Undue silence in the workplace

A couple of weeks ago I was listening to a podcast of a “secret” meeting between Julian Assange and Eric Schmidt in which Assange explained in some detail, the difficulties and successes he's faced while working on the Wikileaks project.

One of the ideas Assange talks about relates to censorship. He distinguishes between two types of censorship, self censorship and overt censorship. Being that the latter form describes the commonly accepted interpretation of what censorship means; namely the intentioned attempt to suppress, hide, bury or erase information that would negatively impact the people involved if the contents were made public, I won't explore that idea any further.

The first type of censorship, which Assange believes is of greater concern is self censorship. He also refers to this form of censorship as economic censorship, explaining that it´s in any publisher´s self interest not to publish content that isn't profitable, for which there is no market. He goes into some detail with regard to this idea, although mostly from a journalist's point of view, probably because that´s the activity he has heavily invested his time, energy, effort and creativity in lately.

One of the reasons i find the concept of self censorship so fascinating is because it applies to all of us.  Almost independent of what type of work you do, we each find it more practical in many cases to self censor our opinions and ideas in the workplace rather than expressing them openly in fear, conscious or otherwise, of future repercussions.

Imagine the personal assistant, when “asked” to type out a memo that he/she knows to contain misinformation, misleading representations or flat out bald faced lies. ¿Does he/she speak out against this type of behavior he/she´s been implicated in? It would probably have to be a pretty important memo, otherwise the personal assistant might decide not to speak up instead.

Imagine the situation of the police officer, who questions the futility of continuously arresting marijuana users rather than spending that time intervening in situations involving more serious criminal activity. ¿Should he/she mention this concern to his/her superior officer risking his/her future career prospects? Maybe, although arresting weed smokers is far easier and less life threatening, so the officer decides not to speak up instead.

Lastly, imagine the case of the graphic designer when “asked” to work on an ad campaign he/she feels is a bad idea, too manipulative, depicts models that not only do not represent the demographics of the community but intentionally disregard specific groups within the population. ¿Does he/she risk his/her livelihood or the chance to work on future choice projects? Maybe, although the ad business, being a seemingly tight knit community makes being labeled “not a team player” a riskier proposition, so the graphic designer decides not to speak up instead.

This is clearly not a comprehensive list, by any stretch of even the narrowest of imaginations, and yet these situations certainly don't seem anything too out of the ordinary. Every day we let things that concern us slide, either because we have too much else to do or because we figure it doesn't matter enough to speak up and risk adding to the already high strung ambiance of our workplaces.

In conclusion:

The point I've been trying to get at is that when our principal source of income is in the hands of a single person or entity (company/corporation), its reasonable to expect that we would all tend to speak out less in order to avoid any unwanted repercussions. This unintended side effect of at-will employment, which few people seem to talk about, but which i imagine to be far more prevalent than most would admit, seems like it would have oxidizing effects on our sense of community which when left unattended could create ever larger breaches in our social compact. Come to think of it, it´s kind of what we see going on all around us in so many different countries across the globe nowadays.

¿when was the last time you didn´t speak out at work about something that bothered you? and ¿what were your concerns related to? please do comment below.