Should You Stay Silent or Speak Up?

What do you do when you’ve been disrespected on the job, disagree with your boss, or feel like you’re wasting your time and talents on the job?

Should you speak up and risk rocking the boat or stay silent and maintain the status quo?

Both options can be a valid response, depending on the circumstances. The trick is understanding your situation and knowing what’s best for you and your career.

Take the following factors into consideration.

Unethical practices. If you believe that your company or manager are engaged in unethical or immoral behavior you likely will want to speak up. However, be careful to avoid accusations that might inflame the situation. You can begin conversations with “It seems to me that …” or “It appears we …” but it’s probably better to bring the discussion to your Human Resources department, rather than with your boss (particularly if you believe he or she is knowingly involved in unethical behavior).

A strong emotional response. If the situation is provoking intense feelings, such as anger or frustration, it will be helpful to bring this up. However, it’s how you bring this up that is important. In the midst of intense reactions, it can be best to remain silent and wait until you feel more in control of your words. Rather than defuse a situation or clarify a misunderstanding, responding in anger can make things worse, delaying or preventing a positive resolution.

Disagreements on the job. If you believe that your skills are not being used properly or you disagree on the direction of a project that is an indication that you’ll want to engage your manager or coworker in a conversation. This is not a time to be haughty or rude but to clearly lay out the reasons behind your disagreement and seek to bring understanding to the situation.

It’s often easier to remain silent on the job or to respond in anger to a situation but it’s important to your career development to deepen your skills at resolving conflicts and knowing when and how to communicate effectively.

High 5 Weekly Career Transitions Roundup: 5 Brilliant (and Simple) Ways to Make a Good First Impression

This is our weekly roundup of some of the best career-related articles, interviews, blogs, etc., we've read during the week. We share them so you have some great resources to prepare you for the coming week. Enjoy!

• 5 Brilliant (and Simple) Ways to Make a Good First Impression: "Something as simple as smiling when you talk or engaging with your eyes in a way that shows interest can go a long way."

• The 4 Reasons Why I Love to Fail: "On the flip side, instead of breaking our will, an embarrassing setback can harden it into titanium and give us the determination to do whatever it takes to achieve our final objective."

• An Entrepreneur's Guide to Confronting and Harnessing Anger: "For many of us, anger is just fear in disguise. It doesn’t matter what it is - fear of the unknown, fear of failure, fear of feeling small - fear can lead a person down a very dark path."

• What to do When a Personal Crisis is Hurting Your Professional Life: "These are all incredibly tough situations to navigate personally — let alone professionally. Should you disclose what’s happening to your manager and colleagues?"
• 10 Proven Strategies to Build Trust: "Anything that communicates listening, empathy, confidence, caring, is going to signal trustworthiness from a preconscious perspective. Those nonverbals register in our brains as signals of trust or distrust."