely pushes differences beneath the surface and can set in motion powerfully destructive forces. When people stay silent about important disagreements, they can begin to fill with anxiety, anger, and resentment. As long as the conflict is unresolved, their repressed feelings remain potent, making them increasingly distrustful, self-protective, and all the more fearful that if they speak up they will be embarrassed or rejected. Their sense of insecurity grows, leading to further acts of silence, more defensiveness, and more distrust, thereby setting into motion a destructive “spiral of silence.” Sooner or later, they mentally opt out. These vicious spirals of silence can be replaced with virtuous spirals of communication, but that requires individuals to find the courage to act differently and executives to create the conditions in which people will value the expression of differences.

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