Strategic Silence

Hi,

This week’s email is about how staying silent temporarily can help you be heard better when you speak up.

Here are the key practical points you should know (mainly from this research article):

• Strategic silence involves intentionally withholding or delaying untimely information.

• Information can be untimely due to factors like irrelevance to current priorities, lack of readiness of the person who wants to raise it, and lack of availability of the people it would be raised to. For example, as an employee, you might wait before raising an issue to your team if the issue is irrelevant to your team’s current priorities, if you need to gather more information about the issue, or if your manager is in a bad mood.

• Although silence is often perceived as harmful and driven by factors like fear, strategic silence is driven by deliberate planning and can be beneficial, both in terms of how people respond to what you say and in terms of how they perceive you.

• Strategic silence isn’t the opposite of speaking up, but rather a way to improve how you’re received when you do speak up. This highlights the importance of considering not only what you say and how, but also when you say it. It also shows that being silent isn’t always a bad thing, just as speaking up isn’t always a good thing.

As always, I’m happy to hear your thoughts.

Have a great week,
Itamar