“I think I'd better not say that: everything has been decided in advance anyway”, 'If you stick your head above the ground, it gets mowed off immediately', 'I'm always that annoying person who is critical: with that stigma I'll never stand a chance of a promotion'.   

 These are statements we all hear from time to time. Statements that also cause concern in light of social safety, especially in an organization where knowledge, insight and different perspectives can make the difference in how successful we are. Knowledge is one of our core assets and collaboration is the method to obtain it. Social safety is a crucial prerequisite for success, also according to the book “The fearless organization.”  

 Feeling inhibited in knowledge sharing usually has a deeper cause: you observe (and learn from) how feedback is handled by the recipient. If this structurally amounts to postponing, or “saying yes, doing no”, or “not really answering the question”, or worse: showing an attitude that the contribution must be “'managed away” as quickly as possible, then social safety is quickly compromised and phenomena such as “Silent Quiting” are lurking.    

Knowledge sharing often arises from an intrinsic motivation as a student or employee to contribute to the success of the TU/e. Of course, knowledge has many forms and many levels of quality, but in every form of knowledge sharing one can find a reason to believe in that contribution. Responding to knowledge sharing with a closed attitude is disastrous for those who believe in the importance of knowledge sharing, and thus for the TU/e. Especially people with a prestigious position can have an oppressive effect on those around them.   

Fortunately, the opportunities to improve as an organization are abundant. This was also evident during Naomi Ellemers' lecture at the Social Safety day on May 30. Her message: let's learn to be more open to knowledge and become curious together about what it can do for us. Do we feel inhibited? Do we experience resistance to sharing knowledge? Then we should make it explicit and explore together what is really going on. Getting to the core faster also saves time and resources, reduces workload, and increases the quality of the results.  

So let's communicate our ideas, visions and insights, and talk about them together in equality. Not only because we can then contribute to one of the valuable assets of the TU/e (knowledge), but also because it will contribute to a safer (work) culture. After all, not everything is fixed or decided in advance; change is possible when you make your voice heard with concerns and solutions. Diversity enriches decision-making, just as a variety of flowers makes a bouquet fuller. Standing out and being visible not only gets you noticed, but also opens the doors to advancement and promotion.   

Remco Tuinier  

Ellen Konijnenberg 

Michel van Eerd 

Víctor Sánchez Martín 

Anton Darhuber 

Harold Weffers 

Max van Mulken 

Kimberley Thissen 

Martijn Klabbers  

PUC; Personnel Faction of the University Council