Ask most people what stops a colleague from saying something when they witness harassment, and the answer is usually some version of, “I didn’t have the courage.” or “It was not my place to do or say anything.”
I think we have been too comfortable with these explanations. The obvious organisational response is to tell people to be braver, speak up and do the right thing, while missing the much more practical question of whether we have actually equipped them to know what to do when faced with a situation.
The real barrier is often not knowing what to do
In my experience of working with organisations on workplace culture and POSH, one of the things that becomes clear very quickly is how differently people imagine bystander intervention when they are discussing it in a training room versus when they are faced with an uncomfortable situation in real life.
In a training room, “speak up” sounds straightforward.
In the moment, it can mean making a decision in a few seconds about whether to say something in front of everyone, whether to interrupt what is happening, whether to speak to the person privately afterwards, whether to tell a manager or HR, whether the Internal Committee needs to know, and whether stepping in might create a bigger problem for the person involved or for themselves.
Most employees have never been given enough clarity on these choices to make that decision with confidence.
So they hesitate.
And when you add the discomfort of everyone else being present, uncertainty about what they have actually witnessed, the possibility of getting it wrong and the fear of becoming involved in something that could have consequences for them, hesitation can very quickly become silence.
That is why the gap between what people say they would do and what they actually do is worth paying attention to.
A person can genuinely believe that harassment should be challenged, genuinely want to support a colleague and still freeze when they encounter it, because wanting to intervene and knowing how to intervene are two different capabilities.
What gets in the way is usually more complicated than courage
There is the fear of retaliation, particularly when the person involved has more power, influence or social standing than the person who witnesses the behaviour.
There is also the social risk of being perceived as someone who overreacts, creates trouble or cannot take a joke, and I have seen how powerful that fear can be even in organisations that genuinely believe they have created a speak-up culture.
Then there is the question that sits underneath almost every difficult situation: Did I actually see what I think I saw?
A comment may have been inappropriate, a conversation may have crossed a line, someone may have looked visibly uncomfortable, but the observer may still be unsure whether they have enough context to act.
That uncertainty is important because it creates an easy exit: perhaps I misunderstood, perhaps it was a joke, perhaps someone else will say something, perhaps it is not my place.
When several people in the same room are having that internal conversation at the same time, silence can look like collective agreement when it is actually collective uncertainty.
We need to make bystander intervention more practical
This is where I think a lot of bystander training still has room to improve.
We are quite good at explaining why intervention matters, but we need to spend much more time helping people understand the different ways in which intervention can happen, because expecting every employee to confront inappropriate behaviour directly is neither realistic nor appropriate for every situation.
There may be moments when a direct comment is the right response, while in another situation quietly interrupting what is happening can be more effective; sometimes the most useful thing a colleague can do is check in with the person privately afterwards, and sometimes the responsible action is to take the concern to someone who has the authority to address it.
The important thing is that employees understand these choices before they need to make them, including what they can say, whom they can approach, what information is useful to share and what happens after they raise a concern.
And this is where rehearsal matters. It helps build muscle memory.
If we want people to act differently in uncomfortable moments, we cannot rely entirely on awareness created during a training session; people need opportunities to think through scenarios, practise possible responses and understand that intervention can take different forms depending on the context.
The goal is to make the path from “Something doesn’t feel right” to “I know what I can do next” much shorter.
Because when we look at bystander silence only through the lens of courage, we risk asking employees to overcome a personal failing that may not exist, while leaving an organisational capability gap completely untouched.
People may already care deeply about what happens around them.