HR leaders are staying silent on the most important topics. This author has a solution

(SeaPRwire) –   Good morning to you all!

HR leaders are weighing the pros and cons of speaking out on sensitive workplace topics such as layoffs, benefits adjustments, DEI, and other charged issues. For many of them, staying quiet feels like the safest choice. Kim Scott, author of Radical Candor, argues that this calculation is incomplete.

Her message to HR teams: silence isn’t a risk-free strategy. When leaders avoid tough conversations, they might dodge short-term backlash, but they also create deeper organizational problems—including confusion, mistrust, inconsistent standards, and performance issues that grow harder to fix over time.

“A strict ROI analysis might make speaking up seem not worth it, but in this current environment, you have to approach the decision differently,” Scott told me and my colleagues last week. Leaders often focus on reputational risk, but she asserts the real cost is more meaningful: “You don’t have to pay the toll that remaining silent takes on your integrity.”

Scott notes that speaking up effectively may require linguistic flexibility. When certain terms become politically divisive, she recommends adjusting the language instead of abandoning the work. For example, she now uses “unintended offenses” in place of “bias” and “intolerant beliefs” instead of “prejudice.”

But silence isn’t limited to how leaders talk about external issues—it’s also embedded in their team management practices.

Scott identifies another harmful form of silence eroding workplaces: the avoidance of honest feedback. Too many leaders today hold back criticism to protect others’ feelings or their own reputation. The result, Scott says, is an endless “silence and resentment cycle”: an employee underperforms, leaders seethe quietly, nothing changes, and frustration builds.

For CHROs, Scott’s warning is clear: silence isn’t neutral. Whether leaders are softening language around DEI or avoiding direct feedback with underperformers, the instinct to stay quiet can create exactly the problems HR is tasked with solving—mistrust, inconsistent standards, stalled performance, and messy escalations. Her argument is that candor is more than a management virtue; it’s a workplace risk-control strategy.

“As soon as someone does something that truly bothers you, you need to say it,” Scott says. “The sooner you address it, the less likely you are to react explosively. The first time you bring it up is usually when you can say it most effectively.”

Kristin Stoller
Editorial Director, Live Media
kristin.stoller@.com