Silenced and Sidelined. D Lynn D Arnold
last category is her description of her body when she feels silenced. Body, heart, and soul include stories that give a more in-depth insight into the impact of silencing. For instance, a senior faculty member at a university stated, “I refer to that time as living with sandpaper on my soul.” I’ve heard women describe heart-sickness, heartbreak, along with soul-dying, and body-trampling pain when silenced. These are not random experiences that leave this sensation, but ongoing, continuous periods.
My real estate–selling sister is three years older, and I idolized her as a teenager. I remember blasting T’Pau’s 1987 song, “Heart and Soul,” in her brown Chevette the summer after her freshman year of college. I would sing the lyrics about giving a little but not begging for love in the process.
I believe at the root of my being that leadership is a call for courage, heart, and soul. We have to be somewhat in love with the purpose that calls for our leadership, and when we lose our heart, we can begin to feel like beggars.
So, who are these villains and silencers who would evoke metaphors of fights, death, isolation, and loss of heart or soul? I would love to paint them as dark felons who relish in criminal behavior. I wish it were that simple or true—because then we could put them in a category that we believe they belong and turn the key.
The Silencers
I imagine without much analysis, there are several people who come to mind as silencers. Elite players in Hollywood, politicians, and the wealthy well-connected privileged are often the accused and the convicted. It only takes a few casual glances at a news broadcast to be aware of powerful men who silence women with non-disclosure agreements, settlements, and career-limiting threats or actions.
The female leaders in my research did not describe their silencers in this same vein.
Instead, they view their silencers as sometimes intentional but mostly subtle, unknowing, but incessant. They include people, systems, and even themselves. Women experience silencing through the non-verbal opportunism of bosses or peers, primarily when they emphasize written communication over face-to-face conversations. Others may fail to give eye contact or may mock with eye rolls when they speak. Women experience the silence that separates with the silent treatment that can come in the form of people being non-responsive to emails or requests. Female leaders can be excluded from meetings by not getting invitations to attend or even worse, getting uninvited. In more extreme circumstances, silencers may be physical. They can fist-pump the table, be rough with chairs, raise their voices, or slam doors to show their disapproval.
Individuals will also silence her with verbal criticism and control. She is the recipient of dismissive comments that question her expertise based on her gender, race, or her role in the organization. She is criticized privately, publicly, and in extreme cases through random acts of nonviolent behavior—like smearing messages in satisfaction surveys or quite literally on bathroom walls. Despite her role as an executive leader, she is on the receiving end of command-and-control leadership from either her supervisor or in some cases, the board of directors. She notices everything. She sees others conspiring against her and may feel thinly harassed. At times, she will need to ward off more overt sexual advances or public shaming, but that is typically not the norm for women in executive roles. Sexual advances are more prevalent at lower levels of leadership or perhaps when she is starting her career. However, unlike lower levels of leadership, she does not always have a place to take her concerns or complaints when something unpardonable does occur.
As she navigates silencing behavior from individuals, she is also silenced by systems of privilege. Here her silencers are faceless and represent dominant male behavior demonstrated by both genders. Systems of privilege may also favor personal characteristics, like a style of leadership or affiliations that are based on preferred groups, credentials, or roles. If she has those characteristics and associations, she may experience inclusion.
It does not matter if you are five years old on the playground, the new hire in your first professional role, or an executive sitting in a c-suite—exclusion is always painful regardless of an achieved or perceived level of success.
Exclusion can also occur if her speech or patterns of communication are misaligned with the dominant discourse in her organization. Merely speaking up or out is rarely the solution as raising voice does not indicate voice efficacy and can at times increase her difficulty. Her lack of consciousness around this issue with voice is one of the first barriers she needs to address.
Her silencers are young, old, and the same age. They are same-sex, heterosexual, male, and female. They are Black and White and inclusive of all nationalities, cultures, and religions. When there is no one around to silence her, she may silence herself and further decrease her care of self. When she self-silences, she has a perceived locus of control that is outside herself. This shows up as an external threat and can cause internal fear, self-questioning, and shifts in effective leadership. She responds to that threat and fear with self-protection. She is unwilling to speak or act if it jeopardizes vital work relationships or her standing with her organization. Often, she is the breadwinner in her family and has bills, responsibilities, and a lifestyle to maintain. She may actively suppress her thoughts, believing there is no room for error or expression.
Cognitive Compromise
When she feels silenced, it feels like she has contracted a virus. The silencing virus affects her cognition, emotion, spirit, and body. Cognitively it is like being in a mental spin, and she struggles with confusion on why things are so challenging. She replays conversations and situations in her head until she cannot think. Kris, the marketing executive, described it as “thinking something to death before I spoke up.”
She also suffers from deficit thinking and questions her leadership decisions. Here we see evidence of confidence surfacing in this phenomenon. Deficit thinking differs from a mental spin in that the deficit is specific to her leadership ability. Here participants described their lack of self-assurance, questioned their ability to lead, and described a sensation of overall failure that trespassed into domains beyond their leadership role. Women wrestle with imposter syndrome and feel a lack of trust in self and others. An executive for a chain of casual restaurants in the United States who had decades of success, only to experience silencing by her CEO later in her career, put it this way, “All I know is from that point on, I wasn’t willing to show up freely as myself the way I think I have been.”
Emotional Distress
Emotionally she experiences a sense of isolation where she feels disconnected from her peers (if she has them) and those she is required to lead. The word “isolation” refers to the idea of remaining alone. One is separate or apart from others. The viral nature of feeling silenced induces a sense that one is not worthy of being part of the whole. Participants in my research reference both their voice and their silence as creating isolation. I vividly remember my physician turned executive describe her leadership silencing isolation as forced internment. That’s a hefty metaphor! Internment is the state of being confined as a prisoner—more often for political reasons. Another executive who chose to retire at an early age from her executive role describes her experience this way:
Well I know what made me want to leave, it was the feeling of separation and loneliness. I didn’t really share how I felt with anybody because at the time I suppose it came up [as] shame. Now I would look back on it with some understanding. I think the feeling of separateness and isolation [is] that you can’t be who you are.
Another aspect of emotional distress is the sense of feeling traumatized by silencers. Here, I heard women use words like misery and mental abuse. Consider Lindsey, who was hired into a senior role by a female leader who vacated the position into a higher executive role. Lindsey’s approach to running the work was aligned with the organization’s mission, purpose, and values, but different than her female boss who held the role prior. She began to feel that all her leadership moves and decisions were measured against what her boss would have done. She felt strongly criticized and verbally rebuked for having a different style and approach but the intent to reach the same outcomes.
I kind of