Australian study looks at barriers to speaking up in meetings – and how to encourage input

New research from The University of Sydney has uncovered the barriers preventing people from speaking up in meetings, and how business leaders can encourage them to provide their input.

Professor Betina Szkudlarek, professor of international management at the University of Sydney Business School and lead author in the study, explained that there are a complex set of factors that can prevent people from speaking up.

“The over bureaucratisation, the large nature of the meeting and the sense of futility – ‘What’s the point of speaking up, nothing is going to change anyway’,” she told HRD Australia. “And of course, fear that there might be negative consequences.”

Fear of speaking up

But Szkudlarek said the researchers decided not to take those explanations from their interviewees at face value.

“We asked them, ‘Could you tell us about situations where you did propose something and it didn't get through or when you did face negative consequence for speaking up?’,” she said. “And we realised that a lot of those were more assumed or possibly serving as an excuse not to speak up. Because hardly any respondents could give us a specific incident when they themselves were in any way negatively affected or where their voice wasn't taken into consideration.

“So we basically dug deeper into the fact that individuals probably have more agency than they think in speaking up and that they constrain themselves, which then contributes to the situations in which silence is the norm and speaking up seems like a deviant situation.”

Szkudlarek explained that people might assume there is no purpose to speaking up, or that there will be negative consequences in doing so, when there might not be.

“We are not saying that this is a universal approach, but we think that in many contexts, those futility expectations and fear are exaggerated,” she said.

“It should be normal that you do speak up about things that should be improved and how you can work together on making changes.”

What should HR do

To encourage employees to speak up in meetings, Szkudlarek said, “It's really about creating a culture of participation.”

“In many contexts, if you look at the meetings, there is a culture of silence. It’s just normal that people come, they listen, and they might speak up with insignificant comments about insignificant things. But prefer to keep the big conversations about big issues in the corridors and whine and complain, rather than actually have open conversations in the meeting.”

Szkudlarek went on to highlight a range of possible solutions to encourage employees to speak up:

• Think about the meeting structure: If you have a large meeting consider having smaller breakout group activities within it where people can share their opinions about an issue
   
• Reduce the time that is committed to sharing and disseminating information, and increase the time for raising issues
   
• Give individuals responsibility for proposing and leading discussions on a topic that is important to them. “Rather than individuals bearing the responsibility of raising the topic, you give it to a group of individuals, which kind of disseminates their potential fear and they are then responsible for leading the conversation,” Szkudlarek said.
   
• Recognise people who speak up
   
• If you have a discussion about changes that need to be made, time should be allocated to employees to implement those changes. “So that they don't feel like ‘well, if I raise something and there is something to be changed, how will I ever find time to actually be a part of the solution?’” Szkudlarek said.
   
• Socialise newcomers to the idea that speaking up is normal and encouraged.

What should employees do 

Szkudlarek went on to offer suggestions on how employees can speak up.

“At the end [of the day], people make the organisation,” she said. “So people should take responsibility for what the organisation looks like. If nobody speaks up, how can the top [executives] know that the introduced change is really detrimental to the people who will be affected by it?”

And while Szkudlarek believes in the benefits that can come from speaking up she acknowledged that it also comes down to the approach in which it is done.

“It's really about constructively bringing up those issues and possibly framing them in the context of some solution,” she said. “I do see people in meetings where they voice their concerns and it's just a whine. And of course, nobody wants to listen to whining.”

One of the ways employees can speak up is to form alliances with their coworkers and have someone to speak on behalf of a group, Szkudlarek added.

“We all know that the collective voice is more impactful,” she said.

On the other hand, individuals should also avoid outsourcing the responsibility of speaking up to one person, Szkudlarek added.

Ultimately, what can also help is practice.

“It's really about overcoming shyness and insecurities,” Szkudlarek said. “The more you exercise your voice, the more you try to speak up, the better you become at it and the more impactful you are.”