The Quiet People in the Meeting

I've seen this scenario many times in international meetings. Three or four people do most of the talking, a few others contribute occasionally, and several say almost nothing.

In the end, it's easy to decide who was engaged, who understood the issue, and who had the most to contribute. It is also very easy to be wrong.

Over the years, I became increasingly cautious about interpreting silence in international business. Sometimes silence is cultural or hierarchical. Sometimes someone is thinking. Sometimes they disagree but do not want to challenge the person speaking in front of the group. Sometimes they are working in their second or third language and need longer to formulate a response. And sometimes, of course, they genuinely have nothing to add.

The difficulty is that all of those things can look the same from the other side of the table.

When silence means something different

Japan is a good example. Western managers working with Japanese colleagues often become uncomfortable with quiet meetings. If we are accustomed to meetings where people demonstrate engagement by questioning, challenging and debating, a quiet room can feel like an unproductive meeting.

But much of the important discussion in a Japanese organisation may happen elsewhere. People consult colleagues, sound out views, consider concerns, and build internal agreement. The formal meeting is not necessarily where all of that becomes visible.

Language creates another version of the same problem. Someone may speak excellent English socially and professionally but still participate less in a fast-moving English-language meeting than they would in their own language.

I’m not the same person in German

I experience this myself when I try to join a conversation in German. I can follow much of what is being said, but I am not as vocal as I would be in English. By the time I have worked out exactly what I want to say and how I want to say it, the conversation has often moved on.

In some ways, I am not really the same person in German. I am quieter, less spontaneous and certainly less likely to jump into a conversation. Someone judging me only by what they saw in that room could easily form a very different impression of me from someone meeting me in an English-speaking environment.

That experience has made me more conscious of what we may miss when someone is quieter because they are not speaking in their native language.

The advantage we don’t always notice

Native speakers have an enormous advantage. We can listen, think, formulate an argument and speak almost simultaneously. We can interrupt, use humour, understand idioms and recognise subtle signals about when somebody has finished speaking. Doing all of that in another language requires considerably more processing, yet we rarely see the processing. We see the silence.

This matters because businesses make judgements based on visible behaviour. We notice who speaks, who asks good questions, who challenges an idea and who appears confident. We can start equating those behaviours with competence, engagement or influence.

International business makes that risky.

Becoming less certain about silence

One of the simplest things we can do is become a little less certain about what silence means. Instead of assuming that somebody has understood because they asked no questions, check. Instead of assuming agreement because nobody objected, confirm it. Instead of assuming the quiet person has nothing to contribute, create another opportunity for them to contribute.

And instead of measuring a meeting by how much discussion took place, think about whether the right information actually came out.

Silence is not necessarily a communication failure. Misreading it can be.

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Mark Mortimer is the founder of Timezone Business, with over 30 years of experience working in international business across China, Japan, Germany, India, the UK, and the US, and now uses that experience to advise senior professionals navigating the cultural and operational challenges of cross-border business.