Corporate people

I had worked in the corporate for over 17 years. In this 17 years I have met a plethora of characters in various offices. Whenever I changed the organisation I realised that only the names and faces change. Wherever we go we find the same characters. One of such characters is people with loudest voice.

In my first company I had met a person who had a very loud voice. That time I thought that may be this person has a hearing problem. They are screaming at the top of their lungs because they have trouble hearing and cannot understand how loud they are. I genuinely thought that. One day when I was speaking with them they asked me why I speak so softly. I said this is how I speak. I am a soft spoken person. I really raise my voice. Now this loud person told me that if you have to survive in the corporate environment you have to be very loud. Only the loud voices are heard by the management. Only the loud voices get the importance. They also told me that soft spoken person like you would be crushed in the corporate. I did not believe them even for a single second.

In my next organisation I found another person who was loud. I thought this would be just another loud person, only to find out that every person in a particular function was loud. I was able to meet 15 to 20 people from the same function who were equally loud or louder. Attending a meeting with such people was a nightmare. Whenever I would be in a meeting with them I would fear that my eardrums would not be able to tolerate this torture. If two or more people from the loud community would be in the meeting it would be a deafening screaming match. There would be a competition of who is the loudest voice in the room. Attending such meetings was tortuous. Even with these people when they would speak (or scream) they would not speak anything of value. They would either repeat what the previous person had said or speak something that had no meaning at all. The only reason for them to speak in the meeting was to show their presence. Their presence would be equally futile as what thir speech.

In my next organisation I met another loud person. This person was so loud that their voicr was would be heard even out of the soundproof conference room. The traits that this person had were exactly like the other loud people I had met. All the talk was without any value. Just loud voice and nothing else. This person to had told me that if you want to stay in the corporate you need to be loud. If you are are loud then nobody would argue with you and everything you said would get approved (spoiler: this is not true).

In my last organisation I was at a managerial role. I would interact with the senior management. I got insights from the senior management that they absolutely hate loud people. Being loud does not get them anywhere but rather in the eyes of management and the clients and they appear immature and unprofessional.

So my conclusion at the very beginning of my career was right. You do not need to be the loudest voice in the room to be heard. You need to speak what is meaningful and it would be heard. It would not matter if you are a soft spoken person. If your words are valuable then they would be heard irrespective of the volume.