How Do We Unlearn Silence and Voice Our Worth?
Episode 490 | Host: Emilie Aries | Guest: Elaine Lin Hering
Your voice is valuable and deserves to be heard.
Silence is a predominant factor in the gender and cultural differences we see in workplaces today. The reasons behind this run deep and varied, making trite admonitions to “just speak up” a lot easier to say than to do (and the irony of our Bossed Up program being titled SPEAK UP is not lost on me, here!).
Established facilitator, author, and speaker Elaine Lin Hering’s new book dives into what’s behind the reticence so many of us face when making our voices heard. Unlearning Silence: How to Speak Your Mind, Unleash Talent, and Live More Fully is an empathetic exploration of the phenomenon of keeping quiet and the intrinsic connection between wielding our voices—both audibly and through our actions—and recognizing our self-worth.
Elaine and I reflect on her research and experience in mediation and conflict resolution to uncover why we stop (or never start) using our voices, the problem with the link between loudness and leadership, and how we can start to shift the conversation.
How do we learn silence in the first place?
In Unlearning Silence, Elaine writes, “Your voice is worthy and deserves to be heard.” This shouldn’t be as radical a statement as it is, but centuries of censorship—from our families of origin, our education systems, and our workplace and social structures—mean a lot of us need the reminder.
So much of what we learn in our early years is internalized and reinforced as we get older. Elaine cites a big factor in her struggle with silence: growing up as the youngest child of an immigrant family and learning that honor and respect stem from keeping quiet and never challenging elders or asking questions.
The school system builds on any home tensions around raising our voices, too. Even the best teachers have a limited time in which to teach a curriculum, so endless questioning eventually needs to be curtailed. We go from asking more than 100 questions a day as children to an average of six as adults, and this impacts not only our confidence but also the development of our critical thinking skills.
The babble hypothesis of leadership
From this celebration of silence, especially for young women, many professionals enter workplaces where their silence continues to be rewarded as evidence of their team player status—that is, until it’s time for a promotion. Suddenly, Elaine explains, they are told they don’t have executive presence, something apparently proven through bold expression of opinions, outspokenness or, in some cases, simply loudness.
This isn’t just evidence of life not preparing us for leadership. It also highlights what is known as the babble hypothesis, which Elaine explores in her book.
Research shows that the more someone talks, the more they are likely to be interpreted as a leader or as having leadership potential. Considering what we know about the positive impacts of listening on successful management, it’s a problematically shortsighted perspective.
Elaine says that until our colleagues can broaden what they imagine leadership could look like, it’s unsurprising that more and more women are questioning whether they even want the promotion to the leadership level. She echos much of what we talk about on the Bossed Up podcast regarding how we use our voices—such as episode 428, Finding Your Voice at Work, and episode 246, Lessons from Improv to Own Your Voice and Speak Up at Work—but it’s hard, lengthy work to change perceptions from the inside.
It’s not just about talking more
Questioning the babble hypothesis highlights an important aspect of Elaine’s work: unlearning silence isn’t just about learning to talk more or more loudly. Rather, it’s about being true to ourselves when it comes to our personal silence. For too long, this trait has been weaponized, an expectation or requirement forced on certain groups and lifted from others.
Elaine stresses that we often don’t know why people are being silent, and we can’t disregard the safety that silence can provide. On the other hand, we need to examine who we are protecting with our silence—ourselves or those who use it to keep us from speaking our minds?
How managers can make a difference
I asked Elaine what current managers and leaders can do to foster company cultures that push back against silencing other voices.
In Unleaning Silence, she offers many suggestions. First off, consider whether the policies and systems in place make sense for the real people they impact and, if they don’t, examine how they might be altered. Which working hours and communication styles work best for your team? While you might not be able to match meetings to everyone’s ideal schedule, if the majority of the team are night owls, why are meetings regularly held at 8:30 am, when many minds are still waking up and not functioning as well as they will be later in the day?
What about how people prefer to communicate? Not everyone processes in the moment, so having all information delivered and decisions made over the course of an hour-long meeting often means the voices of those who are neurodiverse, introverted, or simply slower to process are ignored. The same goes for people who communicate better through writing than speaking.
Additionally, Elaine urges managers to “make explicit your assumptions.” If it’s fine to pipe up with your thoughts without raising your hand, tell everyone at the start of the meeting or when the team is formed so someone isn’t overlooked for waiting their turn. If waiting to be called on is the norm, mention this as well, so a new team member who’s used to interjecting isn’t unfairly penalized.
So many of these traditional practices are “just how it’s always been done.” They deserve consideration and, potentially, innovation by leaders who want to walk the talk of making their workplace one that actively pushes back against silencing others.
I would love to hear about how you have been working to unlearn silence. Where did you learn it in the first place, and how do you practice agency when deciding how you want to use your voice? Speak your mind in our Courage Community on Facebook or in our group on LinkedIn.
Related links from today’s episode:
Elaine’s book, Unlearning Silence: How to Speak Your Mind, Unleash Talent, and Live More Fully
Episode 428, Finding Your Voice at Work
Episode 246, Lessons from Improv to Own Your Voice and Speak Up at Work
Episode 377, What all women can learn from women of color in leadership with Deepa Purushothaman
Episode 445, 3 Tips For Managing Too Many Meetings
SPEAK UP: A Live Assertive Communication Course For Women In The Workplace
Micro Activism: How You Can Make a Difference in the World Without a Bullhorn by Omkari L. Williams
Fine-tune your assertive communication skills with SPEAK UP:
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[INTRO MUSIC IN]
EMILIE: Hey, and welcome to the Bossed Up podcast, episode 490. I'm your host, Emilie Aries, the Founder and CEO of Bossed Up. And today I am so excited to break down unlearning silence
[INTRO MUSIC ENDS]
and really what that means, especially as it relates to women in the workplace, owning the power and really knowing the value and worth of our own voices.
Joining me to break all this down is Elaine Lin Hering, a facilitator, author and speaker who's worked with organizations and individuals to build skills in communication, collaboration, and conflict management. She's worked on six continents and facilitated executive education at Harvard, Dartmouth, Tufts, UC Berkeley, and UCLA. She's the former advanced training director for the Harvard Mediation Program and a lecturer on law at Harvard Law School. She's worked with everyone from coal miners at BHP Billiton, microfinance organizers in East Africa, mental health professionals in China, and senior leadership at the U.S. department of Commerce.
Her clients include American Express, Chevron, Google, Nike, Novartis, PayPal, Pixar, and the Red Cross. She's the author of the USA Today bestselling book, Unlearning Silence: How To Speak Your Mind, Unleash Talent, And Live More Fully, which was just released last year. And I am so excited to sit down with her right now to break all this down. Elaine, welcome to the Bossed Up podcast.
ELAINE: Thank you for having me
EMILIE: And congratulations. This book, Unlearning Silence: How To Speak Your Mind, Unleash Talent, And Live More Fully, is truly a triumph. How did you come to making this your focus and making this topic of unlearning silence your main arena?
ELAINE: Yeah, this is definitely an instance where the professional and personal blend together. So I'll offer both versions and listeners can draw their own conclusions. So at the time that I started thinking about this content, I was the partner of a global leadership development firm. My business partners had written two books on, one on difficult conversations, one on feedback and Unlearning Silence was supposed to be the third of the trilogy. And the observation, my observation was I've spent more than a decade teaching people how to negotiate, have difficult conversations, give and receive feedback, all content out of the Harvard Negotiation Project.
And while I, I think there is validity and soundness to those tools and frameworks, I also noticed that some people still wouldn't negotiate, wouldn't have the difficult conversations, still wouldn't give or receive feedback, no matter how much HR begged them to do it and ask the question, what gives? And to me, that, what gives is, or what's up with that is silence. If we've learned to stay silent. It's actually really hard to then say, go have this conversation, unless you interrogated what role silence plays in your life, the benefits that you get from staying silent. And so, this was an offering to round out that understanding, including other people, well intentioned leaders, coaches, mentors, giving out the advice, just speak up.
How often do we, particularly as women, hear that, just speak up. As if it's that easy. And yet all the research also shows that when women speak up, we are not received as well, or we are more likely to be penalized, told no, than men. And no one's really talking about that piece. So Unlearning Silence was really, look, there's such damaging messaging that essentially boils down to women, fix yourselves, have more courage, have more confidence, then you might get promoted, then you might get heard versus, okay, what is mine to own? In what ways might I have learned silence be staying silent? And in what ways do the well intentioned people around me actually silence me while telling me they're going to support me?
So I wanted us to have a more honest conversation, than the one we seem to be having. And then personally, you know, it's an issue I've always struggled with. I'm the youngest daughter of an immigrant family from Taiwan to the United States, and I share that context because in my family of origin, asking a question, pushing back against dad or your elders was disrespectful. To be respectful, to honor, love, other people, means to shut your mouth. And that serves you really well. You are easy to work with. You don't rock the boat. You know, if you don't have any, theoretically, if you don't have any needs of your own, then you can focus on everyone else. And so you go into the workplace and you're rewarded as a great team player, simultaneously dying a slow death inside.
EMILIE: Yeah, well, I love that you bring that personal lens, that personal narrative. You help your reader kind of unpack their own personal narrative around silence. And you also acknowledge sort of the systemic public narrative around this work. Your work actually reminds me in some ways of what Brené Brown has done with courage. Because in studying shame, you can learn about courage. In studying silence, you can learn about speaking up. And so it really is like the flip side of the same coin that's gotten a lot of press over the past few decades, but it's been underexplored. And so I think it's a really interesting approach that you've taken here.
ELAINE: That observation makes my heart sing.
EMILIE: Good.
ELAINE: Because from the start of this, I said, I want us, uh, us, uh, meaning society, meaning everyday people, whether it is professional, personal, family, work. I want us to talk about silence the way that Brené helped us talk about shame. Because not only is it one of her three things in the petri dish from her quote in her Oprah interview, but because it's there whether or not we talk about it. Silence is coloring our relationships. Silence is undermining our ability to get ahead or get work done. Except we're also misdiagnosing the things that silence is affecting. As you know, you need more courage, you need more confidence. Go fix yourself.
EMILIE: And to your earlier point that I definitely want to sink my teeth into in a minute here, is like, silence serves a purpose whether we are conscious of it or not.
ELAINE: Absolutely.
EMILIE: So first, let's unpack kind of, how we learn silence. Because a lot of your book is about unlearning habits that we've already picked up along the way, particularly as it relates to women, folks of color, folks who are from immigrant families like yourself. Where does that come from, those messages around silence?
ELAINE: I mean, it's almost too simple to say family of origin. And it's almost as simple to say society.
EMILIE: Yeah. [LAUGHTER] Fact.
ELAINE: It does.
EMILIE: Yeah, yeah.
ELAINE: It does. And so in chapter one, I actually break it down in the interpersonal relationships. I mean, the number of people after reading the book who have shared stories of their grandparents or their parents at the dinner table or like this one holiday meal is when it really, you know, struck home that they can't say anything around them or it's too costly. Those really vivid moments that become part of our learned behavior over time form our habits, that we may or may not be conscious of.
And then in school, you think about elementary school, you think about middle school, high school, any of these. And I have such compassion. And there's a sidebar in the book for teachers because in terms of classroom management, we only have 30 minutes for this unit. We got to move the conversation on. So children tend to ask an average of 125 questions a day. Adults ask, and it's really painful. As the mother of a six and a half year old who asked me this morning at breakfast, mom, is it okay that I asked that many questions? [LAUGHTER] And I had to take a deep breath before answering, yes.
EMILIE: You're like, I'm cycle breaking. I'm cycle breaking. I'm cycle breaking.
ELAINE: Yes. And sometimes I need a break. I need five minutes. Because it's really good that you ask questions. I don't want you to lose that. Adults ask an average of six questions a day. And we could use more curiosity, right? But it gets stripped out of us because there's not time in the classroom for the conversation or it's disruptive. And so we learn over time to not be disruptive because you get rewarded for behaving well, which means shut your mouth, be quiet, and don't ask questions, which means we don't hone our critical thinking skills. All of these things over time is how we learn silence. And of course, as we were talking about in the workplace, you're rewarded for it, right? As an entry level person, until you then aren't enough of a value add, don't have executive presence, any of these catchphrases, because you're not pushing the envelope more. And so it's such a strange, jarring moment in one's career where the one thing that helped you succeed early on then becomes the liability. But for so many of us, it is what behaviors allow us to stay in our personal and professional relationships.
EMILIE: Right, and stay safe.
ELAINE: Let me toe the company line. Stay safe. And sometimes not just safe psychologically, but safe physically, right? How many of us came from cultures of silence in the family where there are family secrets, or alcoholism or, you know, who are you, I always ask the question, who does your silence protect? Who does your silence serve? And so often it's, you know, don't talk about what dad did because it would be shameful to the family, or shameful to, okay, but what about me? What about my need to be seen, known, and heard? And what damage does it do? What message does it send when you are always prioritizing someone else, right?
EMILIE: You write at one point in the book, quote, your voice is worthy and deserves to, to be heard, which shouldn't be that radical a statement…
ELAINE: No. [LAUGHTER]
EMILIE: …and yet, and yet, you know, because you acknowledge it right after that sentence, that there's people out there who cannot, women out there in particular, who can't deeply agree with that, right? And so there's like, uh, it's tied directly to self worth, isn't it? Our belief that our voice matters.
ELAINE: And, that we didn't make that up. We didn't make up this, like, oh, my voice might not matter as much. I mean, you think about how long it took for women in this country to get the right to vote. You think about, distribution of caretaking responsibilities in the majority of families. You talk about workplace policy. All of those messages say, you know what, your reality, your lived experience doesn't matter that much. And in fact, if you disclose that you're pregnant or that you need to pick up your kid early. You know, if a man does the same thing in the workplace, it's rewarded, wow, he's so involved. But if I'm. Particularly if I'm the only woman on that team, the only woman who finally got a seat at the table, my standing already feels so tenuous.
EMILIE: There's so many double binds that you're highlighting, including the we love an individual contributor who shuts up and gets their work done. But she's lacking in leadership presence. And so a lot of women come to Bossed Up for that transition. They say, you know, I've been excelling as an IC, I'm looking to make that leap into leadership, but I've been told I need to work on my presence, on my, you know, use of voice. We have a program called SPEAK UP and our first, which is ironic given the advice around that, but the first module that we talk through is like, how have we been hushed?
And it often takes us back to childhood, takes us back to those early messages, but it's just such a catch 22. It's so exhausting, especially for women of color. And I recently got feedback to basically say less in one particular context that I'm involved in because I'm very outspoken and I have so much power and privilege, including a very outspoken culture in my family of origin. But my default to making my voice heard unabashedly gets me in trouble. Like it rubs people the wrong way. [LAUGHTER]
ELAINE: Yes. And this question of, is that your problem? Is it their problem?
EMILIE: Right. So that's what I wanted to ask you about. Because, you know, when you talk through, in your book, when silence makes sense, you talk about self protection. You talk about moments where silence can serve you. And what service is silence performing, whether you're conscious of it or not.
At the end of the day, you say it's all about agency, right? You're the one who has to live today and live into the future. Take the space when you need it, as an act of faith, as an act of protest, as an act of self sustenance. Let's make whether you choose silence or voice your call. Tell me more about what you mean by that.
ELAINE: Yeah. Whether silence is additive, or strategic, or oppressive, the difference between that is agency. Am I choosing when I want to speak or when I want to stay silent? If silence feels like the only option, because I'm going to lose my job if, if I say something, or you're going to break up with me, right? If I, if I have to edit out that part of myself as a prerequisite to be in this role or this relationship, then the silence is not my choice. It feels like the only choice versus we all only have so much bandwidth and so many chips, so many spoons, whichever analogy you want to use. Because also to feel like I have to speak up. And so many of us navigate that now, right? If you're not speaking up on this issue, then you're a bad person. If you're, and particularly if you are the only woman at the table, you can feel so tokenized. Why should I have to speak up on every gender equity issue when I'm another human being on this team? You all could, if you chose, develop the ability, educate yourself to be able to spot that, do something about it. So even the onus of you've got to speak up about it here is also not centering our own agency and how we want, how we want to live and how we want to lead.
EMILIE: What do you make of the like phrase, and this is, I think of my little Gen Z sister who is a very outspoken activist and we love that she's a labor organizer. We love that for her and for everyone. And I've seen some of her rhetoric and maybe it's more like indicative of certain pockets of Gen Z rhetoric equate silence as violence, right? And so I think of the example you gave earlier, when is it oppressive versus strategic? And I think, well, it depends on who you ask. [LAUGHTER]
ELAINE: Totally.
EMILIE: Right. What do you make of that, like, of weaponized silence? Is that a thing? And how do we know if we're defaulting to that mindlessly or being really conscious about it?
ELAINE: Yeah, I think silence is absolutely violence. And you know, it's, that's in the book as well. And depends which vantage point you're looking at it from. How do we know whether the silence is being weaponized? There's a lot of, are you learning? Are you aware? Are you aware of the impact? Are you aware of your power, your privilege, your positionality? And we're all making judgment calls all the time.
So what are the consequences of your silence? Are those ones you can live with? What world are you trying to create? And for me, voice is not just the words that you say or don't say in a meeting. Voice is how you move through the world. And I mean, you can even broaden out this idea of voice, of everybody's voice is going to sound different, look different how we, it's, it's literally not just the words that we use or the timbre of our voice. But literally, what are you going to do day to day? What are your actions? Not just on social media, but in real life.
EMILIE: Yeah. And it's a finite resource, right? It's like, where do I want to project that energy and voice and what. You know, because we can't be all things to all people.
ELAINE: Well, and that's Omkari Williams book, Micro Activism, which is How To Make A Difference In The World Without A Bullhorn, was, you know, and Omkari is a organizer, longtime activist, says really you get two causes if you want to make a consistent difference over time. The most that any human being really can do is two causes. And depending on your season of life, it may or may not actually, right, maybe, maybe you are sending out emails, maybe you are bringing food, maybe you are, but there are all these roles.
And so to really think about our voice is, who are we? What are our gifts? What are the things we care about? What are my values? How do I want to therefore make meaning of my life, make my life meaningful? And that can and should look different for every single person because we are not the same people.
EMILIE: And sort of recognizing the resources we each have in terms of that voice, like, if we value our own voice, we will see it as a resource that can be leveraged in pursuit of the things that we care about, right?
ELAINE: Yes. Which is also an acknowledgement, being really honest, of where are you right now? And I say again, this is deeply personal because in the course of writing this book, I was breastfeeding a child, was a caretaker up, down, sideways, sandwich generation, was navigating a toxic workplace, was learning how to write a book, promote a book. Was the first of you the only to use Deepa Purushothaman's language in so many contexts.
EMILIE: Another former guest on the show. We'll have to link to her episode in the show notes.
ELAINE: Yes. And it's a tremendous amount, right. And you know, I have a kid with night terrors, so I was waking up three, four times a night. And there is a literal. I think some of it is why I end up with so much compassion. It is hard for any of us to judge anyone from the outside. And only you really know what you're caring, which is why there's also a, but don't take that as a reason to give yourself a pass. Really interrogate where you want to invest your energy, your life, because that becomes your life and your legacy.
EMILIE: Yeah, I love that. We've talked a lot on this podcast about many of those issues because they're One and the same.
ELAINE: You can't do it all.
EMILIE: No.
ELAINE: You cannot do it all.
EMILIE: Nor should we. And look at what you've done. Like, this is amazing, despite everything else you've been doing…
ELAINE: Thank you.
EMILIE: …that's below the, below the iceberg, right? It's like, kudos to you. Take a victory lap, mama. [LAUGHTER]
ELAINE: Thank you. And don't want it to be an excuse to say, well, look, Elaine wrote a book despite all of that, so let's not fix gender pay inequity in our organization. I do not wish any of that on anyone.
EMILIE: Well, I want to start talking about the systemic nature of all of this. We've been talking around it, but you had an interesting reference to the Babble Hypothesis of leadership in your book that I think is so interesting. First, explain what that is, because a lot of women who listen to this podcast are on that precipice of saying, do I even want that promotion? And if so, how the h*** do I get there? Especially if silence has been my M.O., you know? So what is the Babble Hypothesis of leadership first?
ELAINE: Yeah, the Babble Hypothesis of leadership is that research studies have shown, and maybe our lived experiences align with this. The more someone talks, the more they are likely to be interpreted as a leader or having leadership potential. It is a flawed metric and yet so often it has been rewarded and is rewarded. And I love when women are actively interrogating this question of, do I really want that next role?
I wish I had interrogated it more. I was very much on, you know, you're supposed to want to make partner. And I became the first non-white partner at my firm and I did not realize all that came with it. I mean, it's a tremendous responsibility. And it's not that we shy away from responsibility. It's that, you know, that you're walking into a broken system that does not support you. And so if you know that, why, why, why would you do it except to try to change it from the inside? And it's progress and it's a tremendous amount, it's just really hard on any one person.
So again, I have no judgment for anyone who chooses to leave, who takes a step back, who chooses, you know, if that's not right for me or my family, because it's all embedded in these systemic issues, like what does leadership look like? And that the model of leadership is babbling and often behaviors of white cis men, which I am none of. And most of us are not in, nor should we be. But until our colleagues can broaden their imagination of what leadership could look like that. Leadership could be quiet and yet powerful, could be empathetic and impactful, that you could cry and still be able to do incredible work. I mean, to me it's actually one of the more healthy ways of releasing tension until the perception around us can change, which we can be part of that change. Why would we want to walk into that? So I think it's such a wise question to really be conscious of what you would be taking on.
EMILIE: And what you're willing to subject yourself to. What's worth it for you and kind of going in clear-eyed. I think those are all really good points. So knowing that we're up against a world that basically, especially in the western business culture, this is a very western conversation in a world that really rewards being outspoken, what is the advice?
And at Bossed Up, since I started Bossed Up in 2013, I've always wrestled with this advice around. The metaphor I use is, you know, we gotta play the cards we've been dealt while we change the game. But even that feels paltry sometimes because what is the advice to the woman who knows she defaults to silence? Who wants to be more confident, who wants to feel like my voice is worthy and deserves to be heard, and is also well aware of the risks that are inherent in speaking up, especially as women? Like, how do we balance the, both and approach, of saying the system is rigged against you and here's what you can do about it.
ELAINE: Yeah, I would start with yourself, meaning unlearning silence or using your voice. Living is not an individual sport. So do you have a team around you? It could be the Bossed Up community, it could be anyone else. Do you have a team around you who knows you, sees your value and is going to call out the BS when it shows up? And those are the people you text to be like, did that just happen? It seems like gaslighting to, check me here, right? And they know you, they know what you stand for and they're going to nudge you in the way that you want to move forward.
That is my best friend, right. This book would not have existed without her. One of our early conversations, a former business partner of mine, didn't understand the idea of silence, and so said, silence is survival are you talking about COVID? And I was like, isn't silence is survival the fundamental immigrant story and experience of women around the world? And she was like, BS, you know, and emojis were in the text chain.
We need those people to check us because our environment, anytime you have a subordinated identity. It could be based on gender, race, class, education, you name it. You are inherently facing an uphill battle because the dominant identity is the norm. And so just to be clear-eyed about that, but also that you're not alone because that ah, social isolation is exhausting and allows us to then internalize the messages of it's us. I need more courage, I need more confidence. When do those things help? Sure. But in my latest newsletter I went on this rant of it's actually not about courage and it's not about confidence. It's about calculation. If you knew that your colleagues would hear you, reward you, appreciate you, value you, promote you for what you brought, how much more likely would you be willing to share?
So for the woman herself, I would say build your team. Have your people who are going to be like, nope, you're not crazy because the world is going to tell you, you are, and that you're less than and that you're not enough. So guard against that with your people. And, and the people could be. Which podcast do you listen to? Which books do you read?
EMILIE: But like, you have to have a counter narrative…
ELAINE: Yes.
EMILIE: …as opposed to just accepting the feedback at face value as truth that you need to internalize all the time, right.
ELAINE: Completely. And the call to action to me, is for everyone else around you. You know, I'm calling on um, the well intentioned leader. You say you care about your colleagues. You say you want your team to be productive. You say that you understand that you need collaboration to get things done. Great. What conditions are you going to create to make that possible? And in what ways do you well intentioned leader, which could also be us, right. The queen bee syndrome happens.
So it is a call to action of, are we disrupting those assumptions of what leadership looks like? Are we designing the way that we communicate so that we aren't prioritizing people who think and communicate best by talking in real time, versus the post processors, or the people who communicate more effectively by typing. It benefits anyone in terms of neurodiversity, I mean there's so many things. But why are we buying into what the dominant norm is other than everyone sort of knows how it works, even if it’s imperfect.
EMILIE: It works better for some than others. Yeah.
ELAINE: Yes.
EMILIE: And you write, you have a whole section in your book that I really want to get to on we all silence others, but we don't have to. And we had a great interview with the Colorado Neurodiversity Chamber of Commerce Co-Founder here, a first of its kind in the nation and we had an event in person all about like, how to create a workplace that is neuro inclusive essentially. But what you're getting at is what can current leaders, managers, people with authority and power in the workplace who are listening to this, what can we do to design against silencing others voices? And how. What are some best practices you've seen? You have a lot in the book. I know, but what have you seen work well, that might be more accessible than we think, right?
ELAINE: Completely. I mean the first is, do you know what mode and medium makes it easiest for the people on your team to communicate their thoughts? Are they a texter, are they a typer, are they a talker, are they a morning person, a night owl, a midday is their power hour, right? And there's no perfect time zone, particularly in a global environment. But scheduling a meeting at 9am is going to benefit the people who are morning people and incline towards silence the people who are night owls. So let's at least be intellectually honest about that. But also if everyone in your team peaks later in the day, why are you scheduling at 9am, other than maybe that meeting has always been there or is it, does it even need to be a meeting?
EMILIE: Not to mention the parents who are doing drop off and pick up, [LAUGHTER] right? But yes, totally.
ELAINE: Totally. And this is where we get into auditing our policies and practices and the systems. Those simple questions, simple but not easy. Simple questions of who does this policy support and who does this policy or practice silence, right. That parents doing drop off or you're just trying to do that context switch right away of does it have to be the way that it's always been done? Could we actually optimize and make it easier so that we're not creating barriers to entry to the conversation or to the work unintentionally?
The other that feels simple and potentially easy to do is make explicit your assumptions. If you are part of the dominant norm, then it may not strike you that not everybody shares the same assumptions. Like in a meeting, this assumption, do you have to be called on in order to share your thoughts? A lot of people who are used to speaking, babbling, you know, I'm not waiting to raise my hand. If I've got something to say, I'm just going to say it.
And if you, I'm going to assume that if you have something to say, you're going to say it. And unless you've made that assumption explicit, everyone comes from such different cultures and not just families of origin culture or ethnicity. But literal team culture, right. At my last job, when I spoke out of turn, quote unquote, because I didn't raise my hand, you know, my boss chewed me out. So now I have learned that to be professional is to wait to be called on or whatever it is, or that little.
EMILIE: That little virtual hand raise. You know, in our Speak up program, I'm, like, very explicit on our meeting norms. We don't raise hands here because we. There's a lot of meeting environments where waiting to be called on is going to bite you in the a** for lack of a better word, you know?
ELAINE: Yes. So what are the norms on our team, though? Because unless we've named it, and by the way, naming it is what, 10 seconds?
EMILIE: Right. Barely. Yeah.
ELAINE: That profoundly changes every meeting going forward and gives you an anchor point and other people an anchor point to say, hold on, you said we didn't have to, or you said, you know, that I could speak up if you get…
EMILIE: Yeah, push back down the line, push back later.
ELAINE: …push back later.
EMILIE: Yeah, I like that. We have a whole podcast on, what do you do about over scheduling meetings? Or just the culture of defaulting to meetings, too? Like, as though meetings are the only way to make decisions and collaborate, right? [LAUGHTER]
ELAINE: Or exchange information.
EMILIE: Yeah. Death by meetings is something we're all too familiar with. I have one final question for you here, because you've given us so much already, and there's so much more to your work in this book as well. But, what is one thing you want everyone to take away from your work?
ELAINE: You are worth it. You're worth it. And it, it doesn't have to be this way. And I say that because so often the messages to us as women are, you know, we don't care. Like, you've got an issue with childcare, you've got an issue with whatever, deal with it. And for so long, to be a good mother, for example, or a good woman, was to act as if you didn't have any needs. And that's actually not true, because human beings have needs.
EMILIE: Yeah. Or to be a good daughter, right. So as you've, you alluded to what you were going through while writing this book. How did you leverage your voice in those moments where you were, I'm assuming, overextended, right? Like, how did you bring these lessons to bear in your own life?
ELAINE: The question makes me smile because the title of the book is very intentionally Unlearning Silence, I-N-G. I am on this journey alongside everyone else. And in fact, when I started on the book journey, because it usually, you know, from book deal to bookshelves is two years with traditional publishing. When I started on the book journey, even putting together the book proposal, I did not fully believe I had a voice.
I had spent more than a decade teaching around the world in really high context, working with CEOs, executive teams, teaching someone else's content. And I thought that my validity, my power was borrowed and was not sure whether this idea had legs. Although I had, you know, good client feedback, there was a lot of doubt and very conscious that as an Asian American woman navigating publishing, which is still really, really white, wasn't sure people would get it.
But I also thought it was a bit of an experiment, right? I also thought it doesn't hurt to try. And publishers got it. You know, I met with 16 different publishers. The book went to auction in a 12 publisher auction. I sold global rights to Penguin Random House. They sold 10 translations before it had even been written. And it was a, oh, I think I'm thinking about it…
EMILIE: Yeah. You got legs.
ELAINE: …you know, and I didn't believe I was a writer. This is by far the longest thing I've ever. I didn't believe. I didn't know I could write until I signed off on the final manuscript and I read it and I was like, oh, it's actually, I think it's good.
EMILIE: You're like, who wrote this? This is great. Yeah. [LAUGHTER]
ELAINE: No, I said to my editor, Meg, I think I can write. And she's like, well, yeah, no, duh. But I share that because the lived experience, it doesn't feel clean and neat. It doesn't feel like I've got this. It's not a pep talk that we're living in. It is real life, which is gnarly and messy, and yet we're trying to make the most of it, or the best of it. And that broken crayons can still color, right?
You don't have to have it all together to make an impact. You do have to keep taking action. And action teaches us something. And we can continue to evolve and pivot from there. And I just so, you know, I think about my own journey. I think about so many of the women I've met. We have so much to offer that has been underutilized, underestimated, under-recognized. And yes, it's an uphill battle. But I also know the power of any one of us making different intentional choices day to day. That is the life we are creating for ourselves and the people around us.
EMILIE: And the world that you create as a result of taking those risks is the world I want to live in, right.
ELAINE: We. We are worth it.
EMILIE: Yeah, absolutely. And then think about the message is, that everyone around you gleans from your experience. So thank you so much for sharing that story at the end here and for all that you're doing. I think it's really tremendous. Keep up the amazing work and thank you so much for being here.
ELAINE: Thanks for having me.
EMILIE: For more links and resources to everything Elaine and I just talked about, head to bossedup.org/episode490, that's bossedup.org/episode490. And now I want to hear from you. How have you been working to unlearn silence in your life? Where did we learn silence to begin with? What has that felt like or looked like in your life? In your family of origin? In your upbringing? And how do you make the call? How do you lean into your own agency when deciding where to focus and invest your voice as the limited but potent energy that it is in your day to day life?
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As always, let's keep the conversation going in the Bossed Up Courage Community or in the Bossed Up Group on LinkedIn. Let's make your voice heard there and let's create the space and the world that we want to live in by hearing from each and every one of you. Until next time, let's keep bossin’ in pursuit of our purpose and together let's lift as we climb.
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