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 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.

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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

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[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

  

SOCIAL MEDIA - MEETINGS - SELF LEADERSHIP

The new framework of business is social media. What this means? It means that organizations benefit enormously if they start to use the logic of social media as modus operandi. This is something which we all must consider very seriously and very personally; we have to clarify to ourselves what is the logic of social media and what it means to me, and also to us as an organization.

Few definitions are in place so that we will start to talk about same issues. Firstly, certainly the logic of social media can mean a lot of different things. Here it means sharing and transparency. It means that we all always think that what is secret, what can be shared with few colleagues, what can be shared in a group and what is open (I deeply thank Esko Kilpi for making this point very succinctly in our Web for Executives program). So for instance, whenever you learn something new (which happens pretty continuously I assume) you always think about sharing. You are not working alone for yourself but you are working and thinking together with others in your organization and in your network.

Secondly I started this blog by talking about organizations but hereafter I will focus on individuals and how we as individuals choose to follow the logic of social media in our daily work in our organizations. Here the way how we choose to act in our meetings is the special topic of this blog.

Thirdly, how the issue of self leadership enters to this picture? Well, it is elementary. How we decide to act in different settings is vastly important and now the logic of social media demands that we really reflect how we play our part in organizational life and in particular in meetings.

Fourthly, I wish to add that now we are talking about meetings which could be 1-2 hour long sessions. So we will focus on those short periods where professionalism should shine (like a sun in Finnish July).

This is the background and now let us proceed to two conclusions:

1) The logic of social media (and the practical tools and gadgets) means that we can communicate all the time. So coming together in the first place is a very special event. Therefore from the perspective of self leadership you may decide to make to yourself clear how very important every meeting is.

2) In the meeting most important thing is to really think together, perhaps solve difficult problems, perhaps plan future actions or do something demanding thinking together. From the viewpoint of self leadership you must be able and willing to think together. You must be able to really share and participate. You must be willing to take risks and propose some ideas which are not ready but which could be developed further together. This kind of open participation can feel very demanding.

Perhaps the topic under discussion can be difficult to you (you may not like the topic, you may not know enough of the topic and you should know, or for some other reason the topic of the meeting may haunt you), some participants of the meeting can be particularly challenging to you for some reason, your genuine interest concerning to success of an organization can be at certain level (and therefore you utmost willingness to give your best even during this short meeting can be question mark).

If any of these elements are present in your thinking you are really facing a self leadership issue here. It is plainly evident at this point that the issue of self leadership is not a fancy theoretical concept but you are truly assessing what is your own capacity to participate and contribute. Certainly this kind of self leadership issues have been always with us but now the logic of social media, the new framework of business raises these issues to new level. They become more and more important and they become more and more transparent, no matter what our personal wishes and hopes might be.

The need for self leadership and genuine professionalism has never been more important than now in this era of  social media.