In this episode, today’s guest, Elaine Lin Hering invites us to ask some deep and important questions about personal agency, leadership responsibility, and how silence impacts our lives, work, families, organizations, communities, and the world.
“Our silence isn’t just about us. It’s about the environmental and cultural norms that we collectively build… What are we missing out on that we don’t even realize?”
Elaine Lin Hering is Managing Partner of Triad Consulting Group, a Lecturer at Harvard Law School, and author of the forthcoming book, Unlearning Silence: How to Speak Your Mind, Unleash Talent, and Live More Fully.
In today’s episode, we discuss:
- Pushing the bounds of what good leadership looks like
- The false dichotomy of a zero-sum mindset
- Subversive patterns and how we’ve all learned to stay silent
- Leadership impact
- How (and why) to break free/actually use our voices
“If we have one life to live, let’s live it well – as determined by our own internal metric of what that means.”
—
Elaine Lin Hering is Managing Partner of Triad Consulting Group and a Lecturer at Harvard Law School. She works with leaders to diagnose challenges and build capacity in negotiation, influence, and conflict management skills. She has worked on six continents and facilitated executive education at Harvard, Dartmouth, UC Berkeley, and UCLA. She coaches women and minoritized individuals navigating executive leadership in majority white spaces. She is the author of the forthcoming book, Unlearning Silence: How to Speak Your Mind, Unleash Talent, and Live More Fully (available for pre-order now).
To learn more or to connect with Elaine visit elainelinhering.com. You can also find her on LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter.
- I am Celine Williams, and welcome to the "Leading Through Crisis" podcast, a conversation series exploring resiliency and leadership in challenging times. My guest today is Elaine Lin Hering who is an expert on conflict management and communication and is managing partner of Triad Consulting Group. She's the author of the forthcoming book, coming out in March, 2024, "Unlearning Silence: How to Speak Your Mind, Unleash Talent and Live More Fully." Welcome Elaine.
Thank you so much for having me.
As Elaine already knows, 'cause I nerded out in our pre-chat, like I have a tendency to do, I'm extremely excited about this topic and to have you on. So thank you for coming. I am cannot wait to get into all of this meatiness with you. And before we do that though, I always ask the question, the name of the podcast is "Leading Through Crisis." So when you hear that, what comes up for you or what does that mean to you?
I think we often think of the external crises that we navigate, and that can feel really out of control. The economy, the wars, fill in the blank decisions that other people made that we don't agree with or like. What comes up for me is the crisis within each of ourselves. Who do I wanna be? How am I showing up in the world? What's the gap between who I wanna be and how I'm showing up in the world, and how I'm actually showing up as a leader? And then, of course, as a leader we look around and there's so few, I would say, good examples of leadership, and so it feels like ship up a creek of the crisis is, how am I supposed to do this? Who am I? How do I keep showing up when it all just feels overwhelming? So I'd say the crisis to me is often within ourselves. And then this question of everything else, our families, our teams, our organizations that flows from that crisis, if we're supposed to be leading effectively and strategically 'cause inside it just feels like a crisis.
Hmm. I'm really curious, you mentioned in that that there's so few good examples of leadership. I might be misquoting you slightly. It was along those lines. When you think of a good example of leadership, 'cause I'm guessing it kind of lines up with the internal piece that you're talking about. What are some good examples of leadership, and, you know, clearly I don't just mean a person, tell me a person, but, you know, what does that look like? What does a good example of a leader look like?
I'm gonna try not to use all the cliches that we hear, but I think we hear the cliches because there's wisdom in them.
Mm-hmm.
So the humble leader, the person who realizes that they don't know everything, that they have to build a team around them. They know when to defer, when to lean in, when to lean out, when to pivot, and to keep learning. So that, to me, that is humility. And you hear a bit of agile, which I hate using, because it's so overused, right? But how do I adapt? How do I change course? How do I learn as I go. Would say great leaders are humble and agile even as I cringe using those words. But where I also want to push us is to say we have so many different models of leadership, and if you look at the vast majority of leadership books are written by white men. So that means we have a unique lens, and I would say a limited lens on what good leadership can be or look like. And so women in particular are constantly told, you are too nice, you are too assertive, you are too loud, you are too quiet. There is no way that you can actually show up well as a leader, particularly if you are a leader, a female or person of color or any other subordinate identity. You just don't fit that box of white male cis leadership that is prized. And I'm still excited to dream and to push the bounds of what good leadership would be. To me, good leadership is, we are affecting the change in the world and in our organizations that we want to see and do it in a way that preserves and honors the humanity of the people around us.
I love that. And I genuinely mean that 'cause it reminds me of, it's such a weird saying, I'm about to say it, but that idea that a rising tide floats all boats, where if we can preserve the humanity of the people around us, if we can have everyone actually in those boats rising together as opposed to-
Not drowning.
Right, as opposed to pushing them off the boat and letting them fend for themselves or maybe drowning, which I think is what has happened for so long.
Yeah, and our zero sum mindset that in order for me to advance or succeed, that means that you need to jump out of the boat or be forced outta the boat. I think it's just a false dichotomy, and really operating from the zero sum mindset that there's not enough and we have to fight over it, which is, by the way, what keeps capitalism going, keeps us hustling and hungry.
Words outta my mouth?
Versus, on this planet, there is actually enough for everyone to be in the boat and not drown. So why are we not making the choices that make that latter reality? We now need to talk about human greed and everything else. But I will pause there.
Yeah. And it's the, you know, when you said that the leadership books to date, most of them, there's always exceptions, but were written by, you know, let's be honest, middle-aged cis white men mainly, much like capitalism and these economic structures and many other structures were created by similar men in a similar age bracket, et cetera. There is a reality that idea of their not being enough was perpetuated to keep those people in power and to keep that power in certain hands. And it's a scary thing to say, "Hey, there's actually enough," and it's so pervasive in society that there's not enough, including we are not enough. So not only is there not enough, but as a result, we are also not enough, whoever we are. Because that keeps the power structures the way they are. So to hear like, "Hey, actually there's room for everyone in the boat so we can all get there." If you are gaining anything from the structures the way they are, you don't want to think about that. 'Cause what if that, does that mean you have less? Who wants less?
Yeah, and some of it is, we all have a sense of what is normal, what we're used to. And so it's not that certain people have more power. It's, well, that's just normal. What could possibly be wrong about it? But that takes us back to our conversation about leadership. I would say a good leader is thinking not just about themselves, but has the humility to think about how are my actions, my decisions, my choices impacting the people around me, people on my team, the people in my organization, community, and that flow on effect, that ripple effect of frankly the world.
Mm-hmm, yeah. There's so. I think the impact in general, when we're thinking about, and whether we are officially leading a team or not.
Mm-hmm.
You know, I think that that piece of impact and thinking about it and wanting to have a positive impact, and I say this also with a caveat that I don't think there are a lot of people out there who genuinely wake up in the morning and say, "I'm gonna make this person's day real crappy today, and I don't wanna have a good impact. I wanna have a crap." I don't think that there's, I'm sure there are some, I don't think there's a lot of people out there genuinely doing that. But I think there's a lot of people who are not thinking of impact at all. And I think there's a lot of leaders who aren't thinking of their impact on the people around them, the people further in organizations, you know, whoever it is in their day-to-day life. And they're not encouraged, pardon me?
If, as a leader, you're not thinking about impact, what are you thinking about?
Great question. That's a great question. I think they're thinking, maybe there's a nuance inside of that actually. I think they're thinking about impact in the sense of, I have these goals to meet, I have this thing to get done.
Yep.
But not in terms of the impact of how you get to that.
Mm-hmm.
If that nuance makes sense.
That nuance totally makes sense. And I would still challenge that, right?
Please.
Analogy of you're lying on your deathbed. No one's gonna say, "Wow, you really exceeded your third quarter goals in 2023."
Yeah.
So if we think about real impact, the impact we wanna leave, sure. To make the companies run and bring in the money, you need to have certain goals. But leadership fundamentally has to be more, more than just about achieving certain goals and metrics. And if not, one of your metrics should also be, what is the impact I'm having on the people around me. At the end of the day, are people more able to bring their gifts and talents and skills to the team or the marketplace? Or in my construct, in my mind, am I actually silencing that? So many companies are saying, "Why don't you bring your full selves to work?" I think that's total hogwash. You can't actually bring your full self to work, but if I can't even bring the ideas that you hired me for, the organization is actually missing out as well. And we get group think, and we make all these decisions that you don't really notice the impact of until your company isn't innovating or until there is fraud or until a whistleblower comes forward. It's this really subversive pattern that happens where we bring less of ourselves and less of our talent, less of our ideas, less of our expertise. And you didn't even notice it 'cause it was just a meeting, and the 45-minute meeting happened, and we all needed to click into the next meeting or go to the next one. So what are we missing out on that we don't even realize? And that to me would be the ways that leaders, if we're not intentional about the impact we're having on the people around us and the cultures we're building, the likelihood is that you are unintentionally silencing the very people that you as a leader claim you want to support or develop or mentor or sponsor or keep in your organization.
My guess is that some of that comes from those leaders having been silenced themselves and not even knowing.
1,000%.
That that happened, right? And I know, listen, I recognize that as I say this, this is your area of expertise, and please push back anything that I'm saying. But I say that because I think a lot of them don't even recognize that they have been silenced whether by themselves or someone else to get to that point. And therefore they don't recognize that they're continuing to do that to the people around them and enable that and create that culture and all of those things.
Totally.
And I'm curious, and I get there's not one answer, but how can who don't, may not even, they don't even have that awareness. This idea of silence, silencing, like where do you even start? How do I, huh? Maybe I have been, what do I do?
Breathe.
You can see my hands.
I do, I see it. Breathe, step number one.
Right.
So let me back up a little bit just for those who are new to this conversation, and some of this comes from my own experience, right? I went, I'm an immigrant from Taiwan to the United States. I was the model minority myth incarnate of like work hard, don't rock the boat, get good grades, got a good job, good team player. And then you hit that cliff where you're a great entry level employee, but you don't have quote/unquote "leadership potential" because you're not pushing back, you're not generating new ideas. And I sort of looked up and was like, what is going on here? And I would say I didn't identify necessarily as having been silenced all my life, although I am the youngest daughter in a Chinese American family. So that to me, culturally, formatively, you are expected to defer to other people. So what I came to is we have all learned to be silent. We have learned what is professional. We have learned what is nice. We have learned what is appropriate. We have learned what's not gonna get us in trouble at work or at home. And all of that is learned silence. And the contours of our relationship with silence is different for each of us. But what I do know is that the more people are silent, the more that becomes normed. So if leaders, we're not speaking up in meetings when the senior leader says something offensive, everybody looks around and says, "Well, I guess we just don't talk about that stuff here." Right? How many times have we each heard or thought that? So our own silence is not just about me, and your silence isn't about you. It is about the environment and the culture and the norms that we collectively build of, can we actually disagree? Or if I express a difference of opinion, a different way of seeing things, do I get my head bit off? Oh, if I'm gonna get my head bit off, and I'm not gonna get that promotion, or I'm going to lose my job, or frankly I'm just gonna have to feel fraught for the rest of the day, silence starts to look far more attractive. And because this is through the course of our upbringing and our families, in our school education, when the teacher is trying to do crowd control and just wants everybody to shut it, to our workplaces, I don't think we even see, as you said, how we've learned silence. So my first place to start is just awareness. There's this thing called silence. When I would question for each of us to ask the question, where do I stay silent, where do I speak up? Are there patterns to how that happens? And I will say, for some people, particularly white men, they've never, they haven't had the experience of being silenced because their voice and their being and how they show up in the world has always been welcomed and normed. So I've facilitated groups where, to their credit, these white men are looking around at the people and the women of color as they tell their stories, being like, "Oh, I've never had to think about that before in my life." And that's also deeply uncomfortable to realize the reality that someone else has lived is different than yours. But that in itself is actually just real life. We all have different lived experiences. Is there space to acknowledge that and change the ways that we behave and what we do as needed so that all these things that we keep talking about, inclusion, dignity, belonging, actually are possible? Because there's the ways that we self-censor, the ways that we silence ourselves, but our very behaviors and choices set the tone for the families, communities and organizations we're a part of and that we're co-creating.
Well, and I think that co-creation right now is incredibly important in the sense that we can talk about, and this is my opinion, I think we talk about inclusion and belonging. We talk about making these changes, but in the systems were not actually designed with inclusion in mind. They were designed to be exclusive. So if we want to make something inclusive, actually inclusive, we have to redesign and co-create that in a way that from the beginning it's been designed with everyone in mind not just a particular group or person in mind.
Totally, which is why there's so much debate, which I think is useful debate as to whether inclusion's even the right frame or the right word because it is inherently bringing certain people in and accommodating to include. So the norm, the center is still where it was before versus focusing as Ada Maryam Davis does on belonging dignity and justice, of those things, of the human condition, we're going to center and build around that. And then also to acknowledge, as you said, if we're going to deconstruct and reconstruct and build new systems, holy hell, that's a lot of work. I'd argue it's worthwhile work. I think, I would argue that what else are we doing other than trying to move forward in a way where every human being and their belonging and dignity and justice are centered. They're just basic human dignity, and it's a lot of work, and it changes the status quo. It changes the norms, it changes the systems. And for many people the systems are just fine.
Which is unfortunate 'cause there's so many people for whom the systems are not fine, right? And that is the, you know, I think that's where the silence piece comes up. By the way, I think it comes up many times, and I'm very mindful of the fact that I would like to have you back to explore that concept deeper on the show because I think it's really important. But in this particular case, I think that the people have been silent about these things and still don't know how to speak up about them quite often and may not even recognize how they're being affected by it and perpetuating these. There's so much nuance and complexity inside of this. It's really something to untangle.
Absolutely, and I would say there are so many challenges. One that comes to mind is, once you see it, you can't un-see it. So then you're left with this question of, "Well, what do I have to do with it?" And because we're used to staying silent because that has been normed and frankly rewarded, and we have each benefited from staying silent, we don't have the skills to use our voices in a different way. I'd actually back up, and then this is chapter six of the book. Do we each actually believe that we have voices? Do I know what my voice, my way of being, my values, my way of wanting to move through the world actually is? Because if I've just been the youngest daughter or a pawn in a system or a cog in a wheel, I'm just supposed to get that report to my direct manager by the end of Friday. Do I really have a voice? Now I'd argue yes. And so some of unlearning our silence is to realize we each have a voice, we each have agency of how we wanna show up in this world. And if we have one life to live, to live that well, as determined by your own internal metric of what living well means. But it begs the question then of, how do we find our voices? Then, how do we use them? For me, with the hope that we ourselves end up living more fully those lives that we want to live rather than the ones that the people around us or the systems have pre-prescribed for us.
I could talk to you for the next 16 hours about this, And I am mindful that I have taken up a lot of your time already. But I would like to thank you, and genuinely when I say this, I would love to have you back to explore this deeper because I think there's so much here. And I mean, really 16 hours. If you wanna come back for 16 hours Elaine, please do.
So, I'm glad you made a finite concrete offer. If you go over 16 hours.
That's right.
I'm going to overtime, and I would love to continue the conversation. So this is just until next time.
Until next time. Thank you.
Thanks.
[Celine] Thanks for joining me today on the "Leading Through Crisis" podcast. If you enjoyed this conversation, please take a minute to rate and review us on your podcast app. If you're interested in learning more about any of our guests, you can find us online at www.leadingthroughcrisis.ca.