Speaking Truth to Power: How power silences; Developing psychological safety

“I want everyone to speak up…even if it costs them their job!”  Samuel Goldwyn, US film producer

Every day, at home, at work and in our communities, we make decisions about when to speak up and when to stay silent. We also choose who to listen to and whose voice to discount. These ‘conversational habits’ have enormous consequences. They define our relationships, our careers and our leadership practice. Collectively, they determine an organisation’s culture and impact reputation, ethical conduct, innovation, agility, inclusiveness and more. In some cases, they save – or cost – lives.

Megan Reitz’s research suggests that ‘speak up’ and ‘psychological safety’ initiatives can fail when they focus too much on the individual courage required for speaking up. This is because speaking up should rather be understood as relational and systemic – we speak depending on how those around us show up and whether we think they are truly interested in hearing us. Leaders are often unaware of the consequences of their power and how it silences others and research findings show that they are likely to overestimate their listening skills as well as how approachable they are perceived to be.

A leader’s job is to invite and listen skilfully, to proactively encourage truth speaking and create a culture of psychological safety. Doing this in practice will require them to change some habits – unfortunately, whilst many of us want to support change, we often prefer to believe that others need to change more than we do. Megan’s work aims directly at this myth and guides leaders to pragmatic habit change.

Who the session is for

For the South East Aspiring Chief Executive Talent Pool.

About the workshop

Participants at Megan’s masterclass will learn:

• – The personal and organisational imperative to speak and listen up
• – To be aware of their own ‘conversational habits’ of speaking and listening and the consequences on themselves and others: when they speak up and when they stay silent; when they listen and when they don’t
• – How perceptions of power, status and authority affect conversations
• – Using survey data, how they perceive their own personal preferences in speaking and listening up and their organisational culture
• – Using the TRUTH framework that she has developed, how we can change conversations, relationships and performance.
• – How senior leaders can proactively encourage truth speaking and create a culture of psychological safety

The masterclass is interactive from the very beginning and includes a blend of research, survey findings, stories and small and larger group discussions and reflections.

Book your Place:

Please book your place via the green RSVP ‘Going’ button below. Places are available on a first come, first serve basis.  Although we will be able to see your name and email address upon submission, once extrapolated the demographic and protected characteristics data will be anonymised. We appreciate your support in providing this information, which will help us to ensure our talent and leadership development interventions are widely accessible and inclusive.

To enable successful delivery of our events, we need to share details, including name, role and/or organisation details, along with any motivations/aspirations included in the RSVP booking form, with facilitators to enable effective and inclusive preparation for the event.  For some events we will also share contact information with all participants to enable connection and ongoing collaboration. By completing and submitting the RSVP booking form you agree to this data being shared as required. Please see our Privacy Notice for further information.

The session will be delivered virtually. Links to join the workshop will be emailed to those who have booked, along with full joining instructions, one to two weeks before the workshop date.

Our Commitment:

We are committed to making our training as accessible as possible (please see our accessibility page), we are aware that there is more that we can be doing. Please do contact us if there are any reasonable adjustments that we can make to support you to be able to attend this programme by emailing us at [email protected]

About the Facilitator – Megan Reitz

Megan is Associate Fellow at Saïd Business School, Oxford University and Professor of Leadership and Dialogue at Hult International Business School. She focuses on how we create the conditions for transformative dialogue at work and her research is at the intersection of leadership, change, dialogue and mindfulness. She is on the Thinkers50 ranking of global business thinkers and is ranked in HR Magazine’s Most Influential Thinkers listing.  

Megan has written Dialogue in Organizations and Mind Time and, most recently, Speak Out, Listen Up which is the second edition of her bestselling book Speak Up, with Financial Times Publishing. Speak Up was shortlisted for the CMI Management Book of the Year 2020.  

Megan is a contributor to Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review. She has presented her research on the BBC, CNBC and Deutsche Welle and she writes for numerous academic and practice-based journals. Her research on employee activism was nominated for the Thinkers50 Breakthrough Idea Award 2021 and her TED talk on the topic has been viewed more than one and a half million times. 

Her latest research focuses on ‘spaciousness’; how, whilst attending to the task, we can also create, hold and value the space to innovate, reflect, learn and develop relationships, in workplaces that are increasingly experienced as instrumental and addicted to busyness.  Examples of her work can be found at www.meganreitz.com and on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/meganreitz.