Creating Culture for Robust Team Discussions:

Use as a training tool: Present the situation below to the group and have them brainstorm how they would best handle the situation. Then share the Outcome Focus answer and see how it relates or differs from solutions the group found.

Situation: Dear Anne, It seems that in our company being quiet, heads down and non-confrontational gets rewarded more than bringing about the best results with team interaction and speaking out. What would you do to help create a culture that is for diversity and difference of opinion so people see that it is good and positive, not bad, to share differing opinions?

Outcome Desired:

You want to create an environment that encourages people to FULLY participate by speaking up, speaking out and raising their thoughts and ideas in a proactive and positive manner.

Questions to consider:

What created this environment in the first place? Is upper management open to listening to others or are they “punished” for speaking up? Are people rewarded more for staying quiet and not sticking their neck out or for taking a risk even if they are wrong?

Other Person’s Perspective:

I want to play it safe. I don’t want to make a mistake and have people judge me. I may not feel comfortable speaking out because I don’t know as much as others. I may not feel fully involved enough to risk my job, my reputation, or my credibility by speaking out.

Best Handled:

In this situation, since I can’t tell from your email whether you are management or not, I am going to take this from the position that you ARE the manager.

There are four steps to follow:
1. The first thing you need to do is ask yourself, “what can I do to make the environment safe for people to share ideas, disagree, and challenge when appropriate?”

You might want to say to the group, “one of the things I value the most is the ability for all of us to challenge, probe, explore and place new ideas on the table. In order to do that we have to trust that each of us will respect each other, respect the ideas and move out of our own comfort zone long enough to explore these ideas together. If this is happening in our team, it means that our sessions are filled with robust discussion, that we factually support and challenge each other on new ideas, and that we appropriately challenge. Currently I don’t see that happening and I would like to explore what I can do and what we can do as a team to make it safe for people to speak up and participate fully.”

2. Then let the group chat. You need to find out if you are doing anything that may stop the discussion (you will be surprised how many times you do things subconsciously that stop the group from participating); if there are perceptions of the team that are off, or if there is a feeling about your company culture that is stopping them.

3. Once you have come to the ground rules of what will make it safe. Repeat them to the group and tag on “so we are all agreeing that if the following things are in place then we will all speak up and have robust discussions as a group.”

4. Then you need to tag on the KEY CONSEQUENCE piece so people know you are serious about this and they set the consequences if they don’t follow the behavior they agreed to. You would say something like this, “So what do you want me to do if the robust discussions still don’t happen?”

Once you own the atmosphere needed and commit to make it safe, then you can get the robust discussions going.

Anne's Aha:

Enjoy IMP’s New Assessments: NEW QUIZ: How Good At Difficult Discussions Are You And Your Team? Quotable Quotes "The secret of happiness is to make others believe they are the cause of it." - Al Batt