How are you encouraging employees to speak up? Getting candid opinions and valuable feedback from your employees can be difficult. However, exceptional leadership is dependent on employees speaking freely. Employees need to offer critical and direct feedback about individual behaviors, workplace practices, and organizational policies. Furthermore, helping employees feel safe to speak up is a significant component of successful inclusive leadership. Do you create a culture that promotes psychological safety where employees can speak freely? Or, in contrast, does your organization make it hard for people to speak up?
Organizations want their workplace to be more inclusive, diverse, and equitable. Additionally, there is a lot of pressure placed on leaders to evolve their business at a swift pace, be innovative, and deliver excellence to their customers. Even more, extraordinary leaders are on a mission to grow revenue and bring value to society. As a result, creating an environment dedicated to open, honest, and timely communication is critical.
Leaders who create psychological safety see increased motivation in dealing with problems, higher engagement levels, more reliable performance, and valuable learning and development opportunities. Therefore, encouraging employees to speak up should be a priority for anyone in a leadership role.
Conversely, if people don’t feel safe speaking up at work, the organization becomes sluggish. As a leader, you will become blind to areas where you are falling short, and miss out on opportunities to improve.
Three Ways Employees Will Use Their Voice:
- Tell you what they think you want to hear
- Tell you their genuine opinion
- Stay quiet
The method of speaking up your employees use isn’t a result of their personality. Instead, the culture of the organization determines how employees voice concerns. Even more, your leadership determines how employees speak up. But that requires that you create psychological safety for your employees.
How to Create Psychological Safety and Encourage Employees to Speak Up at Work
Effective leaders depend on receiving valuable messages from down the ranks. They need input from customers, feedback on their performance, and information from other departments or units. When employees are unafraid to speak up, it puts leaders in better touch with customers and stakeholders, giving them a better understanding of their problems and future possibilities.
Additionally, employees who speak up help leaders address issues or problems as they arise, giving them time to correct them. These tips will help you create psychological safety and encourage employees to speak up.
Invite Feedback, Listen, and Act
Team meetings, one-to-ones, and anonymous feedback are great ways to solicit feedback. Leaders who are approachable and present themselves as open to criticism, feedback, and suggestions will retain talent and increase loyalty. Moreover, leaders who invite feedback and act upon it create a partnership with their employees. Here are some ways to establish psychological safety and encourage employees to offer feedback:
- Maintain open body language
- Maintain eye contact
- Ask them to expand on a piece of the feedback
- Ask open-ended questions
- Take notes
- Thank them for their feedback
- Follow-up to find out if they are seeing improvement
Listening to employees is the first step. Even more, leaders have to take action from their comments. Otherwise, they will stop providing feedback and go quiet.
Don’t Shoot the Messenger – Reward Them to Create Psychological Safety
Applaud the courageous employee who is brave enough to say what could have gone better, what needs to improve, what went wrong, or why something won’t work. Leaders must be willing to accept negative feedback gracefully and without judgment. In doing so, they are able to pivot quickly and decisively when problems surface.
Leaders who have open dialogue around issues, acknowledge employees who bring forth such information, and focus on future improvements will establish trust with their employees. Consequently, trust plays a massive role in fostering psychological safety at work.
Admit Mistakes and Do Better
Employees won’t hold a leader accountable if they never admit fault or acknowledge areas for growth. However, leaders who demonstrate humility by admitting mistakes send a strong message that it is OK to do so.
Leaders who show vulnerability by acknowledging their faults help employees feel safe to acknowledge theirs. More importantly, when leaders show a desire to learn and do better, employees will feel comfortable giving direct feedback.
Admitting your mistakes, being vulnerable, and expressing a desire to improve help employees feel psychological safety at work.
Swap Blame For Curiosity
Going on the hunt to find someone to blame doesn’t create psychological safety at work. Blame, finger-pointing, and criticism create defensiveness and, even worse, disengagement. It also tells employees mistakes are not tolerated.
Instead, bring curiosity and adopt a learner’s mindset. If you feel confident that you know what the other person is thinking or the circumstances they were faced with, you aren’t ready to have a conversation.
All Input Matters When Creating Psychological Safety at Work
There is nothing worse than feeling like a cog in a machine. Being dismissive when people bring ideas or problems forward does not promote creativity, and it discourages collaboration.
When an employee brings a new idea or problem forward, explore it with them. Help them shape and mold the idea or brainstorm solutions to the problem. Doing so, so helps employees feel seen, heard, and valued.
Psychological safety at work takes time, practice, and patience. Most importantly, it requires leaders to be consistent in listening, responding, and reacting when employees bring something forward.
Ultimately, psychological safety and having employees feel free to speak up improves the effectiveness of the organization. Give employees the confidence they need to be honest and forthright with challenges, problems, mistakes, and new ideas by creating psychological safety.
Last updated on April 15th, 2021 at 07:46 am
