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Key points
- A recent study demonstrates how “strategic silence” often yields good values and positive rewards.
- Choosing the right time to communicate is just as important as the content of the message itself.
- The principles of “strategic silence” can be applied in workplace and personal communications.
Michael Parke, an assistant professor of management at Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, demonstrated in a study (co-authored with Subrahmaniam Tangirala, Apurva Sanaria, and Srinivas Ekkirala) published in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes that “strategic silence” can garner positive values and rewards for employees. This study challenges the conventional wisdom that speaking up at any moment is more valued than silence. It alternatively suggests that “strategic silence”—withholding information intentionally—often yields better results.
The implications of this study are threefold.
First, silence is not always bad; as the old wisdom has it, if speaking is sliver, then silence is gold. This study casts doubt on the old wisdom that scorns silence and always exhorts speaking up, under any circumstance. It highlights some of the negative consequences of speaking up indiscriminately and demonstrates the positive benefits of strategic silence.
Second, what the study terms “strategic silence” is a better course of action because it often yields positive results. It does this by allowing the person time to think through the existing problem, from all perceived angles. It allows them to invite the thought of others and to iterate, through trial and error, different strategies to move forward.
Third, speaking up all the time, without taking into consideration a number of factors, often yields negative results. When people speak up, they are on the record, which will shape how events unfold. Sometimes it is better to leave the water undisturbed.
Even so, the study has limitations, two of which merit attention.
First, although silence, and strategic silence in particular, is valued, chronic silence is bad; eventually, we have to speak up, but the question we ought to consider is when we raise our voice.
Second, in the intervening times, we ought to do our homework, research all facets of the problem, think of potential solutions, and consider anticipated rebuttals—so when we eventually speak up, we are armed and ready when the necessary information.
This study has been conducted in workplace communication but its conclusions could shed light on personal communication. Airing our personal opinions gratuitously and indiscriminately could rupture our connections; we have to deploy the concept of “strategic silence” to know when to say what we want to say. The timing of the message is sometimes as important as the content of the message itself.
However, there is the popular phrase, “strike the iron while it’s hot,” which exhorts people to engage in immediate communications. Even so, it is often better to engage in “delayed gratification,” because good outcomes almost always take time, energy, and effort.
People who grow up in precarious and toxic environments often struggle to delay gratification. They tend to deal with problems as they come, without any conscious planning, which often results in poor management and negative outcomes.
In what has come to be known as “the Stanford marshmallow experiment,” psychologist Walter Mischel published a landmark study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, in which he found that children who can exercise the principle of delayed gratification (resisting immediate temptations) are more likely to grow into successful adults—compared to children who struggle to delay gratification and surrender to immediate temptations.
Skills such as “delayed gratification and resisting immediate temptations” are often oblivious to what Walt McClure coins as “the structural poor”—defined as historically marginalized people of color, immigrants, and refugees—who lack “skills that require considerable time, effort and mentoring to develop, skills that they scarcely know exist let alone how to acquire.”
Conclusion
If you are a person who always speaks up immediately, then this might be the time to slow down and exercise the principle of “strategic silence.” If you are a chronically silent person, then this is the time to capitalize on “strategic silence” by speaking up at the right time. The question is not whether you should speak up or not (you should always speak up); however, the question is when should you speak up, and the reviewed literature above suggests that taking the time to think about the problem is often the best course of action.
