speak out

On the first day of elementary school, the teacher was to select someone from the pupils and appoint him or her as the monitor of the class. The teacher gathered all the pupils outside of the classroom building and asked each and every one to stand in front of the class and call out the names of the pupils that were written on a piece of paper. At the end, the boy who had the loudest voice showed his effort to be authoritative was appointed the monitor of the class.

On the first day of university, the teacher gathered the freshmen outside of the building and called out the students’ names. It was a less formal gathering and the teacher seemed to mean only to acquaint himself with the students. One of the students did not stop at being known by name, he struck a conversation with the teacher with confident facial expression and body language, after all the names were called. The conversation went on for a few minutes and he was appointed the monitor of the class.

In both cases, the teacher knew barely no one in the class but had to pick someone as soon as possible. The one who was, or seemed to be, different or outstanding, got the chance. But lift is not fair. One of the young professors of at my university years had said, “Fairness is a coined word. It does not exist in the world.” Sometimes you are given a chance. Sometimes you are not. sometimes you win by competition. Sometimes you are not even invited for the competition.  

In the modern world in general and in the workplace in particular, you need to stand out to be rewarded, or at least, not to be short changed. We believe that your performance will finally be recognized, in the long run, but in some cases you cannot afford to wait. Many opportunities do not wait for you. By behaving like a “silent lamb”, you are giving up opportunities. By constantly and perennially behaving like a “silent lamb”, you are destined to perish without a leaving a trace, literally.

A guy, of Oriental extraction, was initially hired as a project manager. I had been in a meeting with him. He was the highest level attendee in the meeting. But he spoke very little and listened all through. He did not introduce himself to the meeting. In fact, he was introduced by his subordinate. He seemed to be the quintessence of the Oriental culture – humble, soft, and unassuming. Although he remained largely an unknown quantity to me, I did not feel uncomfortable because his demeanor was in line with mine.

I could not recall since when he was not even copied in the emails. Not until I was contacted by the project manager, obviously a new name, did I find out that he had been demoted. I did not know what exactly had happened. I ventured a guess that his quietness, in contrast to the loud and vociferous colleagues and subordinates, brought his demotion. You will not get an opportunity if you are silent. You will not able to hold onto it even if you have got it, when you are silent.

Silence is golden. Some say. In reality, silence is a recipe for demise, literally.  We must speak out.

We are worried that we would become a laughing stock if our speech is not wise, not witty, or even not correct and decided to keep silent. In my opinion, leaving an unfavorable impression is still better than leaving no impression at all. In fact, we can learn from mistakes and improve next time. Even when the first impression is unsavory, impression could be altered in subsequent communications. But if we do not speak out and keep silent all the time, we will never leave an impression.

Speak out. You have nothing to lose. This is a world dominated by uncivilized.

I have been to many meetings. the first large meeting, attended by around twenty, was, in my view, a chaos. The invitees came to the meeting room, sat down, did not introduce themselves, spoke whenever and whatever they wanted with no regard to others at all. I was in a junior role and was only supposed to listen. I did. I did not speak good English then and I was trying through the course of the meeting to understand what everyone said, in various accents.

I attended more and more meetings and my English level was no longer a problem. But the situation did not improve. There was no agenda for most of the meetings. The attendees were not introduced. Nobody was apparently the host. The discussion drifted. Someone made irrelevant jokes. Some others echoed. At the end, no conclusion was reached. Déjà vu?

If you did not say a word in the entire meeting, nobody would ask you to. It is completely a jungle.

I changed. So now in every meeting I organized, I would stand at the end of the table, call to order, and explain the topic of discussion, immediately after every one has arrived. I could not allow the chat to start and the focus to be lost. If I detect that someone has the tendency to dominate, I would interrupt and give a chance to the silent ones. My voice is low. So I stand up. I am not afraid of appearing to be rude to bring the meeting into order.

For the meetings organized by others, we still need to give best try and make ourselves heard. Often after the meeting and in retrospect, I realized that the meeting has not produced best result only because the lousy ideas dominated and the wise ones did not get a chance to be heard.

In addition to formal meetings, we are confronted with colleagues on a daily basis. We need to be careful. We do not want to be a bully but we do not need to be the victim of bully either. It is very easy to detect the bullying behavior. Almost a few sentences could give these bullies away. So we need to be prepared and get ready to confront.

A video was posted on YouTube. A Chinese man, carrying bags of groceries, was to go into an apartment building. While he was apparently waiting for the elevator, a guy (race not to be mentioned) approached him and grabbed the bag of grocery. The Chinese did not fight back. The guy grabbed another bag and threw it on the ground, with groceries scattered around. The Chinese still did not fight back. The guy enjoyed it and started grabbing another bag from the Chinese’s hand. The Chinese fought back.

Workplace is no different from the streets. There are always some people who want to take advantage of you. On the streets, Chinese are timid and become the object of bullying. In the workplace, Chinese are silent become workhorses but do not get promotion.

Do not be a doormat. Do not be a pushover. We need to assert and we need to fight back.

At the same time, we must overcome our shortcomings. If we think we are different, we will be forever different. There are very few Chinese faces to be seen in the blood donation clinics temporarily set up in the company. Why Chinese employees are seen in large numbers in the office but not in the blood donation clinics?

A training without compensation is going to happen, to prepare the employees who are not in customer service positions to be ready to serve the customers during subway shutdown when the customer service employees cannot handle. I asked Chinese employees, in WeChat group, who have registered. At that time, the conversation was dogs. Not a single one responded. When the conversation about dogs faded away, I asked again. Still, no one showed any interest in even knowing what the training is about. My guess is that they do not want to take the training because it will be on weekend and is not paid. Some may have not received the email. But at least they should be interested.

And I heard some complaints from Chinese employees saying they are not properly compensated. They think their salary is too low.

There is no recipe for success. But there is one for failure - keep silent, keep submissive, keep complaining, and keep not participating.