Courageous Leadership

When was the last time you spoke out against the norm?

Do you feel that you can put an alternative perspective out in a meeting?

Do you encourage your team members to question your opinions? If so, how do you react when they do?

Many people have negative memories of the time that they spoke out. They were ridiculed, ignored or criticised for delaying the meeting that everyone wanted to finish asap!

Often people feel that speaking out only alienates them, and there is no benefit as things don’t change.

Sometimes there’s a feeling that they don’t care about improving the workplace, as they don’t have a sense of belonging or purpose.

How do we eradicate these feelings and memories and encourage people to ask questions, be courageous and be curious. If we do, then innovation happens and the business will thrive.

To enable this requires a courageous leader. A Leader that will: -

• Not be afraid to be questioned. Will question their own manager and peers.

• Will answer the questions honestly and with respect.

• Will follow up with Action

Building a team that will question leaders and each other requires:-

• Mutual Trust

• A Sense of Belonging across all members of the team

• A Sense of Shared Purpose.

Ask your team members how they would improve the workplace and processes. Ask them how they feel about their work and the workplace.

Write down each answer and consider each suggestion. Discuss how to implement the good solutions and develop a plan. Take action quickly and discuss the results. If the results aren’t as successful as expected, learn why that’s the case and move on. It is better to fail quickly and learn so that the next suggestions will benefit from these.

Where the suggestions aren’t feasible, provide reasons why, but encourage the people who suggested them to continue with more in the future.

Creating a curious and courageous workforce will deliver incredible benefits for the leader, the employees and the business.

Check out the InteChange website for more on the Leadership Toolkit, and for more on making your workplace a psychosocially safe environment and how this will deliver better KPI results and service performance.