The Silent Voices 2
Jul 31, 2025
Part 2: Unlocking Unexpressed Potential in Authority-Driven Systems
By someone who’s seen what silence costs, and can’t unsee it.
“When we lose someone’s voice, we don’t just lose their idea. We lose the version of the future they might’ve helped us build.”
We live in a time of accelerating complexity. A world defined by volatility, uncertainty, ambiguity, and paradox. And yet…
We still think control will save us.
We elevate heroic leaders. We trust hierarchy over humanity. We mistake silence for alignment.
And in doing so, we create cultures that are full of brilliant people, and yet starved of meaning and purpose.
This is not a tactical failure. It’s a developmental one.
Because when systems are built around authority, image management, and ego preservation, a quiet tragedy unfolds: The most essential voices go silent.
Silent Voices: What We Don’t Hear Is Hurting Us
These voices aren’t weak. They’re wise. They don’t lack ideas. They lack safe invitation.
They hide behind smiling compliance, perfect powerpoint, or a withdrawn camera on Zoom. Not because they don’t care. But because they’ve already learned what the system can’t hear.
And when leadership is too immature to metabolize discomfort, contradiction, or complexity, the system silences what it needs most.
Not through aggression. Through invisibility.
The Real Driver: Not Skills, But Stages
Let’s be clear: this isn’t about better facilitation techniques. This is about how leaders make meaning.
Leadership maturity is not about charisma or confidence. It’s about the inner patterns through which we process the world, our vertical development.
Frameworks like Cook-Greuter’s Ego Development and Torbert’s Action Logics reveal the subtle but profound differences in how leaders hear, hold, and respond to diverse voices.
Let’s name it:
🔹 The Opportunist / Self-Centric (Stage 2/3)
Leadership here is about control, not connection. Voices are either used to win or shut down to protect ego.
Challenge is seen as threat. Feedback? Only safe if it flatters. Disagreement? Quickly dismissed or punished, often behind a polished smile.
Don’t mistake charisma for maturity.
Criticism doesn’t land. It detonates.
🔹 The Diplomat (Stage 3)
Harmony is everything. Voices that disrupt the “we-space” are softened or avoided. Conflict feels unsafe, so leaders create environments where politeness overrides progress.
Disagreement is avoided, even when it’s needed most.
🔹 The Expert (Stage 3/4)
Here, knowledge equals worth. Voices are ranked by credentials. And if you don’t “know enough,” your input is sidelined. Leaders here may invite ideas, but only within their framework. They’ll listen, nod, and then say:“Yes, but…”, the trademark move that sounds open but keeps control.
You’re welcome to speak, as long as you say it the “right” way.
🔹 The Achiever (Stage 4)
Results drive everything. Voices are welcomed, collaboration is visible, and feedback is encouraged. But beneath the surface, listening is selective. Deeper issues are often addressed only superficially, then quietly removed from the table.
There’s openness… until a truth threatens momentum.
There’s feedback… as long as it doesn’t slow down the goal.
Voices are heard, but not yet integrated.
🔹 The Individualist/Pluralist (Stage 4/5)
Now, something shifts. Leaders begin to hold contradictions. They seek diverse voices, welcome nuance, and recognize that meaning is subjective and socially constructed.
Voices are honored, and perspectives are gently challenged, not to reject them, but to expand them.
Stepping outside the box here means feeling differently, not just thinking differently. Leaders tap into intuition, emotion, and sensation, alongside reason, unlocking awareness of unseen forces and unspoken truths.
It’s the beginning of deeper listening, not just to others, but to the field between us.
🔹 The Strategist (Stage 5)
These leaders hold paradox like breath. They listen through context, not control. They invite disagreement, make space for tension, and prioritize development over optics.
Voices don’t just speak, they shape the system.
From Awareness to Action: How Do We Unlock the Silent Voices?
Understanding these stages helps us see why silence happens. But the deeper question is: How do we redesign the system around what it means to listen differently?
Here’s how:
- Prioritize Vertical Development Over Skill-Building
We’ve trained leaders to do and know more. Now, we need to train them to see differently. Vertical development expands the internal capacity to hold tension, contradiction, and vulnerability, so that voices aren’t just heard, but held.
- Shift from Heroic to Collective Leadership
Real leaderSHIP is not a person. It’s a process. It's a web of connections. It lives in teams, in moments, in networks, in human connection. The question becomes: “What conditions allow leadership to emerge everywhere?”
- Transfer Ownership of Development
We don’t need more employees sent to training. We need humans who take ownership of their evolution. Because growth can’t be outsourced. It has to be chosen.
- Use Tools That Reveal the Unspoken
Frameworks like Immunity to Change expose hidden fears and unconscious commitments. These invisible contracts shape why people don’t speak up, even when they want to. Surface the fear, and you release the voice.
- Think Systemically. Act Locally.
Silence isn’t a personal flaw, it’s a systemic response. If leaders want to hear more voices, they must examine how their policies, language, structures, and presence create felt safety, or shut it down.
- Design for Developmental Heat + Safety
Growth doesn’t happen in comfort. It happens in “heat experiences”, like receiving difficult feedback or holding real tension. But heat alone burns people out. It must be paired with support. Stretch + support = sustainable development.
- Master the Polarity of Power & Participation
Do we lead firmly or yield to the group? The answer is: yes. Mature leadership holds both: Firm & soft. Self & system. Clarity & curiosity. It’s not either/or, it’s both/and, skillfully managed.
🪞 In the End…
The silence in your organization isn’t random. It’s patterned. And it’s telling you something.
The question isn’t, “How do we get people to speak up?” The real question is:
“What parts of our leadership can’t yet bear what they might say?”
Because when we grow the maturity of our leaders, we change the shape of the room.
We stop asking for voices to be louder. And start making the system quiet enough to hear them.
Marjana Laibacher Rogelj Leadership Maturity Coach | Systemic Team Practitioner
I help individuals and systems grow bigger minds and hearts - not by adding skills, but by evolving how we make meaning.
My work sits at the intersection of:
- Vertical development
- WeQ - Systemic Team Development
- Polarity navigation
- Trauma-aware leadership
I understand that silence isn’t just an individual act, it’s a cultural response. And it can be unlearned, transformed, and replaced by truth.
✨ Final Reflection
The evolution of leadership isn’t a trend. It’s a necessity. Because in a world this complex…
We can’t afford to keep silencing the futures we claim to want.
Resources:
David Rooke and William R. Torbert, Seven Transformations of Leadership
