Taking risks at work can feel remarkably lonely. Especially if you’re the only one trying new things, or experimenting with new approaches. This week on #AskingforaFriend I share practical approaches to making taking risks a team sport.

In this video, I share three leadership best practices to help your team work together to strategize, analyze and execute appropriate risks. If you build risk-taking into your organization’s culture, you can normalize risk, so everyone feels like they are on the same team even when they are trying something new.

These ideas and approaches came from teams in one of our long-term Courageous Cultures programs. They were focused on practical ways to operationalize their important value of risking taking.

3 Leadership Best Practices for Taking Risks

1. Mini Masterminds for Taking Risks

Carve out a few minutes at the beginning of a staff meeting for a mini mastermind. Anyone can get on the agenda and say, “I have a risk that I’d like to take, but before I do, I could use your help in vetting it.” The team can work together to dissect the risk and identify what’s really at stake. What effect does the risk have on the rest of the team? Weigh the costs and benefits. Is it really worth it?

When the person makes the decision, they’ll feel like they have a whole group of people at their back who have thought it through with them. They won’t feel alone when they’re taking risks.

2. Find Time to Share About Risky Business

Give people time to talk about a risk they took (or that’s in progress) and the outcome. Then celebrate the act of trying something new with one another! Also, acknowledge when someone considers taking a risk, and then decides not to. This will help people feel more confident sharing their ideas and vetting them with the team.

3. Hold Regular “Post-Project Celebrations”

Celebrate the work. Celebrate what worked and the contributions. AND celebrate the learning. You get more of what you encourage and celebrate and less of what you ignore. Naturally, when your team sees you as a leader celebrating those who are taking risks, they will be more likely to do the same. The result will be a courageous culture with more innovative thinking and more willingness to try something new.

What would you add? How do you help your team feel supported (and less alone) when taking risks at work?

See Also:

Post-Mortem Meeting: How to Make Yours Better

The post Taking Risks: How to Make it Feel Safer (and Less Lonely) For Your Team to Try New Things appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

When I think of the most courageous leaders I’ve worked with over my career, it’s not the BIG decisions they made or the SINGLE TIME they made the tough call that created a legacy of courage.

It’s that you could count on them to CONSISTENTLY speak the truth, have your back, or be willing to let you experiment with a new idea.

They earned their reputation as a courageous manager one small daring moment at a time—small micro-moments of courage that led to better performance and deeper trust.

The best way to gain confidence speaking up and other small acts of courage is to experiment with getting out of your comfort zone, one mini-brave act at a time.

What is managerial courage?

Most definitions of managerial courage involve speaking with candor, being willing to act with incomplete information, timely decision making, and addressing performance issues.

Courageous managers know their strengths, own them, and use them.  They will tell you their truth, even if it’s hard to hear. They surround themselves with people who will challenge them. And they give credit where it’s due. They’re consistently trying new approaches, coming to work each day curious about how to make work better, easier, or more efficient.

Every day. In little ways.

And good news! We’ve created an E-Book for you with this super practical content. Visit our Free Resources page to download the free E-Book so you can share with your colleagues and refer back to when you’re in action at work.

7 Practical Ways to Be a Bit More Daring

I’m here to encourage your courage and invite you to be just a bit more daring by taking on one or more of these managerial courage challenges. Start by owning your strengths, and then…

1. Ask a colleague for feedback
2. Open up with a bit of vulnerability
3. Address a performance issue
4. Share an idea
5. Experiment with a new approach
6. Advocate for a team member
7. Ask for help

First, Own Your Strengths

The best way to build confidence and courage is to know your strengths, own them and use them. Consider how your greatest strengths could be vital assets that are transferable across different contexts.

Look for opportunities to show up as an interested expert ready to help.

To start, as yourself these questions.

• What work doesn’t feel so much like work?
• Which elements of your work give you the most energy?
• What do people continue to tell you you’re good at… from role to role.
• When you reflect back to your early childhood what were your natural gifts? How are these still playing out in your approach to the world today?
• Are there any talents you keep hidden from the people you work with today?
• How could you bring more of your “extracurricular” strengths to your day job?

1. Ask a colleague for feedback.

One of the best ways to demonstrate managerial courage is to invite (and act on) feedback.

If you’re up for a small challenge, pick one area you’re looking to improve and identify someone you trust to offer you candid feedback. To get the best input, be specific.

• What’s one best practice I could do to really improve my communication?
• What’s one thing I could do differently to make your meetings more productive?
• I want to take my contributions to our team up a level this year. What’s one change I could make that would make your job easier?
• What’s one change I could make that would increase your trust in me?

If you already regularly ask for such input and want to take on a bigger challenge, consider going on a DIY 360 (or listening tour).

We often include these DIY 360s in our leadership development programs. We consistently hear that having these informal, voice-to-voice conversations builds deeper trust and connection, and opens the door to more collaboration, as well as helps to identify specific areas to work on.

2. Open up just a bit more—and let your team learn something new about you.

Sometimes it’s scary to let people see who you really are at work. And yet, people trust people they know at a human level. 

If you want to take this on as a team challenge, our BECOME team-building exercise is a great way to encourage and facilitate deeper conversations. 

Or, just head into your next round of one-on-ones with the intention of building a deeper connection– both ways. Share a bit more about yourself and be interested in learning something new about each person on your team.

3.  Address a performance issue.

When I ask high-performing employees “What’s one thing you wish your manager would do better?” the most frequent answer is that they would address the performance issues on their team.

If you’ve been letting a slacker slide, this managerial courage challenge is for you. Click on the link above for how to do this well. And if you need to reset expectations, the new year is a great time to do that too. More on resetting performance expectations here.

4. Share an idea.

In our Courageous Cultures research, 40% of respondents said they held back ideas to improve the business because they lack confidence. If you have an idea to improve the business but are stuck with FOSU (fear of speaking up), this is the challenge for you.

Here’s a conversation starter that will make most managers really listen to what you have to say.

“I really care about our team and our success. I have an idea that will ___________ (describe what strategic outcome your idea will improve, e.g. make us more money, save us time, improve retention). Do you have a few minutes for me to walk you through?”  And then use our I.D.E.A. model to position your idea in a succinct and compelling way.

The worst that can happen is that they don’t use your idea. But either way, you’ll be seen as a critical thinker who cares about the team’s success.

5. Experiment with a new approach.

If “It ain’t broke, don’t fix it” feels comfortable, experimenting with a well-run pilot can go a long way in upping your managerial courage while managing your stress.

67% of the employees in our courageous cultures research said their manager operates around the notion of “This is the way we’ve always done it.”

If this could be you, this is a managerial courage challenge for you.

6. Advocate for a team member.

Courage is contagious. And, speaking up gets a whole lot easier when you have support.

If this is tricky for you, a good way to take on this challenge is to find little ways to advocate for your team.

7. Ask for help.

Sometimes one of the most courageous acts is to admit that you need help.

If asking for help is hard, this might be the perfect managerial courage challenge to kick off the new year. Find one area of your work where you need some support and ask for the help you need.

Do you know what happens when you ask for help? You might actually get the help you need. And research shows that asking for help is a great way to build trust and connection. 

I’d love to hear from you. What’s one small act of managerial courage that has made a difference in your leadership?

If you’re looking to encourage more courage on your team… I’ve created an Asking for a Friend Courageous at Work video-based challenge based on these 7 small acts of courage.

You can also visit our Leadership Development page to learn how to build and sustain company-wide change.

Our clients tell us it’s exactly these types of practical leadership tools that bring the LASTING VALUE and sustained results.  At Let’s Grow Leaders we are all about easy-to-implement, 100% relevant leadership tools.

Your turn.

What is your favorite practical way to inspire managerial courage?

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“Courage is every virtue at its testing point” -C.S.Lewis

In this week’s, Asking for a Friend, Karin speaks with Jim Detert, author of Choosing Courage, about what it means, and what it takes, to be a bit more courageous at work.

The Nature of Workplace Courage

1:24 Jim shares about his book and how it’s important not to only know and have the tools for effective leadership, but how at work to use them. And we talk about how challenging “speaking truth to power” (i.e. the boss) can be.

3:40 It’s important to separate courage from courageous actions. We ALL can identify with actions that we or someone else demonstrated toward a worthy or noble cause that carried some risk.

4:27 Courage at work involves risky but worthy actions.

4:39 We’ve allowed ourselves to believe that courage is just a property some people have, but that’s not true.

5:09 Why should courage at work be any different from any other virtue expected on a regular basis (i.e. kindness)?

5:30 Jim shares about a study done with some of his students about people they admire for short and long term. In the long term, courage tends to stand out as the most admirable.

6:30 The myth of the “magical time down the road” when things get less risky.

7:57 Many organizations “talk the talk” about courage, but the sense is that the “yes people” are the ones who actually get promoted.

8:45 Is courage worth it?

9:04 It’s not for one person to decide for another whether courage is worth it. The person needs to ask, “Do I care enough?” and “How important is it to me to be true to myself and authentic relative to potential consequences?” Also, think about longer-term horizons. People tend to look back and talk about positive, courageous things they did or regrets what they didn’t do.

How to Be Competently Courageous

12:09 Some very specific elements of courage.

12:24 Speaking truth to power – some do’s and don’ts. We should choose competent courage – courage that is also skillful.

13:26 It is not just “in the moment.” We also do many things prior to and after that moment that will contribute to that moment of courage.

14:00 Showing up with both warmth and competence

16:05 Develop self-awareness so that we know what may detract from our warmth and competence (i.e. facial expressions)

17:50 Appear to be on both sides, or no side at all, to reduce the feeling of win/lose.

20:44 What’s a good way to not be a yes person and be able to advance your career when the leadership appears to not value that sort of courage? You may have to decide if this workplace is even right for you. Do you want to advance in a toxic organization?

Also, be sure to reframe your points because your boss may be thinking about threats the company is facing more than opportunities you want to see. Pay attention to what is concerning to them. The content can be the same but the framing may need to be different.

23:47 Have a “bags packed” attitude so your career security doesn’t depend on the money or identity you receive from one organization. Think honestly about the notion of loyalty. Sometimes courage at work means being ready to leave.

27:22 What advice do you have for people wanting to change jobs or careers? Get clear on your values and ask yourself what kind of organization, and what kind of boss do you want to work for? Interview the company, don’t just be interviewed. Pick up on signals that may indicate it’s not the place for you. Get things in writing.

30:10 We cannot be someone in 30 seconds what we have not been in the last 10 years…

30:49 One last piece of advice – you are not going to be ready for the big moments if you don’t put in the work every day. Build a courage ladder.

Your turn. What’s been your most courageous act at work? What helped you to muster the courage?

The post Courage at Work: How to Be More Courageous (and Why it Matters) Video appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

Today we bring you ideas for getting started building a courageous culture from backstage at the Mountain West Credit Union Association conference. And how to encourage more courage and innovation on your team.

We discuss:

• How to conduct a “fear forage” even if you are leading a virtual or hybrid team.
• Why “responding with regard” is so critical so employees know their idea is being taken seriously.
• Important first steps in encouraging your team to speak up and share their great ideas.
• AND, the most surprising finding in our Courageous Cultures research: 56% of respondents said that they don’t speak up because they’re afraid they won’t get the credit.  Which of course is highly correlated with the challenge of managers moving so fast they forget to circle back with GRATITUDE thanking employees for their ideas.

You can learn more about our Courageous Cultures research, and download the first chapter of our book for FREE here.

The post How Do I Encourage Courage on My Team? (With Video) appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

Psychological safety pioneer, Dr. Amy Edmondson discusses the difference between psychological safety and courage at work, and why both are so critical in our teams right now. An excerpt from her foreword of Courageous Cultures: How to Build Teams of Micro-Innovators, Problem Solvers, and Customer Advocates (Harper Collins, Karin Hurt and David Dye).

You can download the entire foreword and the first few chapters of Courageous Cultures for free here, or learn more about our research here. 

COURAGE OR PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY?

Dr. Amy Edmondson

Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management Harvard Business School

Even before the welcome publication of this book, courage has been gaining attention in the management literature. We can safely say that courage at work has never been more desirable—or more challenging, and, as a growing number of people contemplate the challenge of speaking up at work, the related concept of psychological safety has received an explosion of interest in both the academic and practitioner management literature.

Mentions of “psychological safety” have grown exponentially.  My own recent book on the subject, The Fearless Organization, has been unexpectedly popular. This interest reflects, I believe, a growing recognition that today’s workplaces require people to collaborate, solve problems, and respond to unexpected challenges. Doing all of those activities well requires speaking up openly and without hesitation. Whether leading a team in the office or caring for patients in the hospital, psychological safety helps people communicate, experiment, and speak up.

Within this active conversation about speaking up, we find understandable confusion about the relationship between psychological safety and courage. Does psychological safety take away the need for courage? Or does courage take away the need for psychological safety?

The answer to both questions is a resounding “no.”

Psychological Safety and Courage: Two Sides of the Same Coin

Psychological safety and courage are simply two sides of the same (immensely valuable) coin. Both are—and will continue to be—needed in a complex and uncertain world.

Karin and David define a courageous culture in Chapter 1 of this book as a place where people speak up (Chapter 1). I’ve defined a climate of psychological safety similarly—as an environment where people believe they can speak up.

In short, candor is as vital as it is challenging in the modern workplace. And fostering it will take a village-like multipronged effort. Because of what we know about human psychology in hierarchies (and frankly, what social system isn’t a hierarchy?), we cannot avoid the simple truth that speaking up is difficult. And so, facilitating voice requires working both sides of the equation. A climate of psychological safety is, for all practical purposes, one and the same as a courageous culture. Both terms describe workplaces where everyone understands that their voices are welcome. In these workplaces, speaking up is still not effortless (that could be asking too much!). But, in these workplaces, people nonetheless understand that voice is expected and valued, despite the pull toward silence.

The difference in emphasis between psychological safety and courageous cultures may be a meaningful one. When we emphasize psychological safety, we risk putting the burden squarely on the shoulders of leaders—whether of teams or organizations—to do what they can to create environments where others’ voices can be heard.

When we emphasize courage, in contrast, we put the spotlight on individuals—inviting them to step up and share what they see, wonder about, and worry about—despite the anxiety they may have about doing so—because of what’s at stake. Here the risk could be seen as asking for heroics on the part of undervalued and at times under-rewarded employees everywhere.

Everyone Doing Their Part

It seems to me that any earnest effort to foster a direct and timely voice at work will require emphasizing both sides of this precious coin at the same time. Leaders must do their part to encourage and invite voice. Everyone must do their part to speak up despite fear.

Yet, it’s undeniable that courage is more compelling. Who doesn’t want to be seen as courageous?

For this reason alone, I’m excited about Courageous Cultures.

The academic research is overwhelming: when people believe they can speak up at work, the learning, innovation, and performance of their organizations is greater. Teams and organizations in which people believe that their voices are welcome outperform their counterparts.

Making it Real

Courageous Cultures offers a model for building energized teams of learners and problem solvers—a model that is desperately needed in today’s workplace.

At the very core of this model is a mindset that welcomes voice, whether it brings good news, bad news, or a puzzle. This mindset starts with curiosity and is fueled by passion about a compelling purpose. It naturally fosters the leadership behaviors that inspire and invite others’ voices.

As you will read in the pages ahead, building a courageous culture starts with your own passionate commitment to doing so. You must start by sharing (and speaking often about) a clear, compelling mission. With that foundation, you can continue to nurture a courageous culture through issuing repeated and genuine invitations for voice—explicit requests in both formal team meetings and informal interactions. But without a commitment to responding in appreciative, productive forward-looking ways, courage is quickly stifled.

This book shows you how to do all three of these vital leadership activities, starting tomorrow. The framework offered by Karin and David mirrors the high-level advice you can find in prior writings on this topic and, fortunately for readers, breaks this framework down into practical, sequential, actionable steps that can be taken in any workplace today.

Fortunately, even if voice will always be challenging, leaders have access to a formula that works. Courageous Cultures offers such a formula, and leaders who adopt it with passionate intent will be poised to build the kinds of workplaces companies need and employees want.

Why People Don’t Speak Up at Work

Courageous Cultures Research in Collaboration with the University of North Colorado.

• Employees feel ignored. (56% say they won’t get credit.)
• No one asks. (49% report that they’re not regularly asked for ideas.)
• Lack of confidence (40% lack the confidence to share.)
• No feedback  (50% say nothing will happen with their ideas.)
• Employees think their boss doesn’t want new ideas. (67% say leadership has operated around “this is the way have always done it.”)
• Lack of training (45% say they’ve never been trained on critical thinking and problem-solving.)

The post Psychological Safety or More Courage? What Your Team Needs Now appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

The irony of a courageous culture is that it takes less daily courage to be successful. If you want to build teams of micro-innovators, problem solvers, and customer advocates, eliminate the toxic courage crushers intimidating your people.

Eliminate the Courage Crushers

A doctor was trying to do an experimental procedure I knew could hurt a child
(and was also against the parent’s consent), so I blocked the door.

—Pediatric Nurse

Jane, a committed nurse in one of our high-potential programs, shared the exhausting list of daily stupidity she faced from a bullying, narcissistic doctor—just to get her job done. She felt like every day was a courageous battle to advocate for her patients’ needs. Her requests were met with sarcasm and micro-retaliation.

She said that the administration knew of his antics but looked the other way because he was renowned in his field. The other participants in the session corroborated her story with frustrated nods. “That’s why we have Fear of Speaking Up (FOSU)—you can’t change a guy like him. And he’s just one of many courage crushers around here.”

“Why do you stay?” Karin asked.

Jane’s eyes welled up (as did Karin’s and pretty much everyone else’s in the room). “I just care so deeply about the patients. They’re just very sick kids who need someone paying attention who cares.”

Jane eventually left for another role where her passion and commitment were appreciated. That department lost a remarkable nurse. You can’t possibly build a Courageous Culture if you tolerate even one guy like that—word spreads fast. Your Janes will go elsewhere.

And Jane’s not alone. When people hear of our research, many share their stories of difficult situations where they had to overcome a toxic situation.

A few quotes from our research.

• “My boss was exaggerating the numbers to our leadership team. I held fast to the truth.”
• “I stood up to a boss who was trying to bully me.”
• “I called ethics because I was tired of all the screaming. And then I got retaliated against for calling ethics.”
• “They asked me to tell the truth about the CEO’s behavior. I did and he was fired.”
• “My integrity clashed with the executive team’s direction, so I quit.”

Zero Tolerance: Stop the Courage Crushers

Sobering answers, aren’t they? When people spend their courage reserves just getting past the bad stuff, there’s no energy left for the courage your business needs most—creative problem solving and micro-innovation.

For most people, innovation takes energy and courage—the courage to be vulnerable, to risk rejection from their peers, or to invite uncertainty.

Your people can make that effort only a limited number of times before they’re done. The more courage they use to address injustice, toxic leadership, needless politics, or poor decision-making, the less energy they’ll have to spend on what really matters. You won’t get any of the courage you need to serve your customers or build your business if it takes a heroic effort just to fight against an existing caustic culture. To build a culture that leverages and amplifies every act of courage from every team member, start with a foundation of safety and clarity.

If you’re serious about building a Courageous Culture, you can’t tolerate even an ounce of harassment or bullying—from anyone, but especially from anyone in a management or leadership role (even if they are otherwise rockstar performers). If it takes a week’s supply of courage for an employee just to show up for another day, you’re wasting money and talent.

Beyond “Me Too” and Other Injustice

It’s interesting: when we are interviewed about our Courageous Cultures research, one of the first topics reporters ask about is sexual harassment and bullying. “Oh, FOSU, you mean like in the ‘Me Too’ movement? Yeah, let’s talk about that!”

Actually no. If you’ve got a culture rampant with sexual harassment and bullying, you’re not ready for any of the techniques in this book. You can’t possibly encourage innovation and problem solving when you haven’t solved the most fundamental problems: when people don’t feel safe and don’t know unequivocally that you value them at the most basic human level.

Before you start any of this, carefully examine your systems and infrastructure for injustice or unintended consequences that prevent people from focusing on the work that matters most.

Spend time with your frontline employees and really listen to what they experience every day. Ask courageous questions that give them an opportunity to tell you what really happens. Take the comments in your employee surveys seriously. For every employee that spoke up, there’s likely another who blew it off or stayed silent.

The Behavior of EVERY Leader Matters

When you’re looking to build a Courageous Culture, the behavior of every leader matters. We talk to so many senior leaders who convince themselves that they must tolerate the bullying or demeaning and intimidating behavior of an executive or middle manager because of “all the other things they bring to the table” (such as innovation, deep customer relationships, the biggest sales funnel). And then they tell us “they’re too valuable to fire.”

If this sounds familiar, think about the messages leaving a toxic leader in place is sending to your team. First, you’ve told your team that you lack courage. You’re not a strong enough leader to create a Courageous Culture. Next, you’ve told your team members that you don’t value them. If you did value them, you would ensure they were treated humanely. Finally, you’ve told everyone that this kind of abuse, harassment, and bullying is okay.

You’ve planted seeds for even more chaos and disruption. We’ve had countless managers raise their hands in our training sessions and say, “Well this all sounds great, but they’re not serious about that here. Otherwise [insert courage crusher leader’s name here] would not be so successful. It’s sad but that’s what it takes to get ahead around here.”

There is much research that shows that people tend to remember a bad emotional experience more than a good one. Even one courage crusher will be enough for many employees to see that this is the way “people like us”—or the people we aspire to be like—are encouraged to act. And they will see this even if they’re surrounded by a dozen other leaders proactively working to build the culture they want.

The Big Three Toxic Behaviors

The three most toxic behaviors we hear being tolerated (and even rewarded) are shaming, blaming, and intimidation. It’s the chief operating officer who projects a list of all her senior leaders in stack-ranked order on the screen at the company off-site meeting and then works her way through the list from the bottom up, sarcastically criticizing them in front of their peers and handing them a microphone to respond, while all their peers laugh nervously while silently praying they’ll be spared next time.

Or the vice president who berates his direct reports for a strategic choice “they made” that didn’t pan out, even though the VP was the one who made the final call despite the team’s concerns and objections. Or the executive who flies around on the corporate jet and delivers fix-it-or-else ultimatums, overlooks all the great results and leaves a wake of intimidation-induced frenzy—all to show how serious she is to make things better.

Shame, blame, and intimidation have no place in a Courageous Culture—and yet you might be surprised how frequently we encounter these counter-productive activities, even in organizations that invest in resources and systems to foster courage and innovation. Don’t let one or two bullies undermine your Courageous Culture strategy.

Courage Enabling Questions to Consider

If you are interested in building a courageous culture, we encourage you and your team to discuss these questions:

• Why Build a Courageous Culture?
• Why do you want a Courageous Culture?
• What specific outcomes are you looking to achieve?
• How will you know you are successful?
• What scares you? Why?
• What hard choices must you be prepared to make?
• Who’s with you? Who’s not? What support do you have? Why?

Avoiding Courage Crushers

• What processes do you have in place to prevent (and make it easy to report) bullying and harassment?
• What do you do when a high performer is a courage crusher who regularly abuses or harasses other people?
• Which of these courage crushers is the biggest source of vulnerability for your organization?
• What courage-crushing behaviors will you have a zero-tolerance for in your organization?
• Do your managers have the fundamental management and communication skills they need to implement a Courageous Culture?

This article is an excerpt of our new book Courageous Cultures: How to Build Teams of Micro-Innovators, Problem Solvers, and Customer Advocates. 

You can take our FREE Courageous Cultures quiz and receive a free chapter here, as well as learn about our pre-order bonuses.

The post How to Overcome the Toxic Courage Crushers in Your Organization appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

Do you ever wonder if they’re going out of their way to keep you out of their way?

That seems ridiculous. AND, it’s entirely possible.

Here’s the scary part if you’re looking to build a courageous, truth-telling culture. The higher your name is on the org chart, the more likely this is happening to you.

(As we write this, we’re envisioning our favorite direct reports Facebook messaging one another “Should we tell them we did that to them too?”) This “keeping you in the dark” thing happens to most leaders from time to time—even the best-intentioned.

When the pressure for performance is high, your team really cares, and they’re not getting the support they need—they may be tempted to work around you.

Your team decides what you can handle. Like parents protecting young children, they safeguard you and themselves.

To get the real deal, avoid these common traps.

6 Reasons Your Staff Keeps You in the Dark (and What to do Instead)

1. Rush To Fix It – Did you ever have a boss that tries to fix every problem themselves, without fully understanding the subtleties of the scene? It can wreak havoc, right?  Keep in mind that your “fix” may aggravate the situation. Escalating a concern may damage peer relationships they’ve been working hard to develop. Calling the supplier directly may derail negotiations. Instead, ask how you can best help. Our 9 What’s Problem Solving model is a great process for helping your staff think more critically and solve problems on their own. 
2. Model It – Your team watches how you manage your boss. Watch what filtering you model. If you want them to be more transparent, be more transparent. We’ve seen managers who simultaneously encourage their team to bring them issues AND coach them not to breathe a word to their boss.
3. Freak Out – Breathe. Nothing will shut them down more than high-emotions.
4. Use It Against Them – They don’t want their mistakes to haunt them. And after all, if you don’t know, you can’t “ding” them. Work to help your team recover from setbacks and mistakes. Sharing some stories of your own mistakes and poor choices can help too. Empowering them with the D.A.R.N. method for delivering bad news can also make a big difference.
5. Assign More Work – They’re already overwhelmed working the issue.  Roll-up your sleeves to brainstorm what needs to happen next AND what needs to move down on their list to make room for that. We’ve seen too many managers leaving their boss’ office cursing under their breath regretting bringing the whole thing up.
6. Require More Updates – Now you’re nervous. It’s natural to want more frequent updates. If you need more info, make it easy for them to share. The team doesn’t have time to build more Powerpoints to update you. They’ve got work to do.

You get more of what you recognize and appreciate. If you want courageous transparency, thank your team for shedding a little light on what you really need to know.

Your turn.

What are your best practices to encourage your team to tell you the truth?

The post 6 Reasons Your Staff Keeps You in the Dark appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.