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Silence and quiet isn't always golden.

Silence or Quiet Can Be Very, Very Bad!

Quiet or silence can see like a great thing at times can’t it? But, if you are in management, consider this.  Have you ever walked into a room and had everyone get very quiet and just go silent?  If so, did you read the signal correctly?  No, it’s not because everyone is in awe of your magnificence and power.  When the ‘silent treatment’ happens, it is a signal your workers are in some stage of disengagement.  That’s not a good thing.  The fact is, most managers have likely experienced the silent treatment and thought it was a natural byproduct of being the boss.  It’s not.  It is a far more important signal, and one you can’t afford to ignore.  Learn how to use this signal to your advantage in this episode of the Manager Mojo podcast.
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Transcript: Quiet Can Be A Sign!

Hello and welcome.   Our topic today starts with this question:  Why does the room get quiet when I walk in?  Now isn’t that a fun question?  Why does the room get quiet when I walk in?

Let me start by sharing a personal story that can help you understand what I’m talking about today.   Years ago, when I was just a youngster, I was working by the hour for a company.   It wasn’t intellectual work but manual, physical stuff.   I worked a lot of hours and in a really confined area, so it was more of a production type of job.

And so, I had a lot of fun with my co-workers.  We had a lot of guys that were actually working on a printing press.  Our job was to keep that printing press clean and all of the paper loaded.  We were producing circulars, papers, and all sorts of things.   We would work from ten to fourteen hours a day depending on what we had to run.          So many times when the press was running, we weren’t really as focused on what we were doing as we should have been.   We would goof off at times.

Well, the manager who was the ‘big’ boss in the little company had a policy of doing what he called ‘a walk around.’  He felt that the best way to make sure everybody was doing what they were supposed to do was to walk in on people and surprise them.

The thing that I want you to get the picture of is that this guy walked really, really fast.  When he caught someone goofing off he would yell at them and order them to start getting things done.  He wanted you to start doing something and he didn’t care what it was.

It was really fascinating to watch.   I’m young, I’m learning, I’m watching, and I’m observing what’s going on here.   I began to realize that people were expecting these walk-arounds and to be told what they should be doing.   When he’d come around the corner and pop in, all and of a sudden everything would get quiet.    People stopped goofing off and no one was saying anything.  They were waiting to see what the reaction was going to be.  Was he going to explode, or was it going to be a normal quick in and quick out so that we could get back to being a little bit more relaxed?

We actually got to the point where I recognized later that everybody was really trying to avoid those interactions with him.  And so the room would get quiet, because when he was there work got done.  He popped in often enough to make sure that things were getting done properly.

Today I’m not so sure that this was a very good practice.  We probably could have been more efficient if we had just had been relaxed about what we were doing.  The job still would’ve gotten done well.  All we really needed was a supervisor with us who would handle problems.

This was my example of management while I was growing up and I thought that was the way things got done.   When I became a manager of course I thought that I didn’t want people goofing off.   I wanted to make sure they were doing what they needed to do, because we had some big objectives.

I didn’t realize that sometimes people needed a breath,  and they needed a little space to breathe.   I started doing the walk-around and surprise visit and doing the exact same thing.  The next thing I know, I found myself experiencing what my mentor probably experienced as well.  When I walked into the room, everything got really quiet.      It was interesting, because in one way it was good.   They listened, first of all, to what I had to say, and they appeared to do it.   It was only over a period of time that I began to realize that what people were doing was being quiet hoping that they were not the bull’s eye of my wrath.   The second I walked out they went back to doing whatever they wanted to do anyway.

I really was not getting the productivity that I wanted.  Thankfully I began to understand more about human behavior that was different than my own.  Consequently, I began to makes changes.

If you’re doing that type of thing, what you need to be aware of is that when people are silent when you come into the room, it’s really pointing to bigger issues.

The first issue is that you don’t have real communication lines open with your people. When they clam up and close up, what they’re looking for and what they’re telling you is that in their mind you have become close minded.  You’re not really listening to anybody’s opinion; you only want to share your own.   In its worse form, this is when you become a dictator.

I realized that early in my career that’s exactly what I was; I was just dictating what needed to be done.   I really didn’t care what your opinion was.  The reality was, I thought ‘I’m the boss. I’m the guy that’s in charge here and you have to listen to me.’  And they did have to listen to me because I had that power.  But that didn’t mean that I got their best.  As a matter of fact, it often meant that I was getting their worst.

What I was sowing was distrust of my leadership ability.  They didn’t trust me to value them or their opinion.  Therefore, what they were willing to do was wait and let me do all the telling.

Over time, here is what happens.   This lack of communication begins to affect team morale.  Everybody’s attitude starts to go down the drain.  They tend to start doing the minimal level of work in order to avoid you and your wrath.  And that’s never a good thing, because you want morale to be high.  You want people to be energized and engaged.  You want them to really want to achieve.  But I didn’t understand that very clearly at the time.

There’s another even bigger consequence that occurs, other than low team morale, if you continue over a long period of time.  That consequence is that you tick off that one person in your organization.   I’m not saying they go ‘postal.’   I’m not talking about anything that bad.  But they will become what is technically called ‘actively disengaged.’   They have decided you are a jerk.  They have decided you don’t deserve their attention, their respect, or their trust, and then they decide they’re going to work somewhere else.  They’ve already got the resume dusted off and are looking for the next job.   But while they are looking for that next job what that actively disengaged person is doing, is trying to encourage some of their coworkers to quit and go with them.

In its worst form this can be devastating to your business.  It certainly affected my own business, because I clearly know I ran people off simply because I wasn’t being open to other opinions.

I’ve seen an even worse example of this.  One company lost one-third of their workforce simply because they didn’t know that somebody had become actively disengaged on their team.  That person wound up recruiting a third of their sales force to follow them in a new business venture that they created.   Now, that really hurts when it happens.

I think you get the point about trying to avoid that, so let’s talk about what you should be doing.  Let’s think about it from a positive standpoint of what you can actually do.

The first thing that you need to do is begin the practice of being open with people.   What I’m talking about here are open communications techniques.   That’s a fancy way of saying something that is really simple.  All you should be doing is simply asking the other person for their opinion.   Simply ask questions.  If asking for their opinion is too hard to remember, just ask questions.  Start practicing asking questions of people and actually listen to their response.

It doesn’t have to complicated.  You don’t have to be some super smart person who knows the answers to everything.  Just begin to be the kind of person that asks for other’s opinions.  And guess what, it doesn’t have to always be about work!

Communication is often overlooked as the value that managers should achieve.  We think we are supposed to know everything because we are the leader of the group, when in reality we often don’t know, but we’re pretending.  Open communication techniques asking your team members for their opinions, suggestions, and ideas actually take the pressure off you as the boss.  When we begin to practice that, people will start to lose that natural fear that comes when you have a title of ‘boss.’

You see, there’s a natural fear of that individual.  Why?  Because you have the power to fire them.  You have the power to affect whether they ever get a raise, whether they ever get out of your department, and whether they are able to achieve personal goals.

When we create the closed atmosphere which causes people to go silent, we then have real problems that can ultimately derail our own success.  I don’t want that to happen to you.  I don’t want you lose your own personal success.

I talked about when you are walking into your team work area, but one thing I want to remind you of is to start paying attention to what happens when you walk into a meeting that you are conducting.   If you are the person conducting and everyone all of sudden goes silent, dead silent, you should take that as a sign that you haven’t created open communications with these people.   Begin right then to start practicing asking questions, letting people know that you really value their opinion.

I’m going to practice exactly what I’m talking about today.   I want to know your opinion.   If you have a question that you would like to ask me, go to ManagerMojo.com and look for the tab at the top of the menu that says “Ask Steve”.   You can actually ask a question using the software called “SpeakPipe.”   I’d love to answer your question on a future podcast.   I hope you take advantage of that and do it today — that’s ManagerMojo.com/AskSteve.

Thank you for listening.  I wish you the most success in your personal life as well as in business.  Thank you and remember what we learned the next time you enter a totally QUIET room!