Great Unheard Knowledge Café May 2023

This is the framing talk for a Knowledge Café that was held online in May 2023, where John Higgins and Mark Cole shared their experience of what it takes to get unheard voices heard and also why sometimes silence is an active choice that speaks volumes. For us, silence happens in the context of specific relationships and situations and is soaked in conscious and unconscious patterns of power - some of which can be named and some which are inherently elusive (or seen as undiscussable in polite society). What passes for common sense in institutions often demands that people break the silence and speak up, creating autocratic climates in which people find their own ways of complying or rebelling - often in the spirit of avoiding making public what they don’t want to share in a workplace setting where the intentions of those requesting an end to silence are instrumental rather than relational We see the Knowledge Café as a continuation of a research process that will probably see both of us to our graves - but do buy the book as well! John Higgins and Mark Cole PS The Café was based on the book: The Great Unheard at Work: Understanding Voice and Silence in Organisations by Mark Cole and John Higgins (2023) https://www.routledge.com/The-Great-U...