Should a meeting in Seychelles be held in Kreol rather than English?

Not necessarily. English is the working language of most companies, and foreign colleagues rarely speak Kreol. What helps is allowing Kreol, or any language, during the thinking parts of the meeting, such as discussion in pairs, and keeping English for the shared conclusion.

Is the silence a sign that the team does not care?

Rarely. It is more often a calculation about cost: the cost of being the person who disagreed in front of everyone, in a place where everyone will meet again. People who say nothing in the room often have the most precise objections once asked privately.

Does this change for a video meeting between Mahé and Praslin?

It gets harder. A video call removes the glances and side comments that tell a manager something is wrong. The fixes in this article matter even more at a distance: questions sent before the call, and a written summary after it that everyone has to confirm.

Silence in meetings in Seychelles, and how to read it

Picture a morning briefing in a hotel on Praslin, or a team meeting at a processing plant in Victoria. The manager explains a new procedure in English, then asks whether anyone sees a problem with it. Nobody does. Two weeks later the procedure is being applied by half the team, and the other half has quietly kept the old way.

The manager reads this as resistance. It is more often a meeting format that made objecting too expensive. In Seychelles, three local facts raise that price.

Three reasons the room goes quiet here

The meeting runs in a second language. Kreol Seselwa is the language most Seychellois staff grew up in, think in and joke in. English is the language of procedures, emails and meetings. Following a detailed proposal in English is fine; building an objection to it, in English, in real time, in front of a manager, is a different task. By the time the argument is ready, the meeting has moved to the next point.

For the foreign colleagues in the room, from India, Sri Lanka, Kenya or Madagascar, English may be a third language. The delay is the same, sometimes longer.

The island is small. With around 100,000 inhabitants, a supervisor who is contradicted in public by a junior colleague will see that colleague at church, at the market or at a family event. The disagreement does not stay in the meeting room. Many people prefer to raise it later, one to one, where it costs nobody their standing.

A work permit changes the calculation. A foreign employee’s permit is tied to the employer. Nobody needs to threaten anything for that fact to weigh on the decision to speak up in front of management. It simply makes silence the safer choice.

None of this is passivity. It is a reasonable reading of the risks. How nationalities mix in Seychellois teams is covered in more depth in managing across nationalities in Seychelles, and the language question in choosing the language for a training session.

What does not work

Asking more firmly. “Any objections? No? Are you sure?” makes the barrier higher, because each repetition signals that the manager expects a no, and that the person who objects will be the one holding everybody up.

Waiting for the most senior Seychellois supervisor to speak for the team does not work either. They will often translate the mood accurately in private and say nothing in public, for the same reasons as everyone else.

Three changes to the meeting itself

Let people think in pairs, in any language. After presenting the proposal, give the room three minutes: each pair discusses what could go wrong, in Kreol, English, French or Tamil, it does not matter. Then each pair reports one risk in English. The objection no longer belongs to one person, it belongs to the pair, and it has been formed in the language people think in.

Ask what people would need, not whether they agree. “What would you need to make this work on your shift?” is an easy question to answer honestly. The answers are the objections, stated as requests: another person on the evening shift, a delay until the end of the high season, a version of the checklist that fits in a pocket.

Plan for the objection that comes after. The most useful comment of the meeting will often come on the walk back to the kitchen or the store. Build that moment in: five minutes with each supervisor after the meeting, or a short written summary sent the same day, with a simple request to reply if something is wrong. People who would never contradict the manager in the room will answer a message.

Why this matters more in Seychelles than elsewhere

In a large city, a decision that half the team never accepted produces friction. Here, it produces friction that follows people out of work, into a community where they will keep meeting for years. A manager who brings the objections out early is not being soft. They are preventing a conflict from settling in.

The good news is that none of these changes require guessing anyone’s culture or background. They work because they lower the cost of speaking, for everyone at once. This is one of the practical modules of The manager-leader toolkit, where participants test these formats on their own meetings.