A recent visitor to this blog posted an example of an organization going through a major change.  As she put it,

“No-one was raising issues with the change, however, so I had been quiet about my concerns until two weeks ago when I realized that everyone in the organization were very quietly being tortured by the stress of the situation. As it turns out, everyone thought that they were the ONLY one who was overwhelmed by the change and felt that they had to put a good face on things. There were people preparing to jump ship and even though we are starting some conversations now about the impact of the change, we may lose some great people because of it. . . . Of course, the reality is that what’s done is done and the organization is now in the position of doing damage control.”

In my experience this kind of thing happens all the time in most organizations.  Despite the fact that we know that silence doesn’t equal agreement, change leaders often do little to explore what people are really thinking when they are not speaking.   I posted a few ideas for getting reactions out in the open in previous blogs and am looking for more examples.  How do you reduce the strain of silence in your organization?