"You're so quiet."

Workplace impressions are always of interest to me. In every job I’ve ever started, the same three words are said to me:

“You’re so quiet.”

Standing out enough to have someone make a comment that you’re quiet seems counterintuitive. By being quiet, I’m actually drawing more attention to myself in a workplace culture that seems to value speaking up and speaking often. Furthermore, these comments do virtually nothing for a conversation other than make me feel guilty, uncomfortable, or these days, nonplussed since it’s become ad nauseam to me. What should one say to this comment?

“You’re so observant.”

or

“…” (say nothing as you silently stare at them, you’re the quiet one, after all!)

For some reason, people often associate quiet with unfriendly. So, is saying to someone, “You’re so quiet” a polite way of saying, “You’re unfriendly?” You would never say to a new co-worker, “You’re unfriendly” (unless you’re a sociopath), but the quiet word gets thrown around constantly: should I assume people are calling me out for being standoff-ish?

In my (relatively short) career span, I’ve never once heard the opposite said to a new co-worker:

“You’re so loud.”

Why don’t we say that?

Being loud seems to be way more offensive on many levels, but we don’t think it strange or peculiar enough to point it out to someone about themselves. Loud can mean interrupting, not listening, and challenging organizational norms, while quiet can mean deeper listening, being polite, and understanding and respecting organizational norms. Heaven forbid we politely listen while others talk and refrain from taking the spotlight at certain moments!

This backwards logic got me thinking, that an opposite polite communication strategy is used for loud people. Instead of saying, “You’re very loud” we politely turn it into, “You’re very outgoing.”

When ask the following question, you might politely answer these ways:

“How’s your new co-worker?”

“She’s very outgoing.” (not loud, that’s rude)

How’s your new co-worker?”

“She’s very quiet.” (not unfriendly, that’s rude)

In addition, a woman who is loud and outgoing is a woman who might be knowingly or unknowingly communicating, “Hey world, I won’t let society silence me in the workplace, I will speak up just as often as my male counterparts do!” As wonderfully empowering and important as this mentality is, the negative side is that it only adds to the attention paid to those being quiet, for now we are women who are not only unfriendly, but also succumbing to gender inequality in the workplace because we choose to be quiet. Not every woman is loud, so does that mean that woman who are quiet don’t push against gender inequality in the workplace?

It is important to understand that speaking up and speaking often are two very different things. Quiet people still speak up when necessary, so being quiet and combatting gendered communication norms in the workplace are not mutually exclusive. (I could write about 5 more blog posts about gender communication in the workplace. What I’ve written here is entirely too brief to cover the complexity of this issue, but still needs to be brought up when talking about workplace communication patterns.)

After a few months/years at a job, I start to get comments saying, “You were so quiet when you first started.” It’s not as if my communication patterns have drastically changed, I’m still pretty darn quiet at work. For most people, myself included, the longer you work at an organization and the more interactions you have with co-workers, the faster the ‘quiet’ label fades away, or at least is a little better understood.

Neither quiet nor loud are the better choice in the workplace. Everyone has their communication style, but recognizing that calling someone quiet makes them feel like they are doing something wrong is important to recognize and maybe reconsider.