I think having a silent mouth is an important skill at a company. I don’t mean saying nothing at all. I mean not speaking when you feel the urge to talk. For example, someone shares an opinion that just doesn’t make sense. We want to tell them they’re wrong and that there are better alternatives. The seconds is when someone is rude to us, whether by accident or as revenge for something that affected them. Then we want to fight back, usually with an even more toxic words.

Sadly, the unfiltered words bring critical consequences to the work environment, sometimes severe enough to cause us unbearable stress. In the moment, speaking up may feel heroic or virtuous. But people talk, people listen, and they become living evidence of what we said.

This doesn’t mean we should be spineless and keep holding it in. It means we should be more careful with the words we say back. Hold the urge, and there’s less to worry about in the future. Let it out, and we speed up the catastrophic clock.

Many senior people are reserved and speak only when needed. It’s not because they don’t feel the same way. It’s because they know the consequences, and they know that staying quiet lets things keep running. When someone harms them, they don’t react loudly. They just slowly move away from the fire.

I think fighting against urge is a very useful skill to master, and it transfers well across different companies and dynamics: older and younger, senior and junior, more qualified and less qualified.

This also made wonder about why people sometimes call a certain country’s people two-faced or creepy for speaking and behaving so differently. Maybe that’s a skill learned at a national level to avoid conflict at work. And maybe talking behind someone’s back is an exhaust that needs to be released somehow once the engine starts rolling.