You will be able to read indirect signals and ask questions that surface real views in hierarchical settings.
Benjamin, a senior manager at an engineering firm in Changi Business Park, presents a new site schedule to his team and finishes with "Any concerns?" The room stays quiet, so he takes that as agreement and sends the schedule to the client. A week later, over kopi, a junior engineer tells a colleague that two of the dates were never realistic, which everyone at the meeting had known and nobody had said.
Benjamin didn't do anything wrong in the usual sense. He asked. But he asked in a way that, in his team, was almost certain to produce silence. This lesson is about reading that silence and the indirect signals around it, and asking questions that bring real views out.
In The Culture Map, Erin Meyer's leading scale runs from egalitarian to hierarchical. In more egalitarian teams, the boss is seen as one of the group, and challenging them in a meeting is normal. In more hierarchical teams, the boss is seen as standing above the group, and people defer to them, especially in public.
Many Singapore workplaces lean hierarchical, though it varies widely by company, industry and the person in charge. In a hierarchical team, "any concerns?" from a senior manager doesn't feel like an open invitation. It feels like a formality where the expected answer is no. Saying "yes, two of the dates won't work" in front of the whole team would mean contradicting the boss publicly, which most people will avoid.
So silence after "any concerns?" tells you very little. It might mean agreement. It might equally mean "I have concerns but this isn't the place". If you're the senior person, treat silence as missing information and go and find it.
Face is a person's standing and dignity in the eyes of others. Losing face means being embarrassed or diminished in front of people whose opinion matters, and giving face means helping someone keep or gain standing. The idea matters in workplaces across Asia and beyond, and everybody, wherever they come from, dislikes being shown up in public.
Two habits follow. First, criticise in private. Lesson 7.3, Give feedback to your peers and your manager, made this point for feedback. It applies just as much to questioning someone's plan or correcting their facts. A correction that would be fine one-to-one can feel humiliating in front of a team.
Second, let people change position without losing standing. If someone senior has committed publicly to a plan and the plan turns out to be wrong, give them a way to change it that doesn't look like a defeat. "With the new information from the supplier, would it make sense to revisit the dates?" lets the change be about new information rather than an earlier mistake. People change their minds much more readily when doing so doesn't cost them face.
In high-context settings, as lesson 8.1, Low-context and high-context communication, described, people often avoid saying "no" outright, especially to someone senior, so the refusal arrives in a softer form that you have to listen for.
Listen for phrases like these:
"We will try." "It may be difficult." "Let me check and get back to you." "In principle, yes." "That's an interesting idea."
Each of these can be a real yes, and each can be a polite no. The clues are in what surrounds them: a pause before answering, a lack of detail, no date attached, a change of subject. "Yes, we can do Friday, I'll send it by 3pm" is a yes. "Friday... we will try" is usually not.
When you hear one of these, don't push for a direct yes or no in public. Make the honest answer easy instead: "What would make Friday hard? And if Friday doesn't work, what's realistic?" Framed that way, the person gets to describe the real situation as useful information, which is far easier than refusing you.
If you're the one giving an indirect no, be aware that colleagues from more low-context backgrounds may take "we will try" literally. With them, it's kinder to be clearer: "Friday's not realistic. I can do Tuesday."
The underlying issue is what Amy Edmondson of Harvard Business School calls psychological safety: the shared belief that it's safe to take interpersonal risks in a team, like admitting a mistake or raising a concern. In teams without it, people stay quiet even when they can see a problem coming.
You can't create safety with one question, but the questions you ask make a difference. "Any concerns?" asks people to volunteer a challenge. Asking for risks directly turns the challenge into a task:
"What could go wrong with this schedule?"
"If this plan fails, what's the most likely reason?"
"Which of these dates are you least confident about?"
These questions assume there are risks, which there always are, so a person who names one is doing what was asked and contradicting nobody. Going round the table, or asking people to write one risk each on a sticky note or in the chat, makes it easier still, because no one person has to speak first.
When someone does raise a risk, thank them for it in front of the team. How you respond to the first concern decides whether anyone raises a second.
Think about the next meeting where you'll present something, or where a junior colleague might hold a view they won't volunteer. Picture the moment you'd normally ask "any questions?", and consider what the most junior person in the room would need to hear before they felt able to answer honestly.
Write two questions you could ask in your next meeting that would make it easier for a junior colleague to raise a concern.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).