By Dr Tanya Finnie

I learnt something unexpected while working as a game ranger in Africa. People often assume the biggest danger comes from the lion charging at you or the elephant standing in the road. In reality, those are usually the moments you’re paying the most attention.

The animal that made me most alert was the hyena. A spotted hyena can crush bones with a force powerful enough to shatter a giraffe’s femur. In the bush, that’s an animal you don’t underestimate. This particular hyena was patient. It watched. It waited. 

Organisations can be remarkably similar.

The biggest cultural problems rarely arrive without warning. They develop quietly. A conversation that never happened. An idea that wasn’t acknowledged. Feedback that was dismissed. A meeting where someone was interrupted for the third time.

Eventually someone stops contributing altogether. Leaders often notice the silence. What they miss are the dozens of moments that created it.

That’s why I believe silence is the last thing that happens.

Most Employees Don’t Suddenly Stop Speaking Up

One of the questions I hear most often from leaders is: “Why won’t people tell us what’s really going on?”

Usually they’re asking after something has already gone wrong.

A valued employee resigns. A project fails. A customer complains. An investigation uncovers behaviour that “nobody knew about.”

Except somebody usually did know. They simply decided it wasn’t worth saying anything.

People rarely wake up one morning and decide to stop contributing. Instead, they collect evidence.

Every interaction answers a silent question: Is it safe to speak here?

Sometimes that answer comes from what a leader says.

More often it comes from what they do. Who gets listened to. Whose ideas are ignored. Who gets promoted. Who is interrupted. Who is thanked. Who quietly disappears from the conversation.

Over time, these experiences become the unwritten rules of the workplace.

Silence Begins Long Before Anyone Notices

I’ve facilitated workshops where leaders were genuinely surprised to hear their teams describe the culture very differently.

The leaders weren’t uncaring. Most had invested in engagement surveys, wellbeing initiatives and leadership development.

Yet employees described something else entirely. They spoke about carefully choosing which ideas were “safe” to raise. About watching what happened to colleagues who challenged decisions. About learning when it was easier to stay quiet. None of these moments appeared in a policy. Yet together they created the culture.

That’s the challenge with workplace silence.

It grows through accumulation. Not one major event.Hundreds of seemingly ordinary ones.

We Often Measure the Wrong Things

Many organisations measure engagement.

They measure turnover.

They measure productivity.

Some measure psychological safety.

They’re all useful.

But I’ve started wondering whether we’re missing something even more important.

What are we measuring before those numbers begin to move?

Because silence leaves clues. You notice fewer questions. Meetings become unusually easy. Everyone agrees very quickly. Innovation slows. Feedback becomes polite instead of honest. People start having the real conversations after the meeting rather than during it. On paper, everything appears calm.

Underneath, trust is slowly leaking away.

Why Employees Stop Speaking Up

People stop speaking up for many reasons.

Sometimes it’s about power.

Sometimes previous experiences.

Sometimes cultural expectations around hierarchy and respect.

Sometimes they’ve learnt that raising concerns simply creates more work without changing anything.

As someone who has lived and worked across several continents, I’ve watched this look very different depending on the culture.

In some places, disagreement with a leader feels disrespectful. In others, challenging ideas is expected. Neither approach is inherently right or wrong. The important question is whether leaders understand the assumptions people bring into the room.

Too often we interpret silence as disengagement. Sometimes it’s caution. Sometimes respect. Sometimes exhaustion. Sometimes self-protection.

Understanding the difference is one of the most important leadership capabilities I know.

Every Organisation Has Unwritten Rules

One of the most powerful questions a leader can ask is:

“What have people learnt around here without anyone ever saying it?”

They’ve learnt whether mistakes are forgiven. Whether difficult conversations are welcomed. Whether curiosity is rewarded. Whether disagreement affects promotion. Whether challenging the boss is career limiting.

Those unwritten rules shape behaviour far more than the values printed on the office wall. Culture isn’t built by what organisations say they believe. It’s built by what people experience every day. It can often be spotted by what people say about the organisation behind their back.

Looking Beyond the Silence

I spend a lot of time helping organisations improve communication. Interestingly, communication is rarely the real issue. Most teams already know how to communicate.

The harder question is whether the system they’ve built encourages honesty. If people believe speaking up will damage relationships, careers or credibility, better communication training won’t solve the problem.

The work starts much earlier. It starts by looking at the everyday experiences that quietly teach people what happens when they use their voice.

That’s where I believe leaders need to spend more of their attention.

A Different Leadership Question

Perhaps we’ve been asking the wrong question. Instead of asking:“Why won’t employees speak up?”

Maybe we should be asking: “What has our workplace taught them about speaking up?”

Those are very different conversations.

One places responsibility on individuals. The other invites leaders to examine the environment they’ve created.

That’s where meaningful change begins.

Human Systems Insight

One of the ideas I’ve been exploring recently is that most workplace problems aren’t isolated people problems. They’re systems problems expressed through people.

Silence is one example.

People don’t stop talking because they suddenly lose confidence. They stop talking after a system repeatedly teaches them that speaking carries more risk than staying quiet.

When we recognise those patterns early, we don’t just create more vocal teams.

We build workplaces where trust grows one conversation at a time.

Back to the Hyena

We were sitting in an open lapa, a bar with nothing more than a reed fence separating us from the African bush, when I saw her standing in the entrance.

Every guest kept talking.

Nobody else had seen her, except for me and the barman/ranger.

I knew exactly what she was capable of. I also knew I was the only thing standing between her and my guests.

I was safe behind the bar. They weren’t.

So I vaulted over it and charged straight towards her, screaming like a Zulu woman at the top of my lungs. She didn’t move.

Ten metres. Five. 30 centimetres!

Suddenly I realised I’d run out of plan. If she didn’t move, I had nowhere left to go.

She stared at me for what felt like forever, turned around and wandered back into the bush. When I looked behind me, every one of my guests had jumped over the bar I had just leapt over.

Final reflection

If your meetings became completely silent tomorrow, you’d notice.

My question is simpler. What signs are already there today that people are beginning to withdraw?

Because silence is rarely where the story begins. People may not shout and storm out. By the time someone resigns, they’ve often been leaving for months.

Leaders finally notice the silence at the end of the story.