Nolan Martin :
Hello and welcome to the NEGOTIATEx podcast. I am your co-host and co-founder, Nolan Martin. With me, as always, good friend, mentor, partner, co-host, co-founder, Aram Donigian. Aram, do you want to introduce our guests for today?
Aram Donigian:
No, I want to hear a few more descriptors there, Nolan, of our relationship.
NM:
Yeah, I will.
AD:
Nah! Nobody wants to hear that. Folks, we’re joined today by Elaine Lin Hering, who was a facilitator, author, and speaker. Elaine works with organizations and individuals to build skills in communication, collaboration, and conflict management. Elaine has worked on six continents and facilitated executive education at Harvard, Dartmouth, Tufts, UC Berkeley, and UCLA.
She is the former advanced training director for the Harvard Mediation Program and a lecturer on law at Harvard Law School. Elaine has worked with 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 is the author of Unlearning Silence: How to Speak Your Mind, Unleash Talent, and Live More Fully. Elaine, thank you for joining us on the podcast today.
Elaine Lin Hering:
Thanks so much for having me. And I’m assuming that the list introducing you, Aram, should also be superhero, visionary.
AD:
Oh, I like this.
NM:
Please.
ELH :
I mean this could be the whole episode.
NM:
No need to pump up his ego anymore. He’s a great instructor, a great professor. We all know it and love him.
AD:
The head is just swelling. All right.
ELH :
Well, Nolan, why is your face getting red? That’s actually my question in this.
NM:
Today, it’s fun teasing him, but then it reminds me back of. Okay. I used to be a student, so better watch what I say sometimes. So I push the envelope every time a little bit further and a little further. So.
ELH :
I’m glad I could help pave the road for you as well.
AD:
Thanks Elaine. Thanks.
ELH :
You’re welcome. I gotcha.
NM:
So Elaine, could you begin by sharing a bit more about your personal journey? What brought you to the work you do around communication conflict? Were there any surprises or key moments?
Elaine’s Journey: From Harvard Law To Leadership Development [02:59]
ELH :
Oh, too many surprises and key moments. And maybe that’s the theme of any career journey. I went to Harvard Law School intending to be a litigator. I was that precocious 11- year old who said I want to be a lawyer.
And when I got to law school, I decided not to be a lawyer because I came across Getting To Yes, negotiation theory and pedagogy. Had a light bulb moment, a surprise moment learning a lesson in law school that I didn’t expect to learn at that place, which was, you can actually talk about things and emotions are data.
And that was not something that I had learned growing up. So I threw myself into that world, discovered this field called leadership development that I didn’t know existed, spent years teaching skills for negotiation, difficult conversations, feedback around the world, across industries. I mean, key moments, surprise, is apparently I’m now an author.
So, all of the journey you know, it seems like, feels like a surprise to me. But there’s a theme of continuing to learn as you go. And continuing to make decisions based on real time data, right? What are you learning along the way? Okay, I thought I wanted to be a lawyer. Oh, there’s this area that seems interesting, useful.
The question becomes, other than sue each other and blow each other up, what can we do? Turns out, quite a bit. Okay, you’re teaching this material seems useful, but some people still don’t negotiate. Some people still don’t have the difficult conversations. Some people still don’t give and receive feedback.
Why is that? Oh, because there’s this thing called silence that undercuts our ability to do all of that. So, so far this continue to learn, figure out the next question, what might be missing, you know, has made for an interesting and I would hope impactful career.
NM:
Absolutely. Thanks for sharing.
AD:
Yeah, those two things combined: interesting and impactful. I love the theme, right? Learning as we go. I wish all of us could have that sort of mindset. I was going to ask you why a book on silence seems like a quiet sort of book. So, and you started to hit on it, right? That this silence is undercutting our ability to do the work that you’re describing. So tell us a little bit, motivation, who was the audience you were writing to? What’s the purpose? Yeah. Tell us a little bit about this.
Voices And Silence: Empowering The Unheard And Educating Leaders [05:26]
ELH :
Two main audiences. One is people who have been silenced. So what I mean by that is as I was teaching skills for negotiation, difficult conversations, there was always this theme of, well, just ask, just speak up.
And if you are not getting seen, if you’re not getting rewarded, if you’re not getting promoted at work, the problem must be you. So you need to speak up with more courage, you need to have more confidence, you need to go to assertiveness training, but that analysis does not solve for a bunch of real factors, like what are the costs of speaking up, how am I perceived, if I am the only woman, only what, fill in the blank, identity.
On the team, my status is already more tenuous. So this, as much as I love Nike and have worked with them, the just do it, just speak up is an incomplete analysis that I would say asking the wrong question. So the first audience is people who have struggled with being heard and it’s positioned as finding your voice, using your voice. You need to speak up and actually the question to me that is more accurate is what role does silence play on your team?
The second audience is well-intentioned leaders. The leaders who say, just tell me what you think. My door is always open. And yet people don’t actually come to them, don’t actually say what they really think. You get groupthink, you get instances like Boeing, you get Enron. You know, the list of corporate scandals or preventable incidents is very long. And we as leaders have a contribution in that system. If, when I speak up, I’m going to be penalized, I’m going to be removed, I’m not going to be invited to the meeting anymore, I’m going to be fired, why would I speak up?
So, two audiences. One is the individual who wants to express their perspectives, wants to get their own needs met, wants to shape the world in a certain way. The other audience is well-intentioned leaders because the two go hand in hand, right? Leaders who say, I am here to support you, I want to unleash your talent. I want our team to perform and at the very same time are creating conditions where everyone else is walking on eggshells.
Well, one is to say, hey, team member walk on eggshells more skillfully. The other is to say, let me change the way as I might be influencing that and often unknowingly, right? So I’m, it is a compassionate call to action to say, you want to show up as an effective leader in your heart of hearts and best intentions.
That’s what you want. And. And there’s a gap between what you’re saying you’re doing between what you intend and the impact. Let’s close that gap. Here’s this factor called silence and a bunch of ways that we all do it because we’re human and what we can do about it instead.
AD:
So how is silence learned? As you just described that, is this an interpersonal thing? Is this a kind of social or society thing or societal thing? Is it? Is it structural? And then how do things you mentioned identity and then other things are our family of origin, faith, et cetera. How do those impact our relationship with silence?
Unlearning Silence: From Cultural Norms To Corporate Halls [08:42]
ELH :
Yeah, can we go with D all of the above and then some, right? And that’s chapter one of the book, how we learn silence. Interpersonally, certainly, right? So many different phrases of children should be seen and not heard, or I continue to learn. My Spanish is rusty, but “calladita te ves más bonita” for people who are Spanish speakers, apparently translates to “you’re prettier when you shut up.”
And is often told to girls and women in Hispanic cultures or Spanish-speaking. The list goes on in terms of “norms,” “best practices” that are passed down generation to generation. So certainly interpersonally, culturally, structurally, we think about education and schools, we think about workplaces. As much as people say, tell us what’s really going on, how many managers don’t react well in the moment. You get penalized. The short term cost means that we’re not going to hit that deadline, which by the way, my performance and my bonus is dependent on us hitting that deadline.
So can you just sweep that under the rug? This quarter, we’ll fix it. Next quarter, we start to learn sometimes that explicitly, but often, you know, you speak up in a meeting and no one says anything, no one reacts. And it’s that moment of, did I actually say that out loud? Cause y’all are acting like it didn’t happen. So maybe I didn’t say it. Maybe I don’t have anything worthwhile to say enough of those interactions and you start to doubt yourself.
And of course, if you’re the only in the room, Nilofer Merchant’s research around this is anytime you are less than 15 percent of a majority based on any identity, then you are more likely to be othered, more likely to be questioned. You are inherently outside, and it is this uphill battle. So I would say D, or All of the above, not to mention family of origin and all of the dynamics there, whether there was abuse, whether there was alcoholism, you know, lots of secrets.
Why does the phrase “family secret?” And we’re not just talking about recipes for food, right? Why do family secrets exist? All of that is learned behavior over time and then a question of what of that learning serves us today? Maybe it protected us, it offered us safety in our family of origin, it probably served us well when we were entry level in a job, right?
You were easy to work with, you were a good performer, and now you’re managing people and the expectations are different, right? How are you innovating? How are you leading? How are you pushing the envelope? That to me is why the phrase is unlearning silence, not unlearn, you know, we’ve done it, check the box, move on, but in what ways might we have learned it in what ways does it serve us? Does it not service us? What do we want to keep? What do we want to shed?
NM:
You mentioned a few things there and was hoping you give us, you know, maybe another example of how silence can negatively impact a person’s behavior in life.
ELH :
So obviously I’ve thought a lot about this and the deep, let’s go workplace and then let’s go personal.
NM:
Sure.
From Silence To Empowerment In Work And Life [11:54]
ELH :
So in the workplace, many of us have aspirations, have ideas, you know, you’re on a team and you see something that’s not working right. Do you say something? Do you not? And many of us think, oh, the other people around me are smarter. My manager knows better. So they probably already thought of it. Even this phrase, is this a dumb question? Is this a dumb idea? Why does that part of our vernacular? We doubt ourselves and whether we have anything to add. So often we don’t say it.
And then, you know, Boeing happens. I’m focusing on that as recency bias, or we don’t get promoted. Because, you know, Nolan, you didn’t have anything new to add. So are you deadweight on the team?
All of these catchphrases from not adding. Our unique perspective, adding value. That’s one way at work. And then because the problem statement has been framed as you just need to speak up and you’re not doing it, go fix yourself. Then you internalize it to think, oh, I really, you know, I’m the problem. I’m not good enough. I don’t have anything to add. And it’s a vicious cycle that we can break.
And then in our personal lives, the essence of being loved is to be seen, known, and heard. How can we love one another in our families, in our partnerships, if we don’t actually know the other person, what they’re thinking, what is heavy on their heart, what they care about, what they really aspire to. And if they’re not sharing it because they think they’re going to be judged or that we’re no longer going to accept them.
So to me, there’s very little in life that silence does not touch in some way. And that intimacy in relationships requires being known that if you feel silenced in a relationship, you are not fundamentally free. And of course at work, we can’t ideate, we can’t collaborate, we can’t innovate, we can’t drive the end results that so many of us are looking for if it feels like we need to be stepping on eggshells all the time.
AD:
You just nailed the reason I wanted to have you on the podcast. What you just said, both in terms of workplace, but also our professional, professional lives. That’s why I felt like this topic in your book. Are so relevant as we sit here in 2024, it is amazing to me that we can live in an age of so much information, so much, you know, social media sort of connectedness and stuff and still be so isolated.
ELH :
Totally. And that was one of the most heartbreaking things about silence is when we stay silent about what we’re thinking or feel like it’s just me, the social isolation intensifies. Whether you want to talk about mental health, whether you want to talk about layoffs, whether you want to talk about, you know, I’m having trouble communicating with my manager. We start to internalize that, oh, it’s a personal failing or a personal weakness, rather than this is something that all human beings go through.
We all do it because we’re all wired differently. So, of course, there would be friction as we figure out how to work together. And in the absence of conversation to say, oh, you prefer. having questions sent to you ahead of the meeting versus I’m just on the fly. We tell stories about each other. We tell stories about ourselves and we internalize the problem as ourselves. And the Surgeon General and many others have done a tremendous amount of research around social isolation and the real health impacts, right? Comparable to side effects of obesity and smoking over time. Shortening one’s lifespan. I think the walking on eggshells piece is also do I have to edit out parts of myself?
And if I have to edit out parts of myself, my nervous system is on chronic high alert. And our nervous systems, of course, were not meant to do that, and that manifests in, you know, for me it was hives, it was insomnia, it was hair loss, and of course it impacts your personal relationships because everything is interconnected.
So one of the hopes of Unlearning Silence is actually greater personal and professional connection in a real way. honest way. In the book, I talk about the double pain and analogize it to Mario Kart, because in Mario Kart, there’s a badge where you can cause extra pain. My kid really loves that badge. But when it comes to social isolation, right, you know, there’s that initial pain of the job loss, or of not getting funding for your project, or them not filling backfilling a role at work, and it’s causing so much friction, whatever it is, there’s that initial pain.
And then there’s the double pain that magnifies it. Feeling like, well, I can’t talk about it because people will judge me or because I’m the only one or no one else is going through this. We may or may not be able to solve for the initial pain, but being able to be in conversation and community about any of these issues allows us to solve for the double pain.
AD:
So you contrast silence with this idea of voice. I’m wondering if you can say a little bit about that distinction and then specifically, how do you coach people to find their voice?
Choosing When And How To Share In A Noisy World [17:35]
ELH :
Yeah so silence by definition is an absence, an absence of voice, absence of life, absence of thought. It happens so subtly that we don’t even realize it’s happening, right? Most of us wouldn’t say, I am now going to actively self censor and bite my tongue.
AD:
Right.
ELH :
Over time, it’s just, oh, I got nothing to add. Or, nope, that’s okay. We’re okay. Are we really okay? Right? The meme, fine, and what that means. All of those memes exist for a reason. In contrast, voice is not just the words that we say or don’t say in a meeting, but voice is how we move through the world.
Do we have agency to decide where and how we want to spend our time? Which battles we want to fight? Many people think that unlearning silence means say everything all the time to everyone. And let me be really clear, that is not the message. Chapter 3 of the book is when silence makes sense. Because the world is far too noisy and complex for us to be saying everything all the time to everyone.
There are people who do that, we call them no-filter people, we wish that they would filter a little bit more. But voice is, do I get to choose? Do I get to choose when I want to share, when I want to bring my ideas? If I want to share, do I have the ability to do that? Is there the reception from other people that makes it worth it and makes it make sense for me to share?
AD:
There’s an aspect of voice which is tied to agency and skillful advocacy.
ELH :
I would say the difference between silence that is additive or strategic or frankly oppressive is agency, right? If I’m saying, Nolan, you have to say this now, when you’re like, no, I don’t want to, it doesn’t make sense, or that’s not what I believe. That voice that is forced also is not coming from a place of agency, also is not additive to Nolan or to others.
But, do we have the choice? Do we have that agency to decide when and where do I want to use my voice? When and where do I want to show up, those things and that agency to choose, which our brains trick us into thinking we do not have often by the way other people react or because we’re operating simply from fast thinking or reactive decision-making rather than slow thinking and reflective-decision making, right? Those things, that choice that we talk about so much in negotiation really does make a difference.
NM:
From your own personal experiences, can you share a time when you broke through silence and seized upon agency? What was the impact of that moment for you?
The Risks And Rewards Of Speaking Out: Challenging Conventional Wisdom [20:19]
ELH :
There’s so many, and of course I’ve started to document over time. You know, writing this book, frankly, is at a very high level. It’s not a safe book, right? I think there are a lot of forces in the world that would prefer us to keep the question framed as you need to speak up more, more clearly, more courageously, more confidence, go fix yourself. Therefore, we absolve ourselves of any responsibility or liability in contributing to that silencing.
And that’s a much more comfortable analysis for many people. I think it is not an accurate analysis and does incredible damage. That message in and of itself is not a safe one. And my own professional journey that comes with costs of whether, you know, I’m no longer with the global leadership development firm that I was part of when I started writing this book because of my agency of wanting to name things as I saw them.
And so when I say that using your voice can be costly. You know, there’s so many examples in the world, and certainly in my own life, of those costs. But, we will also go more light hearted to say, you know, one of the key examples of when I use my own agency is I started a newsletter. It is free, it goes into your inbox monthly. And, in one of the newsletters, I used the F-word and I did an asterisk, so it was F*CK. I grew up in a family where we did not swear. That was not what good people, good kids, good girls did. My father is subscribed to this newsletter. And so after the newsletter went out, I got a text saying, why did you swear?
And I thought, Are you freaking kidding me? I am, you know, in my late 30s. I am no longer living under your roof. By the way, I used it. I italicized it to indicate what I think many people and I know many people think at work, right? The example was something of, you know, I dropped the ball and in my head I’m thinking.
And I had to coach myself in the moment to say, yeah, your question is, why did you use the F-word? And I said I used it for an illustrative and strategic reason to resonate with the reasoner, because that’s how we think. And it was a moment to push back on so many norms that are so deeply baked. You know, my first reaction was, oh no, I’m in trouble for my father. And then my second reaction was, I mean, that was 30 years ago when I should have let that inform my life more.
But how often, talking about family of origin, talking about relationships, people we care about, right? I respect my father, appreciate my father. How many of those habits and reactions are so deeply ingrained in us?
NM:
Absolutely.
ELH :
I’ll keep my language clean though here.
AD:
[laughs] Good.
NM:
Hey everyone, Nolan here, I have to jump in and end today’s podcast for part A of the show. Be sure to rate, review and subscribe to the NEGOTIATEx podcast if you haven’t already. And also join us next week for part B of this awesome interview.
