What is it that's stopping us speaking our minds?
According to a team that helps develop and train our graduates, managers and leaders they’re noticing a worrying trend - an inability to have those difficult conversations, and it’s got them worried.
Dear readers,
A big read dominates today. I
Some of those involved in training at all levels are seeing a concerning trend when it comes to our ability to communicate - an unwillingness to have those difficult conversations.
Of course, such conversations are difficult by definition, but is it really true that 70 per cent of us shy away from raising anything termed ‘difficult’ with our bosses?
We think the questions around this are fascinating, not least because of the relevance to just about every aspect of our lives - from work and business to family life and relationships.
Those questions have been posed by a group of leadership and development consultants and coaches who’re becoming concerned. They explain why in the article below, and we’re encouraging you join us and take part in their research (see the link at the foot of this page or click here).
Best regards,
Andrew Merrell (editor).
Briefing Notes
📆 Calendar of events released for social and environmentally responsible businesses: Gloucestershire B Local, which exists to support and showcase B Corps across the county, has just published a packed calendar of events over the next two months aimed at doing just that. More information on its series of webinars can be found here.
🫘☕🥐 Following significant investment, a Gloucester-based business has revealed it is targeting a doubling of turnover to £15 million in its wholesale food business. The P & M Group has revealed details of investment at one of its Midlands companies. Chris Morgan, managing director at that Leicester-based firm, Waterside, predicted an increase in turnover from £7m rising to £15m. More here.
🧑🏽🏫👨🎓👩🏼🎓 When National Apprenticeship Week 2026 kicks off from Monday 9 February. The University of Gloucestershire will be showcasing its apprentices, employer partners and extensive range of higher and degree apprenticeship opportunities. It currently delivers 17 higher and degree apprenticeships across health and social care, digital and cyber, and business and leadership. More here.
Businesses to lay out their stalls to attract the next generation of talent
Probably Gloucestershire’s biggest catalyst when it comes to apprenticeship training, an organisation that knows it all, helps companies train staff from all manner of sectors and tailor training to suit, has a specialist team on hand to help make everyone’s journey as easy as possible, is due to stage a special opening evening.
Gloucestershire College is due to stage a special Apprenticeship Open Evening on Wednesday 25 February 2026 from 5pm to 8pm at its Gloucester Campus in Llanthony Road. It’s free to attend.
Many of Gloucestershire’s best employers, big and small, will be on hand to chat to anyone who wants to know more and there are still spaces for other businesses to join - for free.
Programmes at the college cover everything from construction, professional services, engineering, dental, catering, teaching and hairdressing to cyber security and computing. Apprenticeships range from entry-level to Level 6 degree (equal to a university degree). More here.
Employers interested in booking a free stand at the event can email employer.training@gloscol.ac.uk or marketing@gloscol.ac.uk
Diary Dates
Friday
🎸🎶🎶 Ben Portsmouth brings the ULTIMATE Elvis experience to Cheltenham Town Hall! From 7.30pm. .
Saturday 7 February.
🎶🎶 Capriol Chamber Orchestra plays Holy Trinity Church, Stroud at 7.30pm. Expect Wasps Overture by Vaughan Williams and the Clarinet Concerto by Mozart. More here.
🎶🎶 The Music Works presents UPSURGE: An evening with Gloucestershire’s most watched emerging talent. From 7pm at Stroud’s Sub Rooms. More here.
⚽ Gloucester City FC play Weymouth at home. KO 3pm.
⚽ Cheltenham Town FC play MK Dons at home. KO 3pm.
⚽ Forest Green Rovers FC play York City away at 3pm.
🏉 Gloucester Rugby v Exeter Chiefs away at 2pm.
Sunday 8 February.
⚽ Gloucester City Women FC play Frampton Rangers Ladies at home. KO 4.30pm.
Future thinking…
Willans LLP solicitors stages Your essential toolkit - The Renters’ Rights Act 2025 and implementation. How the new law will will affect landlords’ rights and responsibilities for landlords, letting agents and property professionals. From 4pm to 6pm. More here.
Woke culture, mobile phones, lockdown: What is it that’s stopping us speaking our minds?
According to a team that helps develop and train our graduates, managers and leaders they’re noticing a worrying trend - a creeping inability to have those difficult conversations, and it’s got them worried.
Lockdown, working from home, the rise of woke culture, a fixation with mobile phones - none of them gave birth to anxiety around difficult conversations or our tendency as a species to shy away from confrontation.
But according to those who help develop our youngest, brightest graduates, our apprentices and up-and-coming managers, there is a real sense of a general and definite creep in that direction.
A study quoted recently by Harvard Business School suggests as many as 70 per cent of us now avoid raising important difficult issues with our bosses, and anecdotal evidence suggests that goes for colleagues and close relationships too.
Maybe changing times have simply brought an issue that’s always been there into focus? Afterall, human beings have long managed uncomfortable feelings through avoidance.
Have we simply become comfortable about avoiding those conversations, or has the stress created by the mere thought of them become the monkey on our backs stopping us from even trying?
The coaches behind the new research that prompted this article are not really sure - yet, but they intend to find out.
Nigel Denning, an experienced leadership and development consultant and coach, spends a significant amount of his time developing up-and-coming managers, graduates and senior teams and works with some of the UK’s biggest businesses.
“I had been observing this for a while in group settings, but it didn’t really strike me until I had a particular conversation with my daughter,” said Denning, founder of Speak Easy Consultancy Ltd.
“She is 22 and four months into travelling around Australia. She is not shy or retiring. She has stood on the podium at big swimming competitions as a kid, and performed publicly in shows singing solos in front of hundreds of people.
“So, she is not afraid of the spotlight.
“But when I asked her about a chat she needed to have with her boss about a change in public transport and a tiny shift in core hours (leaving 10 mins earlier – whilst arriving earlier in the morning), which would mean she worked over and above her hours, the shutters came up.
“She did not feel able to have the conversation. She would rather work around it and make her own life difficult.”
Whether that was a result of her boss being unapproachable, a crisis in confidence or a fear for her job, he wasn’t sure. The conversation ended there.
But it was the moment he realised he had been noticing the same behaviour for a while, not just with many of the graduates he was helping train, but the managers too.
He felt sure something had shifted in people’s willingness to begin conversations and recover them if they feel like they are going wrong. Making mistakes seemed to have become unfashionable.
Was it the result of our increased awareness that we need to respect the many differences we now say we want to celebrate - the different cultures, beliefs and ways of being? What some call ‘woke’ culture.
Have we become so aware we’re paralysed by a fear of offending if we get it wrong?
Or was it something else?
Is the workplace a world where what we call DE&I - diversity, equity, and inclusion - simply doesn’t always fit?
“We’re schooled on social media where we see anyone who tries but fails to clearly express their opinion or a different opinion, taken down and destroyed - with hundreds of others piling in to stifle any chance of them trying again to make their point better,” said Denning.
“We’ve gone through lockdown, where meeting and talking to people started happening online - or not at all.
“Connection now is often through a screen, a swipe and a direct message and no longer a glance, a smile and a nervous opening line. How is this distance affecting our conversation?
“Young people make their way through education with a soundtrack of ‘whoever you are, and however you are is ok (within the bounds of safe behaviour at school and university).
“Quite rightly difference is welcome and accepted at face value, but what happens when those differences rub against each other?
“How skilled are young people at exploring intent, impact and options? Acceptance without understanding can lead to unvoiced resentment. I’m unconvinced silence is understanding.
“Young people are right to confused at work; DE and I (diversity, equity, and inclusion) aligns well with the educational message ‘whoever and however you are is ok’ but feels somehow at odds with ‘demonstrate theses values and behaviours at work’ (often defined even further in competencies that will determine your long term career prospects).
“How do I show up at work ‘whole self’ or my ‘best self’ and what does that mean?
“What we don’t really know is whether any of that’s part of the issue or not,” admitted Denning.
Which is why he and his colleagues founded Speak Easy Consultancy Ltd, to look more closely at what might be going on.
Simon Merrell, of Merrell People, a Gloucestershire-based consultancy that specialises in supporting teams, groups and individuals to bring about change, is another member of the team behind Speak Easy Consultancy.
“We all seem to recognise this would be a good area to focus on.
“There are already lots of good books written with meaningful-sounding titles, like Courageous Conversations and Radical Candour, but when you look closer there has been very little research. We decided to start with the research,” said Merrell.
The team has launched an online questionnaire to help it gather information on the subject.
“The initial survey is a great opportunity for people to reflect on their own attitudes and habits.
“People who have already completed it have told us how valuable it has been stopping and thinking about important conversations and relationships. This is great to hear.
“We want to explore areas of interest that arise from the initial set of results, to work out what is going on for people and to figure out how we can get better at navigating conversations.”
“Importantly our first objective is to try to identify whether there really is a problem there,” said Merrell.
“If there is, we’ll then try to unpick what it is and how we can help people work through those challenges to overcome and actually have those conversations.”
If they are successful, we hope to write about that here too.
Gemma Irvine, HR and operations director at Cheltenham-headquartered HR People Support, a Cheltenham headquartered, said she thought the Speak Easy Consultancy team was onto something.
“Working with a range a clients, we do see more often that not managers/business owners shy away from having those difficult conversations.
“For a multitude of reasons, they may not be able to find the time, they don’t like conflict, or they may prefer to give the benefit of the doubt, but all of which prevent the individual having any control and input into what happens next.
“Without these conversations, the individual has no way of being able to influence the outcome; the manager/business owner decides when and what happens next, which inevitably leads to increased levels of conflict, detracting from any shared goal.
“Early interventions, by having those honest conversations that shape expectations and reframe or clarify goals, are much more powerful in unlocking barriers, exposing challenges which can be overcome, and providing clear aligned pathways for a successful outcome.
“The successful outcome may not always be what’s expected, but it at least needs to allow for individuals to choose the part they play.
“Whether it’s through formal methods such as mediation (we have trained mediators within our team) or informal, regular feedback sessions, discussions should enable individuals to navigate conflict, challenge, and debate, with a clear focus on the goal.”
The Harvard Business School article we referred to above references a study by another coaching and training company, called Bravely, said: “Most hope the issue will resolve itself, but that is rarely the case.
“The longer the conversation festers, the more resentment tends to build, and the harder the discussion becomes once you’ve worked up the courage to start it.
“Fifty-three percent of employees handle ‘toxic’ situations by ignoring them. That avoidance impacts your team.”
Here in the UK, Acas (Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service) has a 24-page pdf called Challenging Conversations and How to Manage Them.
It opens with this line: “For many people challenging or difficult conversations are a bit like the common cold: we all get them, they can be a real nuisance, but there seems to be no cure. Unlike the common cold, these conversations should not be avoided.
“The ability to be able to talk about very sensitive and emotive issues is an integral part of effective line management and can be critical to managing performance, promoting attendance and improving team dynamics.”
All very well for the bosses, who the guidance is written for, but if you’re a staff member who needs to speak to a senior member of staff or a boss, the consequences of getting the conversation wrong can seem too daunting to even try.
Even raising an issue with a colleague can be difficult, especially if you rarely meet them because you work from home.
Denning added: “If something is taking place, and we can help arrest it and make a positive change, the impact could be huge – less stress at work for individuals, better working relationships, better relationships all around; less stress means less time off, greater productivity.
“There could potentially be lots of wins, on a personal and professional level. There is an even bigger calling for me though. This is not about wanting people to be softer. It’s about understanding how to be kinder to one another too.”
To find the survey, visit Conversation Research.