Why Smart Teams Go Quiet (And the Process That Gets Them Moving Again)
The silence is not what you think
Colette reached out to me suggesting to write a guest post. Her writing at Empathy Elevated illuminates how deeply she cares about being a human at work in the age of AI. Which is something you care about too.
I’m stoked to welcome our first guest essay. Enjoy!
–tim
By Colette Molteni
Imagine this for a moment. A capable team, experienced people, and a real problem on the table.
Someone asks: “So, what do we do?” Silence. Not awkward silence. Considered silence. But it stretches. And stretches. And nobody moves.
This is not a safety problem. Nobody is afraid. These are smart people. That’s actually why they’re quiet.
You are in the room with your capable team. Good people. Ones you trust. These people have over a century of combined experience and a wealth of diverse experience across fields.
Someone asks across the table from you to the group, “So, what do we do?”
It’s met with silence.
It’s not a safety problem. This group has a sarcastic sense of humor at times, and some often travel together for client meetings. This group “knows” each other beyond just the Zoom calls that pack their calendars.
Nobody is afraid. Everyone is smart.
That’s actually why they are quiet.
High performers go silent in ambiguous situations. Not all, but many. Their competence raises the bar for how they are perceived if they make the wrong decision. Their awareness of the situation and input make it seem more perilous and require calculation.
The solution to break the silence is not louder leadership.
It’s the infrastructure in place to allow people not to always know the answer.
Name the type of Silence.
Ambiguity-induced silence is not the same as disengagement or fear.
I have witnessed countless situations just like the one described in the conference room, where smart people, when faced with a challenging topic, go silent.
It’s not even necessarily conscious. High achievers (I know as one) have got where we are not just with our knowledge but with a series of decisions in how we engage, who we get to know, what we say, and the decisions we have made under our leadership.
Distinguish the ambiguity silence for what it is. Smart people in unclear situations will wait for more data, a clear problem statement, or maybe even for someone else to go first, so they can contribute without risking a negative spotlight.
The higher the expertise in the room, the more visible the gap becomes between “what I know” and “what the situation requires”.
I have had that stumbling block moment. I knew the data being shown on a dashboard did not smell right. I knew, based on the team’s historical patterns, that if accurate, this would be an outlier. But, I also silently questioned myself, perhaps this was an outlier, a positive one? If I were to speak up definitively in that moment, I would be perhaps creating a problem.
The gap was not my knowledge. I wanted more data. I wanted to prove it before saying it.
The situation required my bravery.
Silence is the output of the gap between what is known and what is required in the room at a certain moment.
Why the usual fixes fail
The silence in the room, where the sound of a laptop fan starts to feel like a roar, can be awkward. Real awkward.
I have seen the presenter who will often try to fill the void with a “any questions?” Or the leader in the room who will use sarcasm to engage with, “Don’t all speak up now”
The silence usually remains. Maybe it is broken with someone giving a comment that is really a recap of what was just said, but in their own words.
It feels like a contribution. Instead, it is an echo.
What to do in the moment on the spot cannot be fixed simply by asking for open-ended feedback without a container to move it through.
Leaders try to give encouragement. Sometimes more questions are asked, or more brainstorming tools are deployed, but without the right ones, it still fails to coax a room full of smart people into devising a go-forward plan.
Motivation alone does not work.
So, what do you do?
The Process
When the team has a problem, but no script to solve it, you can still lead it forward. You can be the first buoy for a safe harbor, a place to be still and rest.
What do you do to get the room moving and to breach the unwelcome silence?
Name the ambiguity. Do not run from it.
Be transparent that you all are in a situation you perhaps have not faced before, or in a unique one to solve, unlike anything you have faced before.
The group can still parse through parts of their experience and contribute.
Ask what the team knows rather than what to do first. Get the baseline.
A neutral phrase that can be used in these situations is something like
“Let’s unpack this”
It doesn’t suggest something is missing, thereby putting people on the defensive. It lets the room know there’s more to find. Each layer can surface before you move to solutions.
Separate what the problem is from what you are to do about it immediately. Thinking out loud can do wonders.
What one person assumes is common knowledge could be completely remarkable to the next person. Combining the two can bloom a new path forward.
Establish the baseline first, do the Discovery, much like you would in Six Sigma: Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control. Establish the base first, which allows for progression to analysis and solution later.
This gets the conversation moving. Not through sarcasm or forced dialogue to break the silence, but real engagement that gets the smart people in the room contributing their know-how and beginning to piece together the puzzle amid the ambiguity.
Silence was never the problem.
Silence was not the problem in the conference room. It was the signal to move and innovate.
When people learn to name the ambiguity out loud rather than run from it, the challenge at hand can be solved more quickly. Avoiding the challenge at hand because you’re unclear or don’t feel there is a contribution that fits will slow down the process.
Taking a pause to acknowledge the unknown path you are all on is not a stall. It is the first step in the process, the discovery baseline.
Ambiguity can be welcomed and embraced as a starting point. A smart group can bring their experiences together into one cohesive action plan when they know they can speak.
About Colette:
Colette Molteni is a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt with 10+ years of operational experience. She is a globally focused Process Excellence manager at a medical device company. She is also the founder of Empathy Elevated, a Substack at the intersection of emotional intelligence and technical leadership. She is a TEDx speaker, having presented on the intersection of AI in our day-to-day lives and staying grounded in our very human skill of empathy.
In her free time, Colette likes going hiking and enjoying the beach in sunny Southern California. She also enjoys travel, having ventured internationally twice in the past 9 months!
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