The advocates, the resistors, and everyone else.

Photo by Craig Ren on Unsplash

It is the advocates and resistors that always stand out. We know them. We hear them. And their words, for better or worse, are like tidalwaves, rising above all the others. If we are part of the “everyone else” then these people speak for us and through us. When we agree with them we are content and can sit passively on their wings, hanging on for their next word like a shot of lightning, fueling us for just a little bit longer.  But, if we disagree, then what? 

Then, what we feel inside festers and burns and wounds us.

Most people are “everyone else”, quiet but not unmoving. Most people keep their heads down and plug along because they are either too tired, too worried, too misinformed, too alone, or too disengaged to advocate or resist. But, they are not unmoving. 

Most people rely on the advocates and resistors to keep them from being inert, to speak their words, to share what they too feel. 

We need the advocates and the resistors to brave the waters of change and to be the wavemakers. But, we must also focus long and hard on the ocean of “everyone else”. These are the quiet many who care deeply but don’t feel safe enough or informed enough to speak out. These are the people we need to pay attention to, these are the people we need to seek out and listen to intently, these are the people we must serve.

In an organizational context, it is critical to draw in this quiet middle and not let their voices, ideas, and beliefs go unheard.  Most especially on topics that feel so personal, like caregiving, like gender equality, like race, like age, like whiteness and blackness, and privilege. And, most especially, in a world of remote work where it becomes so easy for the quiet to become quieter and slip away, unnoticed.

So, listen closely to the quiet. The quiet is everyone else. The quiet is the ocean. The quiet can be me or you.