Are Silent People Really the Smartest in the Room?
Correlation isn’t causation + there’s more
In my first year on the job, I was mostly silent in meetings.
I was not too fond the meetings. They were a pure waste of time. The manager took the status, but most were unidirectional and monotonous: What are you working on, and how long will it take to finish?
The whole thing could be handled via a shared Excel sheet.
Once a month, there were times when topics changed. Yet, they failed to open me up to my team.
I was too lazy to voice my opinion. Slowly, this laziness metamorphosed into the laziness of forming opinions. I began to avoid even mentally summarizing my status, only to utter the ticket number, followed by a one-word status.
The way things stood at the time, I wasn’t disrupting the overall order of things. The project was in the middle of the sea — quite safe from competition. The client was trusting. Our team was delivering excellent results around the clock.
Who cared if one guy failed/missed to report the result in the daily? Everything was already visible in the ticket tracker system.
The fateful day that changed everything:
Around summer, we had a deadline for a major software release. The anxiety in the war room was palpable.
I was working on a reporting feature I wasn’t an expert at (this is more of a rule in the software industry, not an exception): I had to read several fields from the database and display them as a single, calculated value.
It took me more than my average to move the ticket. I was approaching the end of all possible solutions. I couldn’t ask anyone’s help, because no one was ready to touch that part of the project. It was ironic that despite being irreplaceable, I was doomed to work on it because my perceived incompetence in coding (you have no CS degree!) had rendered me choiceless.
The manager asked: When will you move this ticket?
Anxiously, I blurted out the answer: “It can’t be done.”
The room fell silent. My shocked teammates turned their heads to me.
My boss’ eyes bulged out of its sockets. I felt a shiver. I had heard stories about his scary face, and we had good laughs. It had always baffled me how someone’s angered face could be the target of mockery.
I quickly realized who would be the next target of those laughs — it wasn’t the boss.
“What do you mean by it can’t be done?”
I collected myself and managed to summarize my attempted solution. I also lamented why my solution was the only logical way, why it was prudent to reject this ticket, and why it was productive to take up an alternate ticket to better our stats.
I no longer remember my words now, because they were uttered in a state when my body was in an emergency-response mechanism.
With a wave of his hand, he dismissed my response, “You see. Saying No isn’t an option. This is totally against our values. Haven’t you attended that workshop about Positive Thinking when you joined?”
“Yes sir.” Through some weird biological mechanism, those words released me from my stiff stance. I eased up in my seat.
A friendly colleague sitting right behind the boss was smirking. It was a signal that the bins had been spilled, and the only possible course of action was to terminate the discussion.
He had warned me several times before: “Our boss is the fountain of positive thinking. He never likes No for an answer.”
Past that point, I kept alternating between shaking my head and nodding, as a silent acknowledgment that I was following my boss. I didn’t hear a single word. My final words were: “I will try.”
To that, he nodded affirmatively. I considered it a win. The meeting dispersed.
A hungry colleague hurried past me as he reprimanded me for stretching it: “Let’s pray our cafeteria seats are still unoccupied.”
Past that point, I decided never to disagree with the boss. My 3-point strategy was:
- If it has been done, say it’s done.
- If it hasn’t been done, give an estimate.
- If he asks the reason for the delay, say “I am analyzing the root cause.” Don’t be specific.
About the last bullet: Specifics help you solve a problem, but they aren’t helpful in meetings. They yield a lot of power to the adversary — a demanding boss. This breed just picks up a keyword (example: impossible), gathers a tag cloud surrounding that keyword (example: possibilities, out-box thinking, positive thinking, lateral thinking), and starts lecturing you how it was accomplished by illiterate Ford and Coca-Cola workers, and you were worse despite passing from a university with colorful grades.
If convincing the boss was the toughest point of executing one’s idea, one is at the wrong place or is going through the worst career phase.
This strategy worked in all the forthcoming meetings — not just with the first boss, but with the other bosses, too. I was never appreciated for completing something on time, nor I was reprimanded for any delay.
When I faced problems, I was assigned a smarter colleague who had the guts to call a spade a spade, even in front of the boss.
His presentation skills were pathetic. His English broke every grammar rule. He rarely made diagrams. Still, the boss agreed with and built upon his line of thought in practically every team meeting.
I envied him, yet I respected him. He wasn’t a show-off. Still, I never felt curious about how he managed to grow that courage. To me, the entire exercise was futile, given the impact my ideas/disagreements would have.
There was a silent colleague whom I respected even more for being helpful to every teammate, never uttering anything in the meeting. He rarely disagreed with the boss.
It was an irony, yet I believed it: If convincing the boss was the toughest point of executing one’s idea, one is at the wrong place or is going through the worst career phase.
I didn’t know that this was the reality of every field, not just my software company.
The era of the silent smarts:
I came to know about silent people’s fame through a wildly popular Medium article in 2020.
However, I had known about 2 decades earlier from my first company, that the only smartness in the corporate world was not to cross your manager’s word. To do that, silence in the meeting was essential.
In my 2nd assignment at the client site, a new dimension was added to this belief, only to solidify it.
A software firm whose solution we were taking over had several knowledgeable people. But one guy (let’s call him Bob) stood out in meetings: He never uttered a word. Even in times of conflict, he rarely took a side.
Bob was otherwise approachable and good at small talk. In meetings, though, he always carried a cup of coffee, kept looking at anyone speaking in the eye, and rushed out at the first mark of the conclusion.
Everyone thought he knew everything, and was always checking on other people’s knowledge all the time. The loudest guy (the most frequent presenter — let’s call him John) often helped everyone with API and other intricate details, though he was often rude to the frequent, unscheduled calls for help.
A day came when John was on leave. Bob had to bear the responsibility of conducting the knowledge-transition meeting. The presentation was basic, yet had to be carried out to complete the formality. My team lead was eager to suck up every drop of knowledge dripping out of Bob’s mouth, to make up for John’s cold shoulders.
Bob mechanically rushed through a bunch of slides prepared by John. At last, he tried skipping over the “Questions” slide.
Unfortunately for him, my team lead wasn’t asleep. He started firing questions — some of them fundamental to the software architecture they had been selling for the last 2 years. Bob started to fumble, followed by rehearsed definitions of the very basic entities of the project.
It became evident he wasn’t applying any knowledge; he was simply blurting out what he was taught in his first exposure to the project. I must say: His parroting skills could give any GPT a run for its money.
My team lead spotted an opportunity to peel off all his layers. He began shooting questions, signaling to all of us to take notes. The world of contracting is cut-throat: you get to capitalize on your competitors’ ignorance. That day, it was put on a clearance sale.
At the first opportunity, Bob wrapped up the meeting with a casual “We can keep talking about it, but that’s it, I guess!” It was the sticky audience, not the ignorant, unprepared presenter. Not even a single “I will get back to you for unresolved items.”
Ten minutes past that meeting, I saw an interesting sight: Bob was narrating anecdotes of his past girlfriends in the coffee room, and my team lead was laughing.
I knew this wouldn’t change my team lead’s intentions of capitalizing on his ignorance. But Bob’s tactics surely earned him some sympathy/mercy points.
The reality:
“Some people have something to say. Some people have to say something. Avoid the second group.”
― Ichak Kalderon Adizes, The Ideal Executive
Silence in meetings and competence have a multi-dimensional relationship. There are 4 possible combinations, depicted below.
- The blue quadrant: You don’t know anything, and remain silent to hide your ignorance and/or learn something. (Example: Myself in my first company.) You will soon move to another quadrant, depending on whether you are curious to know the intricacies of business + mechanisms (pink/green quadrant) or anxious/insecure about yourself (yellow quadrant).
- The yellow quadrant: You speak, only to show off. In Adizes’s quote above, you belong to the avoidable 2nd group. Every company has its fair share of walking LLMs like you that drain meaning out of every discussion. You are eager to climb the promotional ladder often by stepping on competent workers and driving them away.
- The green quadrant: You are eloquent, but always ensure to add value to every discussion. When you speak first, you set the tone and context of the discussion. When you speak last, you wait for everyone’s perspective, and adding yours provides a conclusive end to the discussion. You are highly valuable, and if the company fails to invest in you in time, you will either move to the pink quadrant or find another company with a better culture.
- The pink quadrant: You feel defeated by the system. Despite knowing everything, you have internalized the agony of redundancy. You firmly believe that nothing you say has any impact on the outcome of the meetings — in the short or long run. You are likely to drag along until the first chance of financial freedom. Your company will be forever dumb not to even regret losing you.
Conclusion:
Silence in meetings can be a positive or a negative indicator of smartness.
The outcome of the meeting silence highly depends upon the driving force behind the silence.
A wise boss should not virtue-signal someone simply because he is silent/vocal. Likewise, she should refrain from pulling someone down simply because of his verbosity/silence.
Silences and opinions (strong and weak) can both be timed strategically. A wise boss not only observes what pattern his team members follow but also takes notice of when they make an exception.
Spotting valuable colleagues will no longer be rocket science then.
Pen Magnet is the author of the popular senior developer interview eBook:
Comprehensive Approach to Senior Developer Interview (40+ example questions)
