The Sound of Silence: Voices Not Heard

by Dr. Gerald Mulenburg, PMP

If the title sounds familiar, it should. It comes from the Simon and Garfunkel song The Sound of Silence: “people talking without speaking, people hearing without listening.” And I’m sure you’ve been in situations where project managers sometimes feel they’ve achieved approval or consensus on an issue, only to discover later that it wasn’t true. When confronted with this situation, they’re at a loss to explain what they missed.

What they missed was the sound of silence in the room; what I call the voices not heard. But, they may say, “Everyone had a chance to speak up didn’t they?” The project manager asked for comments and questions and, when others didn’t speak up, it meant they had agreed, didn’t it? Silence is consent, right?

No, for some it isn’t. Silence is their time for thinking about an issue being presented and what it means to them. It’s unfortunate that many leaders take this silence as approval or agreement and move on.

Another example of voices not heard is the stunning and much repeated story about the failed US invasion of Cuba in 1961. In testimony following the incident, acceptance for the presumed success of the mission was assumed by silence from many of those in the room who didn’t speak their views against it, which was taken as tacit agreement. This is now called “Groupthink” and defined in Wikipedia as, “A psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people, in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcome.”¹

Sound familiar to any of your situations?

Another example of voices not heard is in the book The Abilene Paradox, where author Jerry Harvey describes a concept he calls “violent agreement.” No one liked the idea that was presented, even the person presenting it, but no one expressed disagreement and simply agreed, thinking that was what everyone wanted, only to find later that no one wanted it.

So what can you do to ensure that none of what these examples described happen to you? Let’s first look at one cause of them happening.

Evidence for this phenomenon can be attributed, at least in many instances, to personality type. In my research into superior NASA project managers, 70% of these superior managers were extroverted personalities, even though extroverts make up less than 50% of the general population. Extroverts are often more outgoing and freely speak their minds (some say, they talk-to-think) and they expect that others will do so as well.

Introverted personality types, however, are more introspective and like to spend time thinking about an issue before speaking their minds (they like to think-to-talk). These, to me, are the voices not heard in project meetings because the conversation often moves on with conclusions and decisions made before the introverts are ready to speak up. They are not necessarily groupthinkers, or going-along-to-go-along, but unfortunately they are often willing to let others move ahead without their input.

This introversion phenomenon is covered in detail in the book Quiet, where the author, Susan Cain, delves into how the wonderful potential of introverts unfortunately gets lost because of their silence. She says we’ve become, much to our detriment, a world of extroverts, who often get their way because they are more vocal in most situations and therefore get their views heard and accepted, although they may not have the best ideas.

In your next meeting, listen for the voices not heard, and try to pull them into the discussion. Sometimes they only need to be asked to obtain their views. Have you asked them?

 

 

¹ “Groupthink,” Wikipedia.org <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink> Accessed 11 May 2014.