The Science Of Speaking Up For Yourself | Elaine Lin Hering (Co-Hosted By Dan's Wife, Bianca!)
Elaine Lin Hering, a former Harvard Law lecturer and author of 'Unlearning Silence,' discusses how we learn silence, its health and relationship impacts, and her four-step process to find your voice. She also explores how to stop unintentionally silencing others and when silence is a conscious choice.
Deep Dive Analysis
17 Topic Outline
Elaine Lin Hering's Origin Story of Silence
Defining Voice and Oppressive Silence
The Stakes of Unlearning Silence
Bianca's Experience with Self-Silencing
Societal Expectations and Gendered Silence
When Choosing Silence is Healthy
Unintended Silencing in Relationships: Bianca's IVF Story
Setting Boundaries and Silencing Harmful Behavior
Dan's Trauma Response and Adolescent Bullying Incident
The "Toilet Gate" Example: Connecting Different Perspectives
Expressing Needs and Running Small Experiments
Utilizing Sounding Boards for Practice
Understanding the Voice Silence Calculation Biases
Elaine's Four Steps to Speaking Up
How to Stop Silencing Other People
Navigating Silencing Dynamics as Parents
The Benefits of Unlearning Silence
7 Key Concepts
Voice
Voice is defined as how an individual moves through the world, encompassing the agency to decide one's actions and expressions. It's not merely about the words spoken, but about having self-determination in one's interactions and relationships.
Oppressive Silence
This type of silence occurs when there isn't enough room in a conversation or relationship for an individual's needs, thoughts, or preferences. It makes a person feel compelled to suppress parts of themselves to maintain the relationship or stay at the table, differing from chosen, healthy silence.
Voice Silence Calculation
A framework, coined by Amy Edmondson, describing how people weigh the perceived costs and benefits of speaking up versus staying silent. Individuals often tend to overemphasize immediate personal costs and underestimate the long-term, collective benefits.
Present Bias
A cognitive bias where individuals tend to focus disproportionately on immediate, short-term costs and benefits. This bias often leads to a skewed assessment in the voice silence calculation, making short-term discomfort seem more significant than long-term consequences.
Self-Bias
Related to the spotlight effect, this cognitive bias causes individuals to overly focus on their own thoughts, feelings, and potential negative perceptions from others. It leads to an overestimation of how much others are paying attention to or judging them, thereby influencing the voice silence calculation.
Sounding Board
A person or group used to reflect back ideas, concerns, or planned communication, serving as a mirror. This practice helps individuals articulate and refine what they want to say, gaining an embodied experience of speaking up before engaging in a real, potentially difficult conversation.
Culture of Voice
An environment, whether in a team or a household, where the prevailing narrative and norms actively encourage and reward people for speaking up. This includes expressing diverse perspectives, even when they are difficult or unpopular, fostering psychological safety and open communication.
7 Questions Answered
Healthy silence is chosen and serves as an act of self-care, boundary setting, or a meditative pause. Unhealthy or oppressive silence is when there's no room for one's needs or thoughts, making it feel like the only choice to maintain a relationship or situation.
Staying silent can lead to significant health impacts like loneliness and chronic high alert due to constant self-editing. In relationships, it can prevent true intimacy, and in organizations, it hinders collaboration, innovation, retention, and engagement.
Yes, silence can be an act of self-care, a way to set boundaries, or a meditative pause to create space between stimulus and response. The key distinction is whether the silence is chosen and intentional, rather than feeling like the only option.
Past traumatic or painful experiences, such as bullying or a lack of responsiveness to childhood needs, can lead to learned silence or dissociation as a coping mechanism. These patterns can then unconsciously impact current relationships and communication.
People tend to poorly calculate this because of present bias, over-indexing on immediate discomfort, and self-bias, focusing too much on their own potential negative outcomes. They often underestimate the long-term costs of staying silent and the collective benefits of speaking up.
You can encourage others by recognizing that using their voice might be difficult for them, lending your social capital to endorse their contributions, and building a 'culture of voice' where expressing diverse perspectives is rewarded and seen as safe.
Parents can encourage their children's voices by listening to their opinions, helping them see that their voice matters, and articulating the impact their communication style has on others. This involves an ongoing negotiation between immediate ease and long-term developmental goals.
42 Actionable Insights
1. Unpack Your Origin Story
Interrogate your own reactions, like dissociation or detachment, to understand their origin stories and communicate them to others so they can interpret your behavior more accurately. This helps others understand your responses in context, rather than misinterpreting them as being about them.
2. Process Past Traumatic Experiences
Actively work to unpack and process your traumatic or painful experiences, as unresolved issues will inevitably leak out in unintended ways and negatively impact your relationships.
3. Recognize Needs as Human
Reframe having needs as a fundamental and normal aspect of being human, rather than viewing it as a sign of being ’needy’ or demanding too much.
4. Notice Your Own Needs
Practice stopping, thinking, and observing to identify and become aware of your own needs, which is a crucial first step in unlearning silence.
5. Be Aware and Intentional
Strive to be aware and intentional about your choices regarding silence and actively consider the potential impacts of those choices on yourself and others.
6. Avoid Faulty Narratives
When someone else is silent, resist the urge to fill that silence with your own faulty or negative narrative, as this can cloud your ability to identify your needs and trigger unhelpful emotional responses.
7. Challenge Communication Norms
Question the prioritization of certain communication modes (e.g., real-time verbal) and be open to different ways people communicate effectively, playing to their individual strengths rather than labeling alternative methods as weaknesses.
8. Recognize Difficulty for Others
Avoid unintentionally silencing others by recognizing and empathizing with how difficult it might be for them to use their voice, especially if speaking up comes easily to you.
9. Start with Why
When preparing to speak up, identify your deeper motivation or ‘bigger why’ for having the conversation; this purpose will sustain you through immediate fear, discomfort, or uncertainty.
10. Connect the Dots
Explain your perspective and how you see things to others, recognizing that your view is legitimate but limited, and that others may lack your information or be wired differently.
11. Make the Ask Clear
Clearly articulate what you are asking for or what you need from others (e.g., a listening ear, advice, a specific action) so they can understand and respond effectively.
12. Embrace Resistance
View resistance or pushback from others as valuable information rather than a setback; engage it by asking questions like ‘What concerns do you have?’ or ‘What would need to be different?’ to understand their perspective and find a way forward.
13. Accurately Calculate Costs and Benefits
When deciding whether to speak up, avoid the common bias of over-indexing on short-term costs (e.g., immediate discomfort) and under-indexing on the long-term costs of silence (e.g., consequences in five days, months, or years).
14. Account for Biases in Decision-Making
Be aware of ‘present bias’ (tendency towards short-term thinking) and ‘self-bias’ (over-focus on your own immediate thoughts and the ‘spotlight effect’) when evaluating the costs and benefits of speaking up, and actively consider the long-term costs of not speaking up.
15. Consider Benefits of Speaking Up
Actively consider the potential positive benefits of speaking up, such as greater intimacy, being truly known, or having your needs met in a different way, to balance the perceived costs.
16. Run Small Experiments
Conduct small, low-risk experiments in your daily life to practice speaking up and gather positive data points that demonstrate it is okay to ask for what you need.
17. Use a Sounding Board
Utilize a trusted person as a ‘sounding board’ to reflect back what you’re saying, helping you clarify your thoughts and practice expressing yourself without immediate judgment, gaining embodied experience and confidence.
18. Make Rules Explicit
Make rules, expectations, and decision-making processes explicit rather than implicit to avoid misunderstandings and unintended silencing, especially by being clear about when you are genuinely consulting for input versus when a decision has already been made.
19. Design Communication Flows
Actively design communication flows within relationships or teams to optimize for everyone’s voice, considering different wiring, strengths, and preferred modes of communication.
20. Create an Operator’s Manual
Develop and share an ‘operator’s manual’ for yourself, presenting it as evolving hypotheses about how you show up and prefer to interact, rather than rigid terms and conditions, acknowledging that you will continue to change.
21. Intentionally Disclose Needs
After noticing your needs, intentionally decide if and how you want to disclose them, recognizing and centering your agency in this choice.
22. Reflect on Mutual Silencing
Reflect on past instances of how you and others may have mutually silenced one another and the impact this had, to find new, more intentional ways to move forward that honor all parties.
23. Avoid Self-Flagellation for Silencing
If you realize you unintentionally silenced someone, avoid self-flagellation, guilt, or shame; instead, focus on what you can do differently going forward to align your actions with your intentions.
24. Choose Silence Intentionally
Choose silence as an intentional act of self-care or boundary setting, ensuring it is a conscious choice rather than a forced one where you feel compelled to bite your tongue.
25. Practice Momentary Pause
Practice momentary silence to create a buffer between external stimuli and your immediate reaction, allowing for more intentional and considered responses.
26. Dialogue About Silence’s Impact
Engage in dialogue about the impact of silence in your relationships to actively avoid its negative consequences, such as suffering in silence or intensifying existing suffering.
27. Set Boundaries by Silencing
It is appropriate to intentionally silence someone (e.g., if they are being harmful or disrespectful) to set necessary boundaries and honor your own dignity and the dignity of others.
28. Connect the Dots for Others
Actively connect the dots for others by explaining your perspective and how you see things, recognizing that people are wired differently and may not have access to the same information or definitions.
29. Express and Invite Needs
Practice expressing your own needs and actively invite others to share theirs, fostering a virtuous cycle of mutual understanding and joint problem-solving.
30. Remember You Are a Party
When in any dynamic, remember that you are a legitimate ‘party to the negotiation’ and therefore have your own valid needs, goals, hopes, and concerns that deserve consideration.
31. Inquire About Others’ Needs
Actively inquire about others’ needs and how you can support them, rather than assuming or neglecting their role as a party in the interaction.
32. Change Others’ Speaking Up Calculation
Encourage others to speak up by changing their ‘calculation’: consistently show them that you will hear, receive, appreciate, or even reward their candid feedback.
33. Receive Feedback Non-Defensively
When receiving feedback, choose not to be defensive and actively invite it, clearly communicating the best way for others to get through to you (e.g., reading vs. real-time verbal).
34. Reward Speaking Up Publicly
If you are in a position of power, publicly reward people for telling you things you don’t want to hear to foster a culture of voice and psychological safety within your team or group.
35. Build a Culture of Voice
Consistently demonstrate that speaking up is not only acceptable but beneficial, thereby building a ‘culture of voice’ where people feel safe and encouraged to share their thoughts.
36. Discuss Communication Preferences
Actively discuss and negotiate communication preferences with others to find mutually beneficial methods that accommodate different styles and strengths.
37. Be Flexible with Communication Methods
Be flexible and accepting of different communication methods from others (e.g., voice memos, text), rather than rigidly demanding they communicate in your preferred way, to maintain relationships and intimacy.
38. Lend Your Social Capital
If you have an established voice, lend your social capital and publicly endorse others, especially those with subordinated identities or different communication styles, to encourage others to listen to them and disrupt biases.
39. Balance Parenting for Voice
As a parent, balance the immediate ease of enforcing silence with the long-term goal of raising children who can express their opinions and needs, understanding that listening to them today contributes to their future ability to communicate.
40. Listen to Children’s Opinions
Actively listen to your children’s opinions to provide them with positive data points that their voice matters, thereby encouraging them to speak up and develop their communication skills.
41. Articulate Impact to Children
As a parent, articulate the impact of your child’s behavior on you (e.g., ‘your stomping makes it hard for me to answer’) rather than silently tolerating it, to teach them about relational impact and effective communication.
42. Seek Support for Voice Journey
Recognize that unlearning silence is a group effort; actively seek support from those around you (e.g., spouse, children) by communicating how they can help you on your journey to find and use your voice.
8 Key Quotes
The difference between silence that is additive or oppressive is agency.
Elaine Lin Hering
Staying silent has real health impacts, right? This epidemic of loneliness, of having your alert system on chronic high alert because you have to edit out parts of yourselves in order to be accepted.
Elaine Lin Hering
The silence I'm talking about unlearning is when there's not enough room in the conversation, in the relationship, for your needs, for your thoughts, your preferences. Because it seems like it always has to be the other person's way in order to stay in the relationship, stay in the marriage, stay at the table.
Elaine Lin Hering
We often, as human beings, over-index on the short-term costs to ourselves... We under-index on the long-term costs of, if I don't have this conversation now, what's going to happen in five days, in five months, in five years?
Elaine Lin Hering
Silence as a trauma response, as a secondary response. Our work as grownups, as adults, is to interrogate, what am I doing right now?
Elaine Lin Hering
We often worry about being needy when having needs is actually just being human.
Elaine Lin Hering
The costs of speaking up are usually incurred by me, and the benefits of speaking up are reaped by the group or by everyone.
Elaine Lin Hering
The silence we've learned that has shaped our past and influences our present doesn't have to be the habit that we perpetuate tomorrow or in the next conversation.
Elaine Lin Hering
1 Protocols
How to Speak Up (Four Steps)
Elaine Lin Hering- Start with Why: Identify the bigger reason that matters more than immediate fear or discomfort, providing motivation to have the conversation.
- Connect the Dots: Share your perspective and information, acknowledging that others may see things differently, to help them understand your viewpoint.
- Make the Ask Clear: Articulate precisely what you need or are requesting, avoiding assumptions about what others might understand.
- Embrace Resistance: Expect pushback or defensiveness as information, and engage with it by asking questions like 'What concerns do you have?' or 'What would need to be different?'