Afraid to Speak Up

Most of us have experienced a time when we wanted to share honest feedback with our superiors at work but for one reason or another couldn’t bring ourselves to say anything. There’s been a fair amount of research done on why people don’t speak up at work. And it won’t come as any revelation that the number one reason employees hesitate to give feedback is fear.

Amy Edmondson (Harvard Business School), a prominent researcher in this area, noted in a 2006 interview that she hadn’t yet “worked with an organization that has fully transformed itself from one of fear to one in which most employees would rate the organization as open or conducive to speaking up.” Granted, Edmondson’s research focused on large multinationals. And many companies have made significant strides in fostering a culture of openness since that time. Still, those in the trenches at the vast majority of medium-sized and large organizations subscribe to the following belief: in most contexts, speaking up at work about things you think could be improved is more likely to hurt your career than help it.

One of the purposes of TrueInsider is to give co-workers a forum for exchanging ideas and feedback with each other and with management – a safe place where they won’t have to worry so much about whether their well-intentioned suggestions will hurt their chances for the next promotion. Along the way, companies will hopefully begin the process of rethinking their feedback mechanisms and make changes that will take some of the fear out of sharing ideas with management.