How do you bring more candour and honesty to the workplace?
When senior leaders rely on candour and honesty to gauge how well things are going ‘on the ground’, they often express frustration that employees don’t share important information. Conversely, employees are often unwilling to express their honest opinions for fear of reprisal or a belief that nothing will change.
An honest workplace is vital to a high-performance business.
Honesty builds trust in a work environment and encourages confidence in a leader. Honesty sets the tone of the office culture and strengthens relationship-building. It helps build confidence between coworkers and allows team members to support each other when limitations or concerns are shared.
Organisations can support leaders to encourage greater candour and honesty to deliver these benefits. But what behaviours do organisations need to shape in leaders to achieve this?
Through an analysis designed to measure the degree of candour from approximately 10,000 employees, Zenger Folkman discovered several clear enablers within the organisation that encouraged candid behaviour. These include:
- Involving others
Leaders should ensure employees are involved in the decisions that impact them directly. This helps them grow in confidence and feel comfortable raising concerns. - Being a role model
Leaders should challenge procedures that don’t add value, speak up when they see an issue, and question decisions so the team can see their candour and understand they should feel empowered to act the same way. - Asking for suggestions
Asking for input and suggestions from the team helps leaders build trust and encourage workers to have the confidence to speak up. - Valuing differences
Taking advantage of a diverse workforce and the opinions and preferences they share. Differences can help an organisation succeed and even offer a competitive advantage, but only if workers feel comfortable speaking their minds.
