can also occur if her speech or patterns of communication are misaligned with the dominant discourse in her organization. Merely speaking up or out is rarely the solution as raising voice does not indicate voice efficacy and can at times increase her difficulty. Her lack of consciousness around this issue with voice is one of the first barriers she needs to address.
Her silencers are young, old, and the same age. They are same-sex, heterosexual, male, and female. They are Black and White and inclusive of all nationalities, cultures, and religions. When there is no one around to silence her, she may silence herself and further decrease her care of self. When she self-silences, she has a perceived locus of control that is outside herself. This shows up as an external threat and can cause internal fear, self-questioning, and shifts in effective leadership. She responds to that threat and fear with self-protection. She is unwilling to speak or act if it jeopardizes vital work relationships or her standing with her organization. Often, she is the breadwinner in her family and has bills, responsibilities, and a lifestyle to maintain. She may actively suppress her thoughts, believing there is no room for error or expression.
Cognitive Compromise
When she feels silenced, it feels like she has contracted a virus. The silencing virus affects her cognition, emotion, spirit, and body. Cognitively it is like being in a mental spin, and she struggles with confusion on why things are so challenging. She replays conversations and situations in her head until she cannot think. Kris, the marketing executive, described it as “thinking something to death before I spoke up.”
She also suffers from deficit thinking and questions her leadership decisions. Here we see evidence of confidence surfacing in this phenomenon. Deficit thinking differs from a mental spin in that the deficit is specific to her leadership ability. Here participants described their lack of self-assurance, questioned their ability to lead, and described a sensation of overall failure that trespassed into domains beyond their leadership role. Women wrestle with imposter syndrome and feel a lack of trust in self and others. An executive for a chain of casual restaurants in the United States who had decades of success, only to experience silencing by her CEO later in her career, put it this way, “All I know is from that point on, I wasn’t willing to show up freely as myself the way I think I have been.”
Emotional Distress
Emotionally she experiences a sense of isolation where she feels disconnected from her peers (if she has them) and those she is required to lead. The word “isolation” refers to the idea of remaining alone. One is separate or apart from others. The viral nature of feeling silenced induces a sense that one is not worthy of being part of the whole. Participants in my research reference both their voice and their silence as creating isolation. I vividly remember my physician turned executive describe her leadership silencing isolation as forced internment. That’s a hefty metaphor! Internment is the state of being confined as a prisoner—more often for political reasons. Another executive who chose to retire at an early age from her executive role describes her experience this way:
Well I know what made me want to leave, it was the feeling of separation and loneliness. I didn’t really share how I felt with anybody because at the time I suppose it came up [as] shame. Now I would look back on it with some understanding. I think the feeling of separateness and isolation [is] that you can’t be who you are.
Another aspect of emotional distress is the sense of feeling traumatized by silencers. Here, I heard women use words like misery and mental abuse. Consider Lindsey, who was hired into a senior role by a female leader who vacated the position into a higher executive role. Lindsey’s approach to running the work was aligned with the organization’s mission, purpose, and values, but different than her female boss who held the role prior. She began to feel that all her leadership moves and decisions were measured against what her boss would have done. She felt strongly criticized and verbally rebuked for having a different style and approach but the intent to reach the same outcomes.
I kind of felt like I was going into abuse situations. I would wonder how I could put protections around myself. My husband—he just wanted me to get out. He would try to name it as domestic violence. I did not want to get out. I wanted to work my way through it.
This sense of trauma and abuse may feel extreme, but several women described it as something real but unspoken. They saw it not only impacting their leadership and role within the organization but also their sense of self at home and with their families. A nursing director in healthcare put it this way:
This mental trauma stays with you forever because I’m fearful; I don’t want that time to repeat. Even in this current role, I’m very cautious. I do use my voice, but I know when to silence it because I know that I don’t want to go back to that. It takes a long time to recover from previous silence and trauma.
Beyond the trauma, there is a sense of emotional vulnerability and anxiety that can lead to shame and depression. As one might expect, these emotions can lead to tearful outbursts that rarely are welcomed. Women described times they cried at work with regret and anger as they believed their demonstrations of emotion further weakened their ability to be seen as competent leaders.
I do not know a single person alive who relishes being in the space of this type of vulnerability. Cognitively, we know that vulnerability is needed for growth, but we prefer safety, assurance, and strength. Ultimately vulnerability means to be susceptible, open to attack, or being wounded. Vulnerability is a concept that has surfaced in organizational studies. There is research to suggest that managers feel a strong need to avoid embarrassment, threat, and feelings of vulnerability or incompetence. They may avoid anything that suggests weakness or that might raise questions about their current courses of action. The studies on management perception argue that leaders may silence their employees to avoid vulnerability.[3] However, my research shows vulnerability differently; participants did not feel at risk with their employees as much as they did their peer group or boss.
For example, an executive working at a school district describes her experience after a male peer, who silenced her, left the organization. “I felt like as a leader; I was diminished. I’m a very efficacious person, and I can go back, and I can regroup, and I can get myself moving forward again. Even a year after he left, I was still unable to do that.”
A CEO I interviewed who felt silenced by multiple systems and relationships said this, “I’ve been in therapy every time I change a job and now consistently because I can get depressed pretty easy. . . . And I can’t let that happen to my spirit.”
Despite the source of silencing, every participant in my research described some aspect of feeling vulnerable when silenced. Many women cried during the interview as they recounted their experience. Their tears were an expression of their vulnerability, as well as the emotional pain they experienced. Thus, this overall sense of vulnerability goes beyond attempts to conceal a lack of knowledge or maintain competence. Rather, it is indicative of the viral effect of silencing.
As a reader, you may think that perhaps every single one of my research participants are sensitive women who tend to overuse emotional language and metaphors to exaggerate. I analyzed the language orientation of my contributors. I studied the transcripts to determine how many times they used cognitive oriented words such as “I think,” or “I thought,” or “I believe.” I compared that to the women who used more emotional language like, “I feel,” or “I felt.” Based on the text, 80 percent of them were more cognitive in their choices then emotional. I also found myself having to ask them to tell me how it felt. Their initial reactions were first to express their thinking and belief system. I had to specifically ask (sometimes more than once), “How did it feel to be silenced?” before I could get emotional responses.
Thus, we can put to rest the bias that women who experience
