(Illustration by Nancy Marks)
When my Western-trained colleagues first interact with students visiting from East Asia, they are commonly concerned that these students do not speak up in class, are reluctant to debate, or avoid disagreement. These same students often demonstrate strong critical engagement in other formats such as group presentations, written assignments, and structured discussions, suggesting that verbal reticence or silence in the classroom does not equate to intellectual disengagement. Similar dynamics are present in work settings. Many Western executives I work with experience an “aha moment” when I introduce cultural norms around silence and disagreement in Asian contexts. They realize that what appears to be a lack of voice may instead reflect a different understanding of autonomy, obligation, and authority.
From a Western perspective, autonomy often means the right—and responsibility—to speak one’s mind and act independently. In this view, visible self-expression signals engagement. Research, however, shows that perceptions and desires for autonomy vary by cultural context. In many settings, autonomy is balanced with obligation: Individuals understand themselves as embedded in relationships, and responsible for upholding group norms and hierarchies.
Organizational success therefore relies greatly on cultural sensitization—the habit of questioning one’s default assumptions about voice, authority, and responsibility. For leaders operating across borders or managing multicultural teams, understanding these differences can mean the difference between misreading silence and inviting meaningful dissent. Those who recognize these distinctions and structure interactions accordingly can increase their influence and strengthen collective performance across a range of cultural contexts.
How Culture Shapes the Self and the Meaning of Silence
One reason people misread autonomy and obligation lies in culturally distinct ways of understanding the self. Psychologists Hazel Markus and Shinobu Kitayama distinguish between independent and interdependent views of the self, often associated with European-American and East or South Asian contexts, respectively. These frameworks shape not only how individuals understand themselves, but also how they interpret behaviors such as speaking, disagreeing, or remaining silent.
In contexts that emphasize an independent view of the self, individuals understand themselves as possessing stable internal attributes—preferences, opinions, and abilities—that they should express and assert. Other people matter primarily as audiences or evaluators. Social interaction becomes a space for signaling competence, confidence, authenticity, or conviction. In this framework, voice is closely tied to agency, and silence is often interpreted as disengagement, lack of preparation, or absence of a point of view.
By contrast, in contexts where an interdependent view of the self is more common, individuals understand themselves as fundamentally relational. Social roles, obligations, and relationships shape their identity. People are motivated to fulfill expectations tied to hierarchy and group membership, and to maintain relational harmony, and others evaluate behavior less in terms of self-expression and more in terms of social appropriateness.
In this framework, silence can carry a different meaning. Rather than signaling disengagement, it may reflect attentiveness, respect, or careful consideration of context. Speaking less in the presence of authority may signal social awareness rather than fear or lack of confidence. People may perceive someone drawing attention to themselves through overt disagreement as disruptive to group harmony. Silence, therefore, can function as a socially appropriate and responsible response.
These distinctions describe tendencies, not rigid categories. Individuals and organizations within any culture may draw from both models. Still, the differences are strong enough to shape how leaders interpret behavior and whether they create conditions that make dissent possible.
Inviting Voice Without Demanding Confrontation
Management thinkers often argue that dissent and disagreement are productive, and that organizations risk failure if they avoid conflict or suppress opposing views. But effective leaders operating in interdependent, obligation-oriented contexts do not eliminate dissent. Instead, they structure it differently.
Across many Asian organizational contexts, three recurring strategies emerge. First, leaders deliberately direct dissent. In many organizations, dissent does not arise from spontaneous individual assertion. Leaders recognize that hierarchy can suppress voice if left unaddressed, and they take responsibility for inviting it. They may explicitly assign individuals to raise potential objections during planning meetings. By transforming disagreement from a personal risk into a role-based expectation, leaders make it safer to surface concerns. Employees can frame their input not as defiance, but as fulfilling a responsibility to the group. In this way, leaders draw on employees’ sense of obligation as a resource rather than allowing it to slide into over-deference.
In Japanese firms, for example, employees typically use indirect or hedged forms of speech. Leaders are expected to read these cues rather than demand blunt confrontation. The Japanese concept of kuuki wo yomu—“reading the air”—captures the expectation that leaders attend to concerns that people do not state directly.
In her work on cross-cultural management, INSEAD professor Erin Meyer recounts a moment after a talk she gave in Tokyo when no one initially raised a question. Her Japanese publisher, Tomoko, paused, scanned the room, and gently invited specific individuals to speak, drawing out thoughtful questions. When Meyer asked how she knew who had something to say, Tomoko replied, “It had to do with how bright their eyes were.”
A second strategy is for leaders to frame dissent as a responsibility to the collective good rather than as an expression of individual autonomy. Over time, this collective framing reshapes not only whether employees speak, but also what they choose to speak about.
I note such dynamics in my research on the Tata Steel, one of the world’s leading steel producers and the only integrated steel company outside Japan to win the Deming Application Prize for Total Quality Management (TQM) in 2008. To qualify, the Deming Assessment required that all 35,000 workers understand and enact (TQM) practices. The management team actively encouraged employees to critique processes and suggest ways of improving quality and production, framing employee voice not as an act of individual assertion but as a responsibility toward the collective goal of organizational excellence.
Balasubramanian Muthuraman, then managing director of Tata Steel, explained that cultivating employee voice did not begin with discussions about strategy or production. Early conversations between leadership and workers revolved around everyday concerns about life in the town—things like housing and road maintenance. But over time, communication deepened and the nature of employee engagement began to shift. Workers started asking questions about the company’s commitment to winning the Deming Prize—for example, what TQMs were and how they could get involved. This shift emerged from, as Muthuraman put it, a “tremendous amount of communication” between leadership and workers.
Through this process, voice became tied to a shared organizational purpose. Employees came to see raising concerns and contributing ideas not as acts of personal dissent, but as participation in a collective effort to improve quality and performance across the organization. Similarly, the Chinese concept of he (“harmony”), which is frequently referenced in corporate mission statements, encompasses mutual benefit, balanced development, and cooperative relationships. Within this framework, people find voicing concern acceptable when it serves collective well-being.
A third strategy is for leaders to protect dignity and face, or the importance of maintaining respect and social standing in front of others. In hierarchical settings, public disagreement can threaten the standing of speakers and authority figures. Scholars of face negotiation theory note that maintaining dignity is central to effective interaction. Silence can therefore serve as a strategic way of managing social risk. Individuals may defer, soften, express privately, or communicate disagreement through group channels rather than direct confrontation. Leaders signal that they are attentive to employee perspective, even when employees express concerns indirectly.
For example, in cultures that value saving face, employees often avoid directly saying “no” or openly disagreeing with a leader. Instead, they might say something like, “We will try our best,” even if they have doubts about the plan or deadline. Experienced managers pay close attention to body language, tone, and hesitation, and they may follow up gently by saying, “You didn’t seem fully confident—are there risks we should discuss?” People who are not used to this style of communication may mistake polite responses for full agreement and overlook the underlying concern of saving face.
When leaders use these approaches to encourage feedback and demonstrate that they will not hold it against employees, employees feel safer engaging in deliberation, even if they do so cautiously. Paradoxically, this can make dissent more likely when it truly matters. Asian multinationals and leadership models now feature prominently in business education. Works such as The India Way, Fortune Makers, and Resolute Japan document practices that depart from Western autonomy-centric assumptions yet have produced globally competitive firms.
Leading Across Difference in a Pluralistic World
In a world shaped by geopolitical tension and economic uncertainty, cultural sensitization is not optional, it is strategic. Many organizations operate across borders, employ multicultural teams, and depend on global flows of talent and capital.
From both a civic and organizational perspective, effective leaders do not assume that voice will naturally emerge. They assume responsibility for drawing it out, analyzing it, and situating it within collective goals. In multicultural settings, this may mean asking: Do we reward only direct confrontation? Do we create formal roles for dissent? Do we interpret silence as resistance when it may reflect respect?
The contrast between autonomy-oriented and obligation-oriented models of voice points to a broader lesson. Disagreement is not simply something individuals do. It is something communities and institutions make possible. Whether silence is treated as disengagement or as deliberation depends less on personal disposition than on whether leaders accept responsibility for structuring voice, authority, and difference.
Read more stories by Ritu Tripathi.