Another meeting has just been completed. Numbers weren’t met, disappointment is everywhere so it wasn’t a pleasant meeting at all. The data shows the misses – they can be traced to sectors, groups and right down to individuals. We are in a culture where someone must be to blame. The boss is frustrated, angry and voices raise, in deflection and in blame. Questions are being asked yet the sound of silence prevails.
Finally the meeting ends and each leave with their own individual thoughts of inadequacy, frustrations, defeat and dreams of being able to work in a better environment are just dreams.
Unfortunately, this is not an uncommon scene. We have all been part of this, some of us may have even been the leader – the instigator of this – it exists.
If you were like me, in the evening your mind, still engaged in the would have and could haves and mired in if only. Our rants are silent, further deflating our spirit. We whisper to our inner soul. Waiting for that flash of a neon light Simon and Garfunkel’s lyrics come to mind: “hello darkness, my old friend, I’ve come to talk with you again, Because a vision softly creeping, Left its seeds while I was sleeping and the vision that was planted in my brain still remains within the sound of silence”
Those silence is deafening. The mind won’t shut down. What could have been done to make this different? Where was the moment, what were the words, the signal that could have changed all of this? Where was the “flash of the neon light that could split the night and touch that sound of silence”?
“Silence like a cancer grows” and when we choose we see it, feel it, recognize it in the disengagement, the lack of trust, the absence of drive, curiosity, belief in the people we work with, the company we show up to each and every day we realize how toxic our environment truly is. Why bother – where is the neon god, the white knight that will save us?
“The words of the prophets may be written on the subway walls” – the posters that highlight the great products made by great companies, but are they really great. Are the subway walls the blogs written by people that have broken free of the silence and are speaking truth to power? Are the subway walls the books, the keynotes that provide the guidance we need?
Can you hear the whispers? They are there and getting louder. People are talking, they are speaking the words out loud and others are truly listening and they are disturbing the sounds of silence. Are you?
There is a change happening. We are disturbed by the sounds of silence. Silence isn’t the norm. Use your voice, take that walk through vulnerability and come out the other end and disturb the sound of silence.
Bình luận