The ability to listen is crucial for effective leadership and is the foundation for effective communication. Active listening is how leaders understand what is happening. Listening helps leaders learn, and ultimately make better decisions. Who are leaders listening to if they aren’t inviting their employees to speak? How does a leader learn anything meaningful from their employees, vendors, or clients if they aren’t asking them questions? Get employees to speak up and encourage engagement by asking better questions, and then be quiet and listen.
Why Employees Need to Speak Up
A lousy boss might find comfort in silent employees. However, their silence is rarely a sign of anything good. Quiet employees are a sign of a toxic work environment because it indicates there is a fear of management. It also shows the employees are disengaged. Quiet employees withhold information or intentionally mask mistakes because they feel they will be reprimanded or punished. They won’t tell you how bad things are. Additionally, there is no more significant leadership failure than when leaders push decisions down without understanding its impact on the business’s reality. For those reasons, leaders need employees to speak up. When leaders get employees to speak up they:
- Empower their team
- Create strong team cohesion
- Improve company culture
- Encourage constructive and meaningful feedback
- Make the change management process a bit easier
Getting candid feedback from your team can be difficult. Your front line employees know more about what is happening in your business than you can read in a report. They have direct contact with your clients, and they know how your proposed changes will affect them. The employees know the processes and policies that lower their ability to be productive and deliver an exceptional customer experience. Moreover, they have ideas on how to become more efficient based on day-to-day operations. Being a successful leader requires your team members to have honest conversations with you.
How to Encourage Your Team to Speak Up
When you listen to your employees, you will make better decisions. You will save money, time, and resources. Do you know what the first thing a consultant does after you hire them to improve your business? They go directly to the front line. They observe what they are doing and ask questions to uncover the why’s. Consultants listen to what employees feel is going well, going wrong, and what would help them improve performance. The consultants then type it all up in a pretty presentation and then invoice you a ton of money to implement that feedback.
The best leaders get their employees to speak up and encourage engagement by spending time on the front-line. They ask questions, solicit opinions, and ask for feedback. Even more, they listen to understand, and as a result, gain real clarity on what is happening in their business.
Questions that Leaders Use to Get Employees to Speak and Encourage Engagement
- What areas are we failing at?
- In what areas are we most successful?
- What should we stop doing?
- What should we start doing?
- To help you be more successful, what can we do differently?
- What is our most pressing problem, and what do you propose we do to address it?
There are tremendous opportunities to improve by asking these questions. Leaders who make time to talk to their employees and understand the answers to these questions challenge their team to think more deeply and strategically because these questions involve them. Asking your employees these questions will help them feel empowered. It tells them you care about them and value their opinion. Moreso, they will feel listened to and understood. Consequently, taking the time to do so also makes any change management process much more manageable. These questions will make your leadership more successful, but you have to take it a step further.
With each answer you obtain, ask the five whys. Sakichi Toyoda developed the five whys in 1930, but it didn’t become popular until 1970. Toyota still uses this technique to solve problems today. Decision making is based on what is happening on the ground floor, rather than the boardroom. It is referred to as “go-see.” So much leadership failure is a result of a disconnect between the boardroom and the many layers beneath. That disconnect is what makes change so difficult for your employees.
Snow melts from the edges, and it takes a long time for the melting to reach the center. By the time the center starts to melt, it is too late to stop it. The front line is the edges of your operation, and the boardroom is the center. Go out to the edges of your organization and get an unsanitized view of what is happening.
Get your employees to speak up and encourage them to engage by asking questions. Talk to the employees who interact with your clients, vendors, and technology. Ask questions that get employees to speak up. Ask questions that get them to think more deeply about the business. Finally, encourage engagement by listening and valuing what they have to say. As a result, you will better understand what is happening, learn more about your operation, and make better decisions.
Last updated on July 17th, 2020 at 05:07 am
