Speaking Up at Work: The Price for Rocking the Boat |
Speaking up helps organizations innovate and fix errors, but fear of retaliation often keeps employees silent.
Confidence and self-efficacy increase a person's willingness to speak up.
Crucial conversations require training and psychological safety.
To speak up at work is an act of courage that just might cost you.
Such sharing may take the form of whistleblowing, defined as “the disclosure by organization members (former or current) of illegal, immoral, or illegitimate practices under the control of their employers, to persons or organizations that may be able to effect action” (Near & Miceli, 1986, p. 4).
However, more frequently, speaking up looks more like sharing an opinion, questioning a decision, or countering an argument. Such disclosures, according to research, when thoughtfully received, help organizations course-correct and innovate, filling the knowledge void between management and staff. Yet despite the purported benefits, these types of conversations are often shut down before the ideas take flight (Yang et al., 2025).
Who Speaks Up and Who Doesn’t
As social beings with the power to impact our environment, we form opinions and generate ideas, inward thoughts, that if projected outward, could promote positive change, yet internal and external forces may stifle sharing.
Consciously or unconsciously, our actions are influenced by implicit theories, or our established beliefs about people, places, and events. For example, two implicit theories that can mute conversations at work are that employees shouldn’t voice concerns unless they have a solution and that challenging the boss will negatively impact career trajectory (Detert and Edmondson, 2011).
Employees’ level of self-confidence and self-efficacy also influence their willingness to share. Whereas self-confidence is a more universal construct, reflecting employees’ perception of their capabilities and self-worth across domains, self-efficacy is situational and task-oriented.
The famed psychologist, Albert Bandura (1977), identified four arenas where self-efficacy is developed or influenced: Performance tasks, in which skills are practiced; vicarious experiences, wherein firsthand observations serve as models of execution and success; verbal persuasion, in the form of outside encouragement; and psychological states, such as stress, anxiety, and hopelessness.
Employees with low self-confidence are less likely to share ideas and voice consent, and those with limited self-efficacy regarding a specific topic and exchange are more likely to withdraw from the conversation as a self-preservation strategy (Tian et al., 2025; Wawersik et al., 2023). Whereas self-confidence is more complex and harder to develop, self-efficacy around voice heightens each time employees are encouraged to contribute ideas (Bandura, 1977).
Another mitigating factor that hampers some employees’ propensity to speak up is their craving for power and recognition. Such positioning charges them to practice strategic conformity, or publicly bolstering management’s........