Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Sometimes we operate our meetings and our groups with stupid, unspoken rules.

Silence is agreement

This is one of the things I was told as a much younger person on the job. If I didn’t object loudly in a meeting, I had agreed. Really? Says who? What was that about?

I suppose it was something everything just sort of knew ahead of time. If you didn’t know it, you were too stupid to contribute.

I think this unspoken rule has fallen in use over the years. I am happy to see that. I always felt it was stupid. Everyone was assuming what everyone else thought. It was if everyone was reading the minds of everyone else.

How did anyone ever conclude that?

If I want to know what someone thinks, I as them what they think. Perhaps that is too obvious to write, but there, I wrote it.