Unlearning Silence: How to Speak Your Mind, Unleash Talent, and Live More Fully
Elaine Lin Hering
Viking/An Imprint of Penguin Random House (March 2024)

The Pervasive Influence of Silence…for Better or Worse

In Future Shock (1970), Alvin Toffler offers this prediction: “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” I was again reminded of that prediction as I began to work my way through Elaine Lin Hering’s book.

Here is the conclusion of the Introduction: “If we want to be heard, and if we want to create spaces in which other people can be heard, we we have to understand how power, identity, privilege, and learned patterns lead us to silence. We need to support voice by managing the role silence plays. We need to understands and actively choose our own relationship with silence. We need to unlearn the ways we silence ourselves and silence others. We need to unlearn silence.

Hering explains HOW.

These are among her points of special emphasis:

o Silence can lead to self-doubt, infringe dignity, reduce our sense of selfhood, dull our ability to think for ourselves, exacerbate existing suffering, shape our perception of reality, and breed more silence,

o Silence makes sense when it allows for survival, projects energy, nourishes self-care, helps achieve strategic objectives, and reassures others that we are an attentive listener.

o Three questions for reflection: “What are the benefits of speaking up?” “Of remaining silent?” “Given the responsze to these two questions, what makes the most sense for me?”

o Interrogate your voice by challenging your own thinking (especiallky assumptions and biases), give yourself permnission to think and speak frankly/candidly, and do small experiments to identify and refine the best course of action to take.

Hering discusses these and other key points in detail.

In this context, I presume to offer a suggestion:  Consider very carefully the importance of identifying and then eliminating what Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingham characterize as “the unknown unknowns.” That is, ignorance of one’s ignorance. This is is probably what Mark Twain had in mind when observing, ” It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”  Learn what you need to “unlearn” (e.g. biases and prejudices) in order to “speak your mind, unleash talent [yours and others’], and live more fully.’

Here is how Elaine Lin Hering concludes the last chapter: “Unlearning silence requires shifts in mindsets, skill sets, and systems. [Recall  Alvin Toffler’s prediction: “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”] Whether in a family or a community, systemic change starts with one person being willing to take action.

“Let that person be you.”

* * *

In school, college, and then graduate school, I learned more and learned it faster when I discussed material in a group with 3-5 others taking the same course. I also recorded key Q&As on 3×5 file cards (based on course material, whatever the subject) with a Q on one side and the A on the other, held together by a thick rubber band. I carried them with me and reviewed the content whenever I had a few minutes to kill.

Here are two other suggestions to keep in mind while reading Unlearning Silence: Highlight key passages, and, record your comments, questions, action steps (preferably with deadlines), page references, and lessons you have learned as well as your responses to key points posed within the narrative. Also record your responses to specific questions posed, especially at the conclusion of chapters.

These two simple tactics — highlighting and documenting — will facilitate, indeed expedite frequent reviews of key material later.