Speaking Truth to Power
Why important information is filtered, softened or withheld — and how leaders make candour more likely.
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KEYNOTE SPEAKER
Megan Reitz
Leadership researcher, author and Associate Fellow at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford
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WHY MEGAN
What Megan brings to the room.
Megan Reitz helps leaders understand how power shapes what people say, what decision-makers hear and whether truth can travel through an organisation.
KEYNOTE TOPICS
Ideas built for the stage.
Listen Up
How status changes a conversation and what senior leaders can do to hear what is not being volunteered.
Leadership, Voice and Culture
How everyday reactions to challenge teach people whether an organisation genuinely values dissent.
Employee Activism and Responsible Leadership
How leaders navigate values, public voice and shifting expectations inside and outside the organisation.
Megan Reitz researches the intersection of leadership, power, dialogue and employee voice. Her work examines a deceptively difficult organisational question: why do people with important information so often remain silent, even when leaders say they want candour?
Drawing on research with executives and employees, Reitz shows that speaking up is never only a matter of individual courage. Status, hierarchy, identity and previous leadership reactions all affect whether a person believes it is safe — or useful — to say what others may not want to hear. Her work therefore asks leaders to move beyond inviting voice and learn how to listen up: to recognise the effect of their own power, seek perspectives unlikely to volunteer and respond in ways that make future candour more likely.
Reitz is an Associate Fellow at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, and a leadership and dialogue professor at Hult International Business School. She is co-author with John Higgins of Speak Out, Listen Up and Speak Up. On stage, she turns research on power and silence into practical questions senior teams can use immediately.
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