Methods, systems, and devices for wireless communication are described. A wireless device communicating critical or latency sensitive information may determine that a clear channel assessment (CCA) has failed in a shared radio frequency (RF) spectrum band. The device may then transmit a silencing signal in a managed RF spectrum band, and switch to communicating in the managed band from transmitting in the shared band. Other wireless devices communicating with the first device may receive the silencing signal and may also switch to the managed RF spectrum band. Based on the silencing signal, user equipments (UEs) not associated with the critical communications, but also operating in the managed band, may suspend transmissions in the managed band (e.g., uplink (UL) data), although they may still receive transmissions in the managed band (e.g., downlink (DL) data).