FUTURE TALENT November - January 2019/2020 | Page 60

T
TALKING HEADS
The price of ‘golden’ silence
Caroline
Gourlay
H
ow quiet should the
workplace be? If people
a re d o i n g fo cu s e d
‘thinking work’ – report
writing, coding, accountancy – an
atmosphere of hushed concentration
must surely be the optimal working
environment. Granted, it may not be
much fun, but you can’t argue with
its efficiency.
Actually, I think you can. I see
this way of working as profoundly
short-sighted in terms of efficient
and effective working. Most
obviously, this type of environment
suits introverts much more than
extraverts (for spelling sticklers,
‘extraverts’ with an ‘a’ fits better
with Jung’s original definition – ‘extra’
meaning ‘outside’ in Latin, while ‘intro’
means ‘inside’).
If you drive out all the extraverts
and have to replace them, that
itself is inefficient. But a very quiet
environment isn’t particularly good
for introverts either, even if they enjoy
it – it can stifle their development.
A shy trainee in a very quiet office
may waste hours silently struggling
with something rather than voicing
their need for help. Even those who
“My biggest
concern about
a quiet working
environment
relates to
teamwork”
60 // Future Talent
know what they’re doing lose out on
developing other skills.
It’s not unusual for quiet introverts
to be drawn to professions that
require focused concentration and
spend years honing their technical
skills. But at some point, they are
going to need to interact – to deal
directly with clients, collaborate with
peers, mentor junior staff or get
involved with business development.
If they’ve been encouraged to
believe that real work involves staring
silently at a screen for eight hours a
day, they are unlikely to have taken
opportunities to develop their work-
based interpersonal skills. Human
skills (increasingly in demand) such
as rapport building, explaining ideas
clearly, holding people’s attention,
and negotiating, don’t appear out
of nowhere. It’s surely easier to build
them in the daily dynamics of a busy
office than on a training course five
years into a career?
My biggest concern about a
quiet working environment relates
to teamwork. A manager who
discourages talking has a group of
staff who happen to share the same
boss rather than a team. People
share best practice, bounce ideas
around, solve problems together
and pool resources. But that only
happens once they know and trust
each other. People are much more
reticent about sharing their ideas if
they don’t know their colleagues well
enough to gauge their likely reaction.
It takes time to build strong
working relationships – generally
by working towards shared goals
and getting to know each other as
people. It’s part of the team leader’s
role to encourage relationships,
not stifle them. Seen in this light,
discussing last night’s football or
swapping recipes is as much a part
of someone’s job as updating a
spreadsheet or editing a document.
Silence may not always be golden.
Caroline Gourlay is an independent
business psychologist based in Bath. 
Victoria
Harrison-Mirauer
W
hatever problems
your organisation
faces, someone,
somewhere has
p ro b a b l y s o l ve d yo u r
innovation challenge.
It might be that they
are operating in an entirely
different sector or different
geography, but the principles
behind the problem at hand
are the same. Organisations
often fall into the trap of
looking too closely within
their own sector to seek
out solutions.
I
n the modern workplace,
shiny new technology can
do many tasks more easily,
quickly and effectively than
any human being. Yet we need to be
mindful of placing so much emphasis
on embedding and monitoring
machines that we lose our focus on
people – and what keeps them
connected to their organisations, to
each other and to customers.
Human connection has been
proven to add immense value to
our lives. That sense of belonging to
a group, a team, an organisation, is
a key part of inspiring us to do our
best. Our shared experiences, good
and bad, help bind us together and
make us feel that we belong;
belonging is about a great deal more
than fitting in.
As our organis ations climb
frantically aboard the tech- and
data-insight train, senior people in
HR must influence the direction of