Silence and management - part 8

…text about Silence in organization continues - this is part 8.

Best organizations are quick to adopt newest technologies and equipments. That is first step to success in our digital, global era. At the same time the path to genuine sharing in organizations is a demanding route for each of us to proceed. This blog (and other relating blog posts) examines the issues which are important when individuals and organizations strive to develop sharing culture. You find more below:

 

4.3.2          Fears which relate to others

4.3.2.1. Fear of ruining positive atmosphere

Apparently we all wish to work in a pleasant environment, in a nice atmosphere with collaborative colleagues. And certainly nice and supporting atmosphere can be a success factor of its own right, it nurtures creativity, innovation, it energizes and it provides many other positive things to all involved and to whole organization.

In this setting you may anticipate that taking up certain matters might for some reason mildly or perhaps drastically harm the positive general atmosphere. Therefore you may decide to go with the silence and avoid taking up certain matters.

Apparently selecting silence can a reasonable choice if you have reached that conclusion by applying   special kind of a “cost-benefit analysis”. In other words you have estimated what would happen if you would raise certain topic and how things would most likely continue in case you would choose silence. And you have reached a conclusion that in this particular case you go for a silence. That is a decision, and like with all decisions you may have made an excellent or not so excellent decision.

On the other hand when choosing silence relates heavily to maintaining good atmosphere, it can be counterproductive. Often genuine development requires also critique, and in case the need to preserve good atmosphere hampers a possibility to criticize it is time to evaluate what is important what could be less prominent role in organizational life. Perhaps a lot of efforts could be put up so that the capability to give and take constructive criticism would reach a higher level in organizational discussion culture.

 It is, however, understandable that there are situations where any of us might predict that bringing something up might cause a mess and confusion in our organization. We all know that organizations are pretty delicate creatures on what comes to the maintaining trust and keeping discussion channels between people open. It has been said that individual is strong but organization is fragile. This suggests the idea that organization is a trust based network and the trust between actors may brake easily and it is very difficult to restore. So also here we have to conclude that sometimes some level of silence is perhaps the best solution. Perhaps this is no true in ideal world, but it can be very true in real world.

 

4.3.2.2 Fear that the connection with others fails

In his excellent book about relationship marketing (From the 4P’s to 30R) Evert Gummesson writes how he noticed what is the essence of marketing is in professional organization. The crucial challenge is to find a place, position and acceptance among colleagues. Only after adequate acceptance as new member of the network your new colleagues will ask you to join to different projects and you can gradually become part of the functioning network.

In fact, it would be touching (and difficult) to study how many executives and other professionals on different levels of organizations are not really part of the functioning organization. Perhaps, for instance, a boss was fired a long ago, not officially, not publicly but in a way which almost all seem to know - at least silently. Here firing means that working collaboration with others has severed, perhaps not totally but to the extent which seriously reduces the real working possibilities. Also these lines lead us to suggest that sometimes in some organization it may happen that people in a way have gradually fired each other, as a result they inhabit the same organization but the genuine connection between people may have been lost on the way. How could they reach a situation where they in way could recruit each other back to work?

Thus a genuine connection with a network is very important, often a necessary factor before you can actually do anything productive in any organization or in business life in general. Sometimes the network could be a colleague, sometimes few colleagues, sometimes a team or a department, sometimes the whole organization, sometimes some other formation of people. Typically in order to maintain and strengthen your position in any network you are expected to show some loyalty towards your network.

Hence, quite often the deepening collaboration with any network creates also complex configurations which cunningly start to suggest that member of any network should be silent about something. Typically some kind of we-them - setting emerges. Often organizations are divided to different departments and units. It is not rare that these different units start to compete with each other. One negative result of the rivalry which grows intensive is that flow of information between the competing units may not stay at the level where it could be. As a result for instance some new business opportunities may be lost because of unwarranted silence between different organizational units emerges.

In general a person may fear that sharing something which is somehow considered as a secret in her/his network might result in negative reactions and actions by others. Hence a person would be prone to resort to silence on those occasions. In the mild form this can mean that organization does not learn as quickly as it could if information were shared more openly. In a strong form we are talking about more difficult situations where cover up can be serious thing (a short discussion about whistle blowing is in the later blog post).

4.3.2.3 Fear that sharing would ruin customer relationships

It is also important to emphasize that there are a lot of occasions where silence is actually part of proper professional conduct. For instance, even law may require silence about some customer related matters in some businesses. Also, in general prudent handling of customer information is part of any laudable work.

Again we notice that silence is a complex issue. Quite easily there would a tendency to think that silence is something negative and we must get rid of all silence. However, often silence is unavoidably part of the professional work. It is easy to see that some work would be actually impossible without silence, for instance in some cases you have to trust your strategic plans to outsiders and you could not do that if you feared that they would not obey very prudent silence concerning your vital business secrets.

Silence and management - part 7

…text about Silence in organization continues - this is part 7.

Typically people say that there is too much emails, meetings, information and everything in organizations. This blog suggests that there is also a lot of silence in organizations. Sometimes silence is fear based. You find more below:

4.3      Fear based reasons

When you ask that why people choose silence in organizations one answer which you get quite often is: fear.  This is the answer which has emerged in numerous personal discussions in different contexts. I also made a Linkedin poll where I offered two options that why people choose silence. The first option was fear and the other was that speaking does not seem to provide results.  The poll got 9 answers which came from all over the world, therefore the result is not based on anything larger, but nevertheless the result was indicative - a fear was a clear winner with 8 votes (feels somewhat awkward to write that fear was a winner, but in this polling context it was).

 

Apparently fear is one of those words which you seem to know with certainty, but when you try to define it you may notice that as a concept the fear is very, very elusive. Defining fear is not at all simple task. Therefore let us look first how Wikipedia defines fear and after that we will examine different ways of approaching fear in organizational context:

Wikipedia starts its fear entry as follows:

Fear is an emotion induced by a perceived threat which causes entities to quickly pull away from it and usually hide. It is a basic survival mechanism occurring in response to a specific stimulus, such as pain or the threat of danger. In short, fear is the ability to recognize danger leading to an urge to confront it or flee from it (also known as the fight-or-flight response) but in extreme cases of fear (horror and terror) a freeze or paralysis response is possible.

In organizational context fear which leads to silence is a phenomenon of its own. In this text I will approach that specific phenomenon from two angles:

1)      Fear which relates to you

2)      Fear which relates to others

Clearly this discussion is tentative and thought provoking by its nature. The point here is to suggest that because a silence is a very important organizational factor which may play a crucial role in determining whether the organization succeeds or not, we must pause to examine that what actually causes silence. One explanation is certainly fear, perhaps that fear is based on real things or perhaps mainly imagined, however fear must be one factor which relates to silence in organizations.

Therefore understanding the roots of fear, and through that understanding being able to reduce silence and increasing communication can be seen a most important managerial task for every executive. But what actually is fear in organizational context, how it can be approached and discussed?  The purpose here is to find new openings which might give new ideas for executives and for each of us how to tackle these issues in our working environment.

 

4.3.1.        Fears which relates to you (or to me, or to any individual personally)

4.3.1.1. Fear of making fool of yourself

Certainly there might be situations where you choose silence because you are afraid that you would make fool of yourself.[1] Perhaps you may feel that you do not know enough of the topic under discussion.  Or perhaps you may feel (know, anticipate) that your position in your organization is such that in those discursive practices which prevail in your organization your effort to participate would only result in difficult and somehow embarrassing  consequences.

Apparently silence is a very different thing in different cultures and reasons for silence are also very different. Examining these cultural issues which relate to silence would be a most intriguing research topic in itself.  However, generally speaking the point here is that each individual has her/his own un avoidable responsibility to participate and share. That is part of work - working is sharing, working well means sharing wisely. On the other hand it is necessary to emphasize that each organization should develop the rules of communication and participating culture to a direction where joining and sharing would be as rewarding as possible.

Also here we have a special challenge for each executive. We may think in our time in this modern society people would feel very free to participate. However, it may be that in organizations there are still a lot hidden rules and discursive practices which hinder participation. Sometimes executives may even think that in these days they even need to emphasize their role and take strong positions in meetings and in different discussion forums. However, this is one place where wise discernment is really needed. Each executive should carefully consider how they on their own part could create an atmosphere where genuine - let it be stressed: genuine - participation will happen as much as possible.

 4.3.1.2 Fear of getting more tasks

Age old truth in army is that movement reveals. Unfortunately something similar may be true in organizational life. Consequently, there seems to be a tendency that a person who opens her/his mouth about something also gets that task on her/his task list. There, let us check in every organization that sharing is as rewarding as possible. If sharing means problems, there is something which must be changed.

Also more generally speaking it may not be always rewarding to try new things. There is always a risk to fail, suggesting new, trying something different means that someone breaks the silence and puts her-/himself to the front. Perhaps organization could develop an attitude where trying new things would be appreciated and also mistakes could be tolerated and viewed as learning possibility.

 

4.3.1.3 Fear of becoming labeled “difficult”

Some of the issues which relate to silence in organizations are very difficult to understand. Also some of these issues are such which we wish not connect to wise adult professionals and to professional organizations. Hence these kinds of topics are easily such which are not discussed (publicly). However, often that is exactly what would be needed - open and honest discussion could be way to improve things.

For instance, there appears to be a lot situations where people are asked to comment freely but for some reason everybody seem to know (rightly or wrongly) that comments would not be candidly welcomed. These kinds of awkward moments relate in particular to many change processes and also to many other situations in our organizations. Let us imagine that the managers have created something new, perhaps they have already started to implement it and then there is a session where people are asked to express their opinion freely.

Quite often these situations are loaded with a lot of tension. Most people are thinking all the time that will happen to me in this change process. This whole setting begs silence with a very load voice. I would assume that in these situations many will think that saying something is easily interpreted that this particular person is resisting the change and s/he might become labeled “difficult”. No one wants to be labeled difficult when there is a lot of uncertainty in the air. No wonder that silence prevails.

The point for managerial perspective is that planning and orchestrating a change process is demanding task. Poorly conceived situations may create unwanted silence and once silence has appeared it may be difficult to push it away.

---

[1] Even fools seem smart when they are quiet. -Proverbs 17:28

Silence and management - part 6

…text about Silence in organization continues - this is part 6.

4.2   The impossibility to share everything

4.2.1 We simply cannot share everything

It is unavoidable part of normal human life that we simply cannot share everything. Whenever we encounter other people, one or more, we are always in a situation that we able to share only part of that whole totality what we see, think and perceive and also what we have seen, have thought or have perceived, or what we think that we will see in the future, or what we will think or will perceive in the coming days. Clearly this whole array of experiences forms a massive entity of which we could share something but only some tiny part to others.  Perhaps we choose the share something of the present or recent moments, or perhaps we decide to indulge into our memories and share something from there or perchance we decide to look into future and share our plans or our anticipations about the future.

 

Perhaps we may not even pause to think or to ruminate that we actually forced to choose what to share, we may not even be really aware, at least not all the time, that we cannot share everything.  In fact it is even hard to think what it would be to share everything. It is impossible to define in any given situation what would be that ALL what one person could share. In fact, it is impossible to define what is all what we know (experience, think, observer, dream, etc.) in any given moment.

These lines above seem to lead to a following conclusion: we cannot know all what we know. As an executive educator I am tempted to ponder that what this means to our eternal quest of becoming wiser and wiser, what actually is the way to become sagacious: a) to learn new things, ie. to gather the pile of knowing higher, b) to learn more about those things that you already know (at some level, in certain special way), ie. to become more aware who you are, how you are. Perhaps both avenues are necessary for an avid learner.

At the same time it is valuable to notice that it is a decision to choose what we share. Perhaps most of the time we just share something, it comes naturally we do not have to focus on deciding what we share. Perhaps sometimes, in new or in somehow challenging situations we pay our attention to sharing. When someone asks in the job interview about our weak points, we tend to consider before answering. But these situations are exceptions. Could it be that in our professional life we should take the sharing much more carefully. There the point would be to think what others, and what the whole organization need to know. That should guide us when we decide what to share. It is part of professional excellence to understand what to share and to know what is valuable to others and to whole entity, let it be organization or some other unit.

Clearly the discussion above portrays a somewhat one sided picture of sharing. At least implicitly the focus seems to be on those kinds of things which could also be called facts or pieces of information. In other words as described above we know and we have seen a lot of things and we can share only part of it. This is acceptable and these kinds of phenomena are the main focus in this paper. However, we must remember that choosing what to share is by no means limited to facts. For example, we also share all kind of feelings and emotions. Hence in any situation it is often a big decision whether you choose to use upbeat or downbeat style of speaking and sharing. The choice is yours - how do you decide to proceed?

4.2.2          Modes of communication we choose use, modes of communication we choose not to use

Whenever we establish contact with other person or other persons we are also prone to decide which modes of sharing and transparency we consider as most important. I would claim that quite often our attention focus on words and speaking, perhaps almost solely.[1] We might for instance ask whether s/he said everything. 

It is interesting to notice how the speaking really gets a high importance in various situations. For instance, in the court the oath may have the following form: “I swear by Almighty God that I will tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.” From the perspective of this paper, the way how telling everything is emphasized in the court represent something special, and now I am not referring to the law as such but to something else. What is special here is that in the court people are examining events which have happened in the past.  It is worth mentioning that in this paper we are not examining past events but the way how people share or choose silence in the evolving situations.

 

Therefore, when we are examining sharing and transparency in organizations we must consider the whole spectrum of different modes of communication which we can use. We have to consider all the means and ways what a human being can use in order to communicate something to others. We have to be aware of whole array of different modes of communicating.  In addition to speaking there are also other modes of communication like:  facial expressions, all kinds of gestures, also all forms of action.[2]

The point in this chapter is to make us think that when we are examining sharing speaking is not all that there is. One evocative quote comes from Mark Twain: “Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often.”

---

[1] Let it be admitted that this comment is written by a person who represent a very low context culture. Please see Edward T Hall.

[2] “Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often.”  ― Mark Twain

Silence and management - part 5

…text about Silence in organization continues - this is part 5.

4.    Why people choose silence

This is not a typical empirical paper, so I will not publish any statistics how silent people are in different situations. I have not measured the level of silence in meeting rooms with technical instruments, or I have not counted how many words are said in the auditorium when CEO has introduced her/his new strategy agenda. On the other as a breathing (and sometimes thinking) person I have experienced, wondered, listened and encountered different levels of silence in numerous organizational occasions.

 

 In fact, it might be interesting as such, to do some clever measurements about silence in organizational context. Without being too serious at this point, one might for instance measure how the level of silence develops during strategy process. Perhaps it might possible to draw some silence profiles, so that in a successful strategy process the silence profile follows certain pattern and in those strategy processes which are not so successful the silence profile might follow different kind of pattern.

Certainly this discussion about silence profiles is very tentative by its nature and it has more a thought provoking role than anything grander. However, what we are talking here is not a joke of any kind. I would propose that any competent leader is very keen to follow how silence (thus in the way the silence profile) develops in her/his organization. S/he will not use technical apparatus for the measurement, but I am sure that s/he uses all his perception and thinking capability to understand what is happening in her/his organization.

But why people choose silence, let us tackle that conundrum.

4.1 Silence - the whole picture

Therefore what I try to do next is that I suggest a whole picture of a silence in organizations. I am fully aware that “whole” is insurmountable word, impossible to achieve. In addition I do not try to present any kind of fixed or well established total picture of silence. What I try to do is outline a very preliminary taxonomy which would capture this phenomenon as well as I am able to do at the moment. It would be a sheer pleasure if someone would use this taxonomy and develop it further or changed in completely.

The point in presenting this taxonomy is to try to understand why people may choose silence in different situations in different organizations. What is also important here is try to understand how silence could be approached from the managerial perspective. Here this perspective means a desire to improve the possibility for an organization to succeed. It is proposed here that those managerial actions which lower the level of silence are such interventions which create new potential for an organization to thrive.

The suggestion for whole picture of silence in organization includes four main areas which are all discussed in the next blog posts.

 

Silence and management - part 4

…text about Silence in organization continues - this is part 4.

3.    Silence vs darkness

 

Let us still deepen our understanding of silence by taking a one new and particularly intriguing perspective on silence.  As we noticed in the previous chapter silence is related but not restricted to our hearing ability and thus to our ears?  Partly silence means that we do not hear anything but silence also means many other things. This is really intriguing. Wikipedia opens its silence entry with the following lines:

Silence is the lack of audible sound or presence of sounds of very low intensity. By analogy, the word silence can also refer to any absence of communication, including in media other than speech.  Silence is also used as total communication, in reference to non verbal communication and spiritual connection. Silence also refers to no sounds uttered by anybody in a room or area

One way to deepen our understanding about silence is to ask that are silence and darkness comparable concepts. One might think so, because the other refers to hearing and the other to seeing.  One might think that silence prevails when you do not hear anything, and darkness prevails when you do not see anything. You might think that these concepts are sisters or brothers on the semantic[1] sense, but they seem to be very different. In particular the connotations which relate these words are surprisingly different.

Please test this by yourself: silence vs. darkness. Please stop for a while to reflect these two words. How they are similar? How they are different? What would you propose?

One answer in my mind is that for some reason silence appears to be both very positive concept (happy, joyful, awe, refers to deep wisdom etc.) and word which brings with it very negative connotations (sad, even bad because the lack of caring, fear, etc.).

On the other hand the connotations which relate to darkness appear to be predominantly fearsome, sad and even evil.  Again I turned to internet and searched for pictures which were related to darkness. In one picture there was a following evocative sentence which appears to capture the message which was present in numerous pictures:

                      “It's not the darkness we are afraid of,

                       it's what lays within the Dark we fear!”

It actually seemed that one major line of approaching darkness in numerous pictures was that there is something dangerous in the darkness and our heroes go there for us and fight the fight for us.[2] The message seems to be that the fight would be too difficult to us hence we need a hero who is capable to face that foe and win our battle for us.

What can we learn from this discussion when we turn our attention to silence in an organization? At least one message is clear, we must not be too quick to think that silence is always a negative thing, just an item in liabilities. Perhaps there is more in silence, also when examined in organizational context. At least tentatively we must keep open the possibility that sometimes silence may also be - surprise, surprise - a success factor.

---

[1] And again Wikipedia helps: Semantics (from Ancient Greek: σημαντικός sēmantikós)^[1][2] is the study of meaning. It focuses on the relation between signifiers, like words, phrases, signs, and symbols, and what they stand for, their denotation.

And internet help to find explanation for denotation: Denotation refers to the literal meaning of a word, the "dictionary definition."¨ For example, if you look up the word snake in a dictionary, you will discover that one of its denotative meanings is "any of numerous scaly, legless, sometimes venomous reptiles, a long, tapering, cylindrical body and found in most tropical and temperate regions."  Connotation, on the other hand, refers to the associations that are connected to a certain word or the emotional suggestions related to that word. The connotative meanings of a word exist together with the denotative meanings. The connotations for the word snake could include evil or danger.

 

[2] One very tentative thought why silence and darkness bring with them so different connotations. Let us think how language has developed in connection with human development. Let us think a hunter in the forest. Could it be that for her/him darkness was a negative thing, a predator could be close. And could it be that silence was a good thing, a one sign of safety.

Silence and management - part 3

…text about Silence in organization continues - this is part 3.

 

2.  What is silence - three perspectives on silence

This text as a whole is about silence and in particular about silence in organizations. However I feel that it is valuable to say something more general about silence before we go deep into organizational sphere. My hope is that this general discussion on its part helps us to see more about our specific topic ie., silence in the organizational context.

At the same time this discussion on its part relate to the general idea that it is important to try to examine whole and real people in organizations.  In addition the research should not neglect anything what relates to being a human in organizations. This means because real, complex and manifold emotions and experiences are part of being human and these phenomena are also important research topics in business studies. This kind of comment may sound odd, but perhaps the history of business disciplines has focused rather heavily on technical and rational side of organizational life. Sometimes it may have been difficult to find real people on the pages business literature, or in consulting discussion and also style of discourse within organizations themselves have been permeated with rather technical tone, like let us make strategy and let us implement it and that's it.

So what is silence how is it experienced? Clearly a vast topic and I will approach this subject with a help a very specific and limited empirical material. However, I strongly feel that there is something valuable here - at least the following will confirm that silence appears to be a very strong, very important and deeply emotional phenomenon to us.

The empirical material used here are numerous pictures in internet. I have looked for pictures which people have connected to silence. On that basis I have come to interpretation that in general people seem to approach silence from a three perspectives. Certainly my point here is not present this interpretation as a anything fixed or permanent, it is here more a heuristic[1] tool which helps us to deepen our study of silence. The perspectives are as follows:

 

2.1  Impressive nature makes us silent

 

Quite often people seemed to connect silence to magnificent and marvelous pictures about lakes, mountains, trees or some other beautiful sights or to some awesome elements of nature. Apparently the point was that often nature is so impressive that it silences us. Apparently the silencing happens here in a very good and positive way - we are silenced in front of beauty, tranquility or something else which is so stupenduos and tremendous that it fills us with awe, enthrall and eventually respectful silence.

It seems that it is a far cry to try to connect this kind of approach to silence with any discussion about silence in organizations. Clearly these are different worlds, that world of nature and the world of organizations. Yet, it is interesting to try to think that in organizational context can we think that people would choose silence because they have encountered something so fabulous. Perhaps, this can happen, it is thinkable that the organization operates in a way which creates awe, also organization may have possessions like buildings, factories or so on with create silence because they are so overwhelming.

The other thing is that when, for instance, customer service  reaches extraordinary performance  would organizations prefer that silence would be the result? Probably not. For instance, in case an organization provides astonishing service, the goal would not be silence, but a hope that a very satisfied customer would tell to others. Also for instance the magnificent head quarter buildings are built to create awe, but not silence. Apparently it is hoped that people talk about those landmarks as much as possible and that discussion is hoped to strengthen the brand.

 

2.2  Silence which relates to crimes and wrong doings

 

 

 

These pictures about silence are sometimes very tough to look. They certainly open a

touching and poignant perspective to silence. These pictures tell that there is an array of

wrong doings which have may have happened and which may continue to happen at least

partly because of silence.[2] Sometimes there seem to be wrong doings which are used in

order to create silence.

---

Unfortunately it is possible to see that this perspective on silence can relate also to organization life in various forms. The special term in organizational context is “whistle blowing”.   It means that that there is something wrong happening within some organization and perhaps that thing is somehow silently accepted.  And then someone, the whistle blower, breaks the silence. We can anticipate how difficult those situations must be to everyone involved. Certainly these phenomena around whistle blowing would deserve more research in the future. For instance, it would be valuable to examine the scope of whistle blowing. Should we use that concept only in relation to possible crimes or could whistle blowing also refer to all or to some unsatisfactory operation which is for some reason silently accepted.

 

2.3  Silence which relates to internal wisdom

 

There may not be that many actual pictures which relate to this perspective, but there are numerous   quotations which proclaim this message in various forms.[3] Wikipedia entry sums up succinctly how some major religions approach silence from this perspective:

"Silence" in spirituality is often a metaphor for inner stillness. A silent mind, freed from the onslaught of thoughts and thought patterns, is both a goal and an important step in spiritual development. Such "inner silence" is not about the absence of sound; instead, it is understood to bring one in contact with the divine, the ultimate reality, or one's own true self, one's divine nature.  Many religious traditions imply the importance of being quiet and still in mind and spirit for transformative and integral spiritual growth to occur. In Christianity, there is the silence of contemplative prayer such as centering prayer and Christian meditation; in Islam, there are the wisdom writings of the Sufis who insist on the importance of finding silence within. In Buddhism, the descriptions of silence and allowing the mind to become silent are implied as a feature of spiritual enlightenment. In Hinduism, including the teachings of Advaita Vedanta and the many paths of yoga, teachers insist on the importance of silence, Mauna, for inner growth.

 It may be difficult to connect this perspective on silence to the organizational life. Yet, perhaps proponents of self-leadership might suggest that:  “this is it”, meaning that the key element in leadership is self -knowledge and what we are discussing here relates to the highest form of self- understanding which is basis of true leadership.

Also some people might suggest that when we examine on communication more deeply we become aware that in order to hear (understand what the other tries to say) we need some place (silence) in our own mind.

…to be continued

---

[1] It is simply beautiful how Wikipedia entry defines heuristic, I have to add it here: Heuristic (pron.: /hjʉˈrɪstɨk/; or /hyoo-ris-tik/; Greek: "Εὑρίσκω", "find" or "discover") refers to experience-based techniques for problem solving, learning, and discovery. Where the exhaustive search is impractical, heuristic methods are used to speed up the process of finding a satisfactory solution; mental shortcuts to ease the cognitive load of making a decision. Examples of this method include using a rule of thumb, an educated guess, an intuitive judgment, or common sense.

 

[2] This quote is well known. “The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.” Martin Luther King, Jr.

[3] For instance the following quotes: "Silence is an empty space, space is the home of the awakened mind." - Buddha;  “Silence is a true friend who never betrays”. Confucius; “ Silence is a source of great strength.” Lao Tzu