This episode comes from Nicola Richardson, who founded The People Mentor to help small employers, managers and leaders handle difficult conversations, strengthen accountability, and lead with calm, practical confidence.
In this solo episode I want to talk about something that doesn’t get said enough in leadership and management circles: what happens when you lose your voice at work. Not your literal voice, your professional one. The part of you that speaks up, pushes back, asks the question in the room, advocates for yourself and for what’s right. I’ve seen it happen to people I’ve worked with, and I’ve lived it myself, and what I’ve learned is that it’s almost never about becoming a less capable or less courageous person. It’s usually a response to something: pressure, a difficult relationship, or something outside work pulling your energy elsewhere. Understanding that changes what you do about it.
Listen to the full episode on Spotify below.
Key takeaways from The People Mentor
- Losing your voice at work is rarely a character flaw. It’s usually a response to pressure, a difficult relationship, or something pulling your energy elsewhere.
- Silence compounds. The longer you go without saying the thing you need to say, the heavier it gets and the harder it is to start.
- When a capable, engaged person goes quiet, that’s information, not a lack of ability. The question to ask, with genuine curiosity, is what’s changed.
- Managers have a choice: write someone off, or notice the shift and create space for a proper conversation. That choice catches things before withdrawal turns into resentment, and resentment into departure.
- Finding your voice again isn’t about becoming braver or tougher. It’s about getting clear on what’s happening, what you need to say, and how to say it honestly and calmly.
- Speaking up ripples outward. It changes not just your work, but how you show up everywhere you’d been making yourself smaller.
What I Cover in This Episode
- What it really means to lose your professional voice, and why it happens
- My own experience of going quiet at work while my first marriage was failing
- The pattern I see in capable clients who’ve stopped speaking up
- One client’s story of reclaiming her voice and her dignity through a badly handled process
- Why going quiet is information a good leader learns to read
- What getting your voice back actually takes, and why it’s learnable
A Useful Reframe
She didn’t act calm. She found calm. There’s a difference. Getting your voice back isn’t about becoming braver. It’s about becoming clear.
Episode Transcript
Hello and welcome back to The People Mentor podcast. I’m Nicola Richardson. Today I want to talk about something that doesn’t get said enough in leadership and management circles. What happens when you lose your voice?
Not your literal voice. Your professional one. The part of you that speaks up, pushes back, asks the question in the room, raises the thing that needs to be raised. The part that advocates for yourself and for what’s right.
Because I’ve seen it happen to people I’ve worked with. And I’ve experienced it myself. And what I’ve learned is that losing your voice is almost never about suddenly becoming a less capable or less courageous person. It’s usually a response to something. Pressure. A difficult relationship. Something happening outside of work that’s pulling your attention and your energy somewhere else entirely. Understanding that matters, because it changes what you do about it.
I want to start with something from my own life, because I think it’s relevant and I don’t talk about it enough. When my first marriage was failing, I went into myself. That’s the only way I can describe it. I withdrew. And the withdrawal didn’t stay at home. It followed me to work.
I stopped speaking up in meetings when I should have. I went quiet when I had something worth saying. I was doing the job, keeping things moving, but I was operating at about half capacity, and I knew it. I was carrying too much privately, and there wasn’t enough left over to show up fully at work.
Some of my managers had pretty much written me off at that time. Not because my work had fallen apart, but because I’d gone quiet, and they read that as a lack of capability rather than a person going through something difficult and not getting the support they needed.
That experience stayed with me. It taught me two things. First, that losing your voice at work is often a symptom of something, not a character flaw. And second, that the managers and leaders around someone who’s gone quiet have a choice. They can write that person off, or they can notice what’s happening and create enough space for a proper conversation.
The divorce was the turning point. My voice came back with it. Not gradually over years, more like a door opening. And I became very aware of how much I’d been suppressing.
I see a version of this story regularly with the people I work with. Someone who is genuinely good at their job, experienced, capable, who has somewhere along the way stopped speaking up. They’ve been overlooked enough times that they’ve stopped trying. Or they’ve been in a team dynamic where speaking up felt unsafe. Or they’re managing something at home, and work has had to take a back seat.
What I notice is that the silence tends to compound. The longer someone goes without saying the thing they need to say, the heavier it gets. And the heavier it gets, the harder it becomes to start.
There’s a story from my own experience working alongside a powerful, organised co-lead who took over everything. I started to step back, not because I wanted to, but because fighting for space felt exhausting. I switched off. I told myself to let her get on with it. For someone like me, that’s not natural. I recognised it as avoidance dressed up as pragmatism. And I see exactly the same thing in managers and leaders I work with now. They go quiet. They stop pushing. They tell themselves it’s fine.
It rarely is fine. The work suffers. The relationships suffer. And the person themselves often ends up feeling disconnected from their own role in a way that’s difficult to articulate. What they need isn’t someone to tell them to speak up. What they need is support to understand why they stopped, what’s making it feel so difficult, and a manageable route back in.
I want to tell you about someone I worked with, because her story says better than I ever could what it looks and feels like to find your voice again after losing it. She came to me in a genuinely difficult position. She’d been seriously unwell and was still recovering when she found herself caught up in a mismanaged disciplinary process at work. Her leadership team communicated poorly throughout. She described feeling overwhelmed, unfairly treated, and like she was battling to hold onto her professional dignity at the worst possible time. Her own words when she first came to me: I was at rock bottom.
She found me through my newsletter. She said she was struck immediately by plain, direct language. No fluff. No corporate softening. She wanted someone who would tell her the truth and help her work out what to do with it.
We worked together on getting her clear. Clear on what had actually happened. Clear on what she needed to say and how to say it, without lashing out, without crumbling, and without making herself smaller just to keep the peace. She didn’t act calm. She actually found calmness. There’s a difference.
Within two sessions, she told me her whole approach had shifted. And what she said afterwards has stayed with me. She said: I finally felt heard. Not by them. By myself. I had reclaimed my voice and my professional dignity despite a deeply flawed process.
Her thirteen-year-old daughter, watching her mum go through that process, told her to pass on a message to me. She said simply: tell Nicola she is wonderful, because Nicola has been wonderful to you. I’m sharing that because it matters. Getting your voice back doesn’t just affect your work. It ripples outwards into everything.
Whether you’re listening as someone who has lost their own voice, or as a leader trying to understand someone on your team who has gone quiet, there are a few things I’d want you to take from this.
Going quiet is information. When someone who has previously been engaged, vocal and present starts withdrawing, that’s telling you something. The question worth asking is: what’s changed? Not accusatorially. With genuine curiosity. The skill of having that conversation, noticing the shift and naming it directly but kindly, is one of the most valuable things a manager can develop. Because it catches things early. Before the withdrawal becomes resentment. Before resentment becomes departure.
And if you’re the person who’s lost your voice, I want you to know that getting it back is not about suddenly becoming braver or tougher. It’s about getting clear. Clear on what’s happening, what you need to say, and how to say it in a way that is honest and measured, without being aggressive or passive. That clarity comes with support and the right tools. You don’t have to work it out on your own.
Speaking up at work changes things. Not just there, but everywhere. I’ve watched it happen with clients over and over. They start speaking up in a difficult conversation at work, and it ripples into how they show up at home, in their relationships, in every area of their lives where they’d been making themselves smaller than they needed to be. That’s the work. And it’s learnable.
If any of this has resonated with you, if you recognise yourself in any part of what I’ve described today, then there are a variety of ways of working with me, from one-to-one coaching to online courses with community space. You’ll find out more at thepeoplementor.co.uk. Thank you so much for listening. If this has been useful, please do share it with someone who needs to hear it. And I’ll see you in the next one.
Resources Mentioned
- The People Mentor newsletter: plain, direct writing on leadership and difficult conversations, and how one client first found Nicola.
- Ways to work with Nicola: one-to-one coaching and online courses with a community space.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does it mean to “lose your voice” at work? Not literally. It’s when the part of you that speaks up, asks the question, pushes back or advocates for yourself goes quiet. It usually happens in response to something, not because you’ve suddenly become less capable.
Why do capable, experienced people stop speaking up? Often they’ve been overlooked enough times that they’ve stopped trying, or the team dynamic has made speaking up feel unsafe, or they’re carrying something at home. The silence then compounds and gets heavier the longer it goes on.
I manage someone who’s gone quiet. What should I do? Treat it as information, not a failing. Notice the shift and name it directly but kindly, with curiosity rather than accusation: what’s changed? That one conversation often catches things before withdrawal hardens into resentment.
How do you actually get your voice back? By getting clear, not by forcing yourself to be tougher. Clear on what’s happening, what you need to say, and how to say it in a way that’s honest and measured. With the right support and tools, it’s very learnable.
A Final Thought
Going quiet is one of the easiest things in the world to misread, in yourself and in the people you lead. It looks like a lack of capability. Far more often it’s a capable person carrying too much, with too little support. If you recognise yourself in any of this, know that your voice isn’t gone. It’s waiting for the clarity and the space to come back.
If any of this has resonated, there are lots of ways to work with me. For managers who want practical, ongoing support with exactly this kind of thing, The Manager’s Academy gives you the tools and a community to lean on, all for less than the cost of a coffee a week. If you’d rather go deeper one to one, or through my online courses with a community space, you’ll find everything at thepeoplementor.co.uk. And if this episode’s been useful, please share it with someone who needs to hear it.