Changing Culture to Enable Couragous Conversations

Yesterday’s post focused on the importance of Courageous Conversations in every business right now. Today’s is about how to create the environment in which they actually
happen.

If they don’t already happen in your business, why not? Normally the reason is FEAR. People aren’t willing to speak up because they don’t want to look silly, don’t want to be the only one objecting, don’t want to disagree with their boss, don’t want to damage their career or other
don’t want to’s. The common thread is that they are afraid of something – that’s what causes them not to. The fear may be irrational, it may have no foundation in truth but the fact that they believe it to be true is what’s important. So in order to create the right environment, or to put it another way create a culture, in which they happen naturally, you have to change the belief and replace it with a belief that having courageous conversations is the right thing to do.

In order to understand what’s driving the fear, I suggest talking to people and encouraging them to share their views in a safe environment. The skill is to ask broad, open questions to get them talking and then be quiet and listen to what they say. As it’s possible that the fear is caused by the individuals manager it’s usually best for this conversation to take place with someone who is seen as impartial.

The specific actions to take to change the belief will obviously depend on the cause(s) of the fear but generally the following steps will be useful in changing beliefs and embedding a new culture:

1. Communicate the reasons why you want people to speak up and that it’s an important behaviour in your organisation. This is even more important if this is a big change from the current situation and the higher the status of the person who communicates it the bigger the initial impact will be.

2. Reward people who are courageous enough to speak up. Never, ever dismiss or punish them
for speaking up because the old belief will immediately be reinforced. Rewarding them means that when they speak you listen to them and demonstrate that you are doing so. It means actively listening, maintaining eye contact with them and allowing them to finish.

3. Help Leaders and Managers to welcome contributions, no matter how negative. In
order to do this, they may need to change some of their own beliefs. Above all, they must assume positive intent i.e. that they individual means well and is seeking to help. If they come from this position then it’s much harder to be negative.

4. Encourage contributions. Find ways to ask people their opinion, seek out those views you suspect will be different.

5. Leaders and Managers must role model the behaviour. This means them speaking
up and being seen to do so and being rewarded and congratulated for doing too.

6. Be consistent! Deeply held beliefs take time to change so persevere with the new behaviours and over time the evidence people see will cause a new belief to emerge.