When You’re Seething in Silence
by Michelle Pauk
At least a full minute had passed. It felt more like an hour. I could feel my cheeks getting red and hear an edge creeping into my voice. “Does anyone have anything to share?”
“Hello?”
“Are you there?”
“Could someone answer me? Please?”
Another 20 seconds of absolute nothingness. Then, finally, a less-than-satisfactory response: “We can hear you.”
Five minutes later, I hung up the call, completely exasperated, humiliated, and confused. If they could hear me, why wouldn’t they say anything? Why did they refuse to participate, refuse to turn on their web cameras? Were they incompetent? Was I incompetent? What was going on here?
It was the first time I’d worked as a Scrum Master with an offshore team in India, and I was about to learn some profound lessons about silence and collaboration.
These frustrating episodes of deafening silence repeated for several weeks. Realizing that my internal seething did little to change the nature of these conversations, I finally allowed my curiosity to step in and discovered an incredibly useful text, Speaking of India: Bridging the Communication Gap when Working with Indians by Craig Storti.
Storti’s book offered all sorts of possible explanations for the silence I found so maddening.
The team may have been confused about my questions. Rather than risk embarrassing me by asking–as this would alert me that I’d been unclear and cause me to lose face–they chose to stay quiet.
Or, perhaps there was a hierarchy at play among the team members that made it unbearably awkward for anyone other than the “lead” to respond.
Also possible: they were not in a physical working space that accommodated speaking up easily. There might have been too much background noise, or a faulty connection.
I still didn’t have the answer, but I had something better: a humble desire to understand. So I scheduled one-on-one chats with each team member to learn more about their experience and how I could make it better.
These conversations were the complete opposite of the team calls. In our one-on-one chats, they told me about their hobbies, their families, and what they liked about our work together. They shared some of their misgivings about participating in our team meetings. One woman, a new college graduate, shared she was learning her role and wanted to defer to more senior team members in discussion. Another team member told me their workstations weren’t equipped with web cameras and they shared one desk phone for two people.
With this new understanding, I gradually made adjustments to our team calls. I contacted the manager of their local office and asked for web cameras to be purchased for our team members. We started a “Webcam Challenge” and created an award for the first person to be on camera 10 times in a row. We added some fun to our regular meetings – sharing what we’d had for breakfast that day, starting a Friday meme war, and teaching me new words in their mother tongues. Our work together was more productive, more efficient – and a lot more enjoyable!
This team taught me silence can communicate volumes, but we have to be open to hear the message. It’s not a cue to speak – it’s a cue to listen.
