There is a lot of talking going on in higher education (HE) right now. Amongst some of the loudest questions are those asking: ‘Why do we have to cut funding?’ ‘Who is to blame for poor leadership?’ ‘Why am I working harder than ever before?’ ‘How can I stay well and meet the demands of the latest set of university expectations?’ ‘Why are those in charge silent?’ ‘Is the silence a sign of guilt, insecurity, uncertainty, incompetence or intentional mystery to assert power?’
It is often useful to take time out and reflect for a moment on the meaning of silence. It is not a one-dimensional act. Rather, it is multifaceted, complex and filled with significance if we engage with it ourselves. If we are wondering what all the chatter, and indeed all the silence is about, then we may need to be silent for a moment ourselves to figure some of that out. We may also need to figure out our own use of silence.
Silence in religion and philosophy
Silence is a concept that is considered across many religious and philosophical traditions. In his latest (unpublished) reflections on spirituality and leadership, author of The Ethical Entrepreneur, Paul Palmarozza, gathers numerous sacred texts together to show how silence is revered across all faith traditions and in philosophical thinking too. The Bhagavad Gita, for instance, underlines the importance of “serenity, kindness, silence, self-control and purity”.
Richard Rohr, founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation, said that “to experience silence, you have to let go of all of your attachments”. In other words, you need to let go of your ego. The famous and much respected Lao Tzu said that “speech is silver, silence is golden”. The Christian biblical texts tell us frequently to: “Be still and know” (Ps. 46.10). But how are any of these useful to us today in the complexity and confusion that is HE?
Leadership, building trust, and peace
Firstly, being still for a moment allows us to come back to safety. Feeling safe enables and creates a more solid foundation for making decisions and for assessing situations around us. It can bring a greater sense of inner peace amidst the confusion. You might begin to avoid judging the leadership team for their silence and conclude the silence is because they ‘just don’t know’ how to manage the confusion either. Or it could be that they are ‘working it out’.
Second, taking time out to be silent helps us to listen. And we know how important it is for everyone, including those holding senior leadership positions, to stop talking and to begin listening. It leads to greater harmony and understanding before we attempt to implement strategic projects, views, perspectives and ideas that are new. Pausing and embracing reflection in silence can help us to, as they did at Toyota, pull the ‘Andon cord’.
Toyota’s ‘Andon cord’: a lesson on problem-solving
For those who have never heard of the ‘Andon cord’, it may be useful to understand where the concept originates from. Before they produced cars, Toyota made sewing machines. “Sakichi Toyoda, founder of Toyota, designed one of the first automated loom designs, which immediately stopped the machine when the needle broke. This prevented wasted material and defective product” (Marquet 2020, p92). The ‘Andon’ concept grew out of this ‘taking time out to reflect and fix a problem’ mentality that was already at the heart of Toyota’s ethos and embedded into its early production techniques.
When Toyota began to make cars on the assembly line, the leadership team implemented a similar process. They installed cords along the production line that, when pulled, caused a lantern to light up and thereby indicated that someone on the team needed help. In short, “the Andon cord allowed the worker to escape from production work [also known as red work] and shift to problem solving, blue work” (Marquet 2020, p 92). This often involved taking time out, being quiet, taking time to understand what was needed to continue working and to engage in blue sky thinking – hence the term ‘blue work’.
‘Suffering in silence’ and its risks
Sometimes, however, people didn’t feel comfortable pulling the Andon cord. Instead of having the courage to take time out, be quiet and figure out the solution, they stayed silent in the hope of ‘keeping their heads down’ and muddling through.
Of course, in the end, this led to further upheaval on the production line and others had to step in to pull the cord to indicate that a colleague needed help, and that this was causing an issue for their work too. When asked why they stayed silent, staff often worried about being the ‘boy who cried wolf’ or being seen as causing trouble or being weak at work.
This shows us clearly that there is a time to stay silent and a time to speak out. We need to discern which approach is needed at any given time. We also hear many stories of victims of crime, harassment and bullying staying quiet because they were fearful of the consequences of ‘speaking out’. The term ‘suffering in silence’ is not unfamiliar to any of us.
The benefits and downsides of quiet leadership
So, in short, therefore, we need to always be considering when the use of silence is a powerful enabler of discussion, understanding and quiet leadership and when it is a weapon of destruction keeping people in positions of fear. We need to empower people to use their own conscience to decide when to stay silent and when to speak out. Attuned individuals and leaders need to know and be aware of when to embrace silence for the greater good and when to enable a culture of speaking out.
Marquet refers to this process as enabling a culture of “speaking up” rather than “covering up”. The famous example of Barings Bank – a former City of London Bank – is cited as having had a leader who used the code ‘88888’ to hide an error of a person on his team. It all went fine until he started using the account to hide other losses. This eventually led to the bank collapsing when the deficit amounted to 827 million.
Why silence is powerful in reflective leadership
Leaders need to be listening and silently reflecting whilst staying attuned to what people need. This will ensure that they are more able to call ‘time out’ for the institutions, or people and teams within it, to ‘pause’, ‘be still’ and then ‘know’. In other words, we need to go to the ‘inner sanctuary’ of ourselves – using sources of belief, if we hold a faith or a belief, that is – to find the truth in each instance.
This moves us away from just policy-driven, ‘head down’ approaches to work. It helps reshape our thinking about silence and leadership towards a more humanising culture of work that is genuinely reflective and engaged in an ethical use of silence – and a discerning use of rules, policies and principles – that is based on experience and finding context-specific solutions to issues, rather than being driven by a rule book or by fear.
It also helps to foster a greater sense of well-being – for the individual and for the team (for a fuller account of techniques for staying well in HE, see Mealey. 2024. The Lecturer’s Survival Guide. London. Routledge. chapter 5, pp 90–101).
Practising silence in our own lives
There is much more that we could say about what can be learned from the great mystics who engaged in silence as part of their mission and development to try to transcend the limits of human reason, language and intellect, to engage with deeper dimensions of knowing and truth. But even if we never manage to attune ourselves to this depth of inner knowing, we can certainly practice ways of using silence that are not manipulative, toxic, or pain-inducing for others, and that are balanced for the good of oneself, others and for the organisations that we lead and work for.
In short, let’s not be afraid to ‘light the lantern’ and ask for help and understanding, especially if we believe that silence is an absolute moral principle at work and always the best option. This includes asking others why they are silent and trying to understand the rationale of the use of silence. The question that might need to be asked here is: “are all of our ‘self-imposed’ absolutes to be held absolutely?”
