“Lois, I need to tell you something,” she whispered nervously as I walked into the ladies room. Then she quickly searched the stalls to make no one from her management team was there.

“I know why the workshop isn’t working,” she said with conviction.

Now I was on high alert, having walked into the bathroom frustrated and discouraged about the leadership workshop I was leading. The topic was on how to lead meetings so  that healthy conversations and differing points of views could be aired to arrive at better decisions. But the energy in the workshop was low and the engagement almost non-existent. Was it the material? Was I having an off day? Do these people not have meetings? Could I turn this around after the break or should I just end it  and put all of us out of our misery?

“It’s trust,” she whispered. “I’m fairly new here and can see the problem. But no one sees it because they confuse friendliness with trust. I have to go. Please, never, ever tell anyone I told you this.”

Yowza. Having worked with this client before I never would have thought that trust was an issue.

Organizational silence = shutting off ideas

After the break I started the session with “organizational silence” research from NYU Professor Elizabeth Wolfe Morrison. (Here’s a great article by Professor Morrison; the chart in this post is from her as well.)

“Perhaps what’s really at play here is nothing about how to lead meetings. It’s about your organization. Meetings simply mirror the culture. In most organizations silence is pervasive because leaders are afraid of negative feedback and harbor beliefs that they know more than the rank and file, and that employees can’t be totally trusted.

“Moreover,” I continued, “We leaders are often trying to protect our status and sense of certainty. People speaking up shake up our status and we often inadvertently shut them down. If not in words, then in our body language.”

Radio silence.

Then one brave young man raised his hand. “Yes, it feels kind of unsafe to say anything at our  meetings. I don’t get the sense that people really want to hear my point of view.”

Then people started talking.  After two and a half hours we were having the real conversation.

How often do we all silence others because of our fears and beliefs? What harm does that do to our companies?

The hidden causes of maintaining silence

“A troubling aspect of the dynamics that create and maintain silence is that they are hidden from view and often unrecognized” says Professor Morrison.  “Management may see that employees are not engaged, but may assume that it is because they are self-interested or not motivated.”

I’m still reflecting on the workshop to understand the real issues.  I have come to one important realization: these executives may have taken away nothing about leading meetings that matter, and it doesn’t matter. What they did come away with is a recognition of that organizational silence exists in their company and it’s not a good thing.

How to break the silence? Professor Morrison offers these suggestions:

• Don’t shoot the messenger: In terms of prevention, managers must work hard to counteract the natural human tendency to avoid negative feedback. They must not only seek out honest feedback, on a regular basis, they must also be careful to not “shoot the messenger” when they receive bad news.
• Create safe climate: Managers must also work hard to build an open and trusting climate within their organizations, one in which employees know that their input is valued and that it is safe to speak up.
• Really want to hear it: If employees sense that those above them do not want to hear about potential problems and issues of concern, they will not talk about them. Managers must recognize this dynamic and convince employees that they do want input.
• Replace top managers: One way to create such a change (of open communication) is to bring in new top managers. This will not only enable the organization to break from its past, but will signal to employees that there is a commitment to changing the status quo.

There is no easy way to create safe corporate cultures and inviting and accepting differing points of view. I believe it’s a practice. Like practicing your golf swing, tennis serves, meditation, drawing and patience.

We’re never done. We can only be aware that we need to be aware.

If the environment doesn’t feel safe to employees, no amount of team-building exercises, awards for creativity, financial incentives for “employee suggestions,” or expensive organizational culture and/or innovation consultants will make a difference.

None.

As humans our brains are wired to perceive threats faster than our logical minds work. When we perceive these threats we retreat, just as we would run if someone were physically threatening us.  (For more on this topic, check out David Rock’s excellent book “Your Brain At Work.“)

People are afraid to speak up at work. They’re afraid they’ll sound dumb, make someone upset, get in trouble with their boss, maybe even get fired.  This fear not only stymies good ideas it can cause tragedy.

The story of  NASA’s Challenger space shuttle is legendary.  People were afraid to speak the truth. And those brave engineers who did were eventually over-ruled by senior executives whose emotions were tied up around fears about “looking bad.”  There were no ill intentions on anyone’s part. But clearly people didn’t feel safe dissenting forcefully enough to stop the shuttle, and the leaders were listening to logic and not hearing in-between the lines. They didn’t sense the engineers’ fears and concerns.  Listening to someone’s words but not the feelings expressed in those words  is half-listening.

11 ways to create safe organizational cultures

The challenge — dare I say leadership 101 requirement — is for leaders is  to create the conditions for safety, model that behavior, and require all leaders to do so as well.  Easier said than done.  We’ll dive into this in more detail in future posts, but here are 11  pragmatic ways to create safety in everyday work meetings and conversations.

• Open meetings differently:  To encourage everyone to feel comfortable participating, open a meeting by going around and asking each person to comment briefly about the topic. I often ask people to share their insights and observations in a sentence or two.  No one comments on what the person has said, just respectfully listens as you go around the room (or on a conference call.) Two things happen. Everyone’s perspectives have already begun to be shared, even the shy types among us. By speaking and being listened to people are more likely to contribute again. It feels a bit safer already.

• Focus on what you’re good at vs. problem fixation: when you convene a meeting or a brainstorm session to talk about problems, everyone comes to the table with a threatened mind-set. After all, if it’s a problem, someone’s responsible for it. In addition, the negative stimulates are threat brain triggers and shuts down our creative thinking. A valuable practice to learn is Appreciative Inquiry, which through a different path of questioning builds on a team or organization’s strengths.  To learn more about AI, check out the Appreciative Inquiry Commons, hosted by the Case Western Reserve University’s Weatherhead School of Management. The book “Appreciative Inquiry: A Positive Approach to Change” provides a great snapshot of the practice and its value.

• Data vs. judging: before rushing to judge what a person is saying, stop. Consider the idea or opinion as a piece of data to be examined. Even if it makes your bile rise, there’s something to be understood in why the view is making you angry. Then apply a little empathy. What’s it like to be that person? Why is this important to him or her.  You’ll glean valuable insights by taking this approach. And you’re showing people that they can express ideas without someone dismissing them or biting their heads off. (Know, too  that we can send this “anger” message in our body language even if we don’t verbalize disagreement.)

• Listen in between the lines for what’s being felt:  How people talk about something conveys more information than the words themselves.  As leaders, listen for the emotion beneath the words. Acknowledge those as real and important pieces of information. Acknowledge that anger, frustration, and other types of emotion are real and part of our work. “You must be getting pretty tired and frustrated from trying to get people to buy into this. What kind of help do you need?”

• Don’t let titles interfere: people are no smarter or less smart because of their title. Focus on the purpose to be achieved and listen and value everyone’s ideas.  Then focus on the idea –  before worrying whether Mr. Big Title will like it or not.  Also  invite more diverse people and thinking into meetings. Too often meetings are convened for people with the same titles. This is for directors. This is for senior vice presidents. This is for Level 4 professionals. The same groups can get stuck in a rut. Mix it up.

• Suspend certainty:  This is the cousin of judging vs. data.  If you make it a practice to challenge thinking and explore possibilities, it gets safe for people to think more expansively and creatively. If you don’t have to be “right,” you free up that pre-frontal cortex to make new connections and see previously unseen patterns. This is how insights and “aha’s” happen.  Certainty confines, asking us not to create art but to paint by numbers.

• Don’t worry about getting through the agenda: Getting through the agenda doesn’t mean the meeting succeeded.  The question for all meetings is “what do we want to accomplish?”  Digressing from the agenda is often the best way to get there. I was recently leading a meeting and after the opening where everyone shared their “insights and observations” from the previous meeting, we had landed on what we needed to do next. The meeting had been scheduled for two hours. We were done in 45 minutes. The only agenda item we covered was “introductions.” Yet real progress was made. Everyone felt good.

• What hasn’t been said that should? This is a great question to ask at the end of a meeting. Sometimes people are sitting quietly stewing, or feeling afraid of raising a point. By inviting people to speak up, you often get to the real conversations that need to be had.

• Look at dissent as learning: When people disagree they are not being difficult. They are raising a different view.  Too often our reaction is to shut them down, get back to the nice flow of agreement and gentle progress.  Insights come from dissent. It’s a powerful way of learning. Help make it safe for people to disagree by sharing a few agreements such as, “it’s OK to challenge ideas, policies and opinions but it’s not OK to attack people.”

• Ask good questions. Good questions guide good conversations.  Good, provocative questions and respectful listening not only create meaningful conversations, they make it safe for more people to participate in those conversations.  A helpful resource is this  booklet “The Art of Powerful Questions,” by the brilliant folks who started The World Cafe.

• Laugh more. Nothing is more welcoming and indicative of a safe, friendly environment than hearing people  laugh.

In it Shawn shares five simple ways that his team has successfully helped trained people in companies to rewire their brains to be more optimistic and successful: gratitudes, journaling, exercise, meditation, and random acts of kindness. All are fairly easy to do and cost little.

The three I find most useful:

1. Three gratitudes: write down three new things you are grateful for every day for 21 days.
2. Journaling: write about one positive experience that’s happened in past 24 hours.
3. Random acts of kindness: write one positive email a day thanking or praising someone in your social and/or professional network.

Enjoy. On top of being so smart, Shawn is a great presenter.

I think President Obama is onto a potentially powerful message strategy in his campaign speeches. Now, he needs to support that platform  with emotional stories, and convey the three essential messages more clearly and consistently.

The platform is essentially about fairness.

In America we’ve always been greater together than on our own. We succeed when we’re all rising. This  big, inclusive, generous, bold, ambitious vision of America is what’s at stake, is what we’re fighting for.

1. Every American gets a fair shot if they’re willing to work hard to get ahead.
2. Every American needs to do their fair share.
3. Every American plays by the same set of rules.

Our brains react to five threats or rewards: status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness. Choosing fairness is both an American value and connects with the 99 percent who are outraged at the inequities of the one percenters, which both Romney and Gingrich are.

Scientists have also found that fairness can be linked to achievement.  “Fairness between strangers at the individual level is what allows social organisms to thrive, and to out-compete more selfish societies, ” according to a Fast Co. article last year about a study done by evolutionary scientist Joe Henrich at the University of British Columbia.

While I think most voters want the “certainty” brain circuits lit in this election — more jobs, stable housing prices, assurances about no new taxes, withdrawal from Middle East — those are things that no politician should promise as he or she has so little control over those outcomes.

But fairness? Fairness provides an opportunity for all boats to rise. And who doesn’t want a better country for themselves AND their family, friends, neighbors and countrymen?

If I were running the Obama campaign I would support the platform by:

• Share stories of Americans — famous and everyday — who have gotten a fair shot, succeeded, and give back.  Make the message real, emotional and aspirational through individuals’ stories.  Even the President’s own.

• Highlight people who are doing their fair share — and then some. Social entrepreneurs. Small business owners committed to their employees and their communities. Community college teachers. Hospice nurses.  Tireless community volunteers.  Generous individual donors to vital non-profits. You can whine about how unfair life is, or you can do. Celebrate the doers.

• Give concrete examples of distorted rules that need to be changed to level the playing field. Specifics make a message real.

During his first term President Obama has not emotionally connected as well as he could with Americans, and what he most believes in seems kind of vague to the average Joe and Jane. People don’t want wonk-ish  explanations. They want to be inspired.

While I am comforted to know that a leader has the intellectual chops to lead amid complexity, most people want a president who “gets them” — feels their pain, their hopes — and has the conviction to make things happen to address those pains and hopes.

Conviction is emotional, passionate, fierce and focused.

Obama potentially can deliver on this. Romney, not so much. Gingrich, potentially.

Let the election communications strategies begin in earnest!

A  frank and generous executive coach, Maria believes that knowing how to have difficult conversations is an essential leadership skill — and one that few of us have ever been taught.

Rather than ignore signs of disagreement, negativity or skepticism, she encourages people to learn how to open  a can of worms. “You find that once the worms are out of the can and on the table they don’t hang around very long.”

Here’s Maria’s recent blog post explaining how to open up a can of worms. More of her sage advice can be found on her blog.

People are always communicating. Always.

I’m sure you’ve been in plenty of conversations or meetings in which you’ve noticed others roll their eyes, cross their arms, raise their eyebrows, press their lips together, pull out their smartphones, look down or away, exchange quick glances across a table, or just sit there and not say anything.

These messages are as clear and real as if they had been put into words.  In fact, they can be the most important part of the conversation because people are telegraphing how they actually feel.

The trouble, of course, is that it can be awkward and uncomfortable to acknowledge these signals because they seem negative and a little slippery.  They are often subtle, and sometimes they go by quickly.  Who wants to open up a can of worms?

You do.  You’re going to find that once the worms are out of the can and on the table they don’t hang around very long at all.

So, grab your can opener and use these two simple steps to increase the honesty and comfort of conversations in which these behaviors are occurring:

1.  Stop thinking about signals like arm-crossing and long silence as criticism or rudeness and start calling them information. The people who are giving you these signals are letting you know how they feel.

2. Do a quick, friendly check in, just as you do when you are using your listening skills:

• Bob, you look a little skeptical. What are you thinking?
• Ted and Sarah?  Is there something you’re worried about that it would help us to know?
• Garry, I’m sensing there’s something about this that you don’t like.  Where are you on this idea?
• Anna, I’m sitting here wondering if you’ve sort of checked out of the conversation.  Is there something that’s not working for you?

Notice that each one of my suggestions ends with a  NOW WHAT? request for something back from the person.  That reduces awkwardness and helps move the conversation along.

Here’s an excerpt that captures the behaviors of those with a desire to lead.

Turning to one another

Ask “what’s possible?” not “What’s wrong?”  Keep asking. Notice what you care about. Assume that many others share your dreams.

Be brave enough to start a conversation that matters.

• Talk to people you know.
• Talk to people you don’t know.
• Talk to people you never talk to.

Be intrigued by the differences you hear.

• Expect to be surprised.
• Treasure curiosity more than certainty.

Invite in everybody who cares to work on what’s possible.

• Acknowledge that everyone is an expert about something.
• Know that creative solutions come from new connections.

Remember, you don’t fear people whose story you know.  Real listening always brings people closer together.

Trust that meaningful conversations can change your world.

Rely on human goodness. Stay together.

– Margaret Wheatley

Fascinating, yes?  Note that QlikView and Salesforce have the biggest gross margins AND more simple, focused missions than the other companies.

A clear mission is so valuable, but so many companies struggle with finding the courage and commitment for standing for something.  Or they fall into gobbledygook corporate speak that lacks inspiration and clarity. Or the “mission statement by consensus” process is so draining that people end up with “whatever” missions rather than something simple and great.

Big hint: If  the mission process gets painful, you have the wrong people involved.

(See the story that accompanied the chart over at Harvard Business Review, “Employee Values = Stakeholder Value” by Lars Bjork, CEO of QlikTech.)

Hi Lois,

I love your Foghound website and specifically your concept of rebels in the organization. Guess what, I identify with this and am the rebel. It has not always been with a positive outcome. I am wondering if you have any ideas on how to find the “protectors” within an organization for these people. Specifically, if one was to interview for a job, how would you know if this potential boss would give the rebel freedom and protection?

Any thoughts are appreciated. This is definitely something I think about.

Finding the right boss is crucial for corporate rebels. With the right “protector” you can feel safe in creating change and new ideas that will make a difference. Plus, a good boss can help guide you through the complexities of organizational politics and decision making.

Here are some job interview suggestions to help you figure out whether the person would be a good boss:

1. What is the organization trying to achieve?  This reveals whether a clear organizational purpose exists. When there is a clear purpose, rebels have a much easier time because they can link their  new ideas to how they support the big organizational goal or purpose.  When goals and purposes are fuzzy, rebels can get caught in an unproductive eddy of questioning the validity of the proposed idea.

2. What’s possible that hasn’t yet been done in this [field|company|organization) or  What are the greatest opportunities for the organization? This helps you see if the potential boss is a forward-thinking idea person. (Aside: A corporate rebel recently told me that her new CEO  told the top execs to stop thinking about new ideas and focus their energy on executing his strategy (which they disagreed with).  That no-possibilities boss is losing some of his best talent.)

3. What do you especially like about the organization’s culture and work environment? The response to this will uncover whether the person is positive and appreciative of the strengths of the organization, or a Debby Downer who defaults to problems and negativity.  From my observations, positive, optimistic bosses are more open to –and appreciative of — rebels.

4. What’s the best assignment/project you’ve ever been involved with?  What made it so fulfilling? Does the person  most value implementation or creating new things? This idea helps you understand what makes the person tick.  Rebels need a boss who veers more to the creating new things mindset.

5. How do you support people who question approaches that may no longer be effective and see alternative ways to do things?  How a person answers this will be more telling than the words themselves. Is the person comfortable with the question?  Does the answer flow easily and naturally — or does it take a bit  to find the words? Does it sound like the person truly values truth-telling idea people? Or do you detect some annoyance? Does the response indicate that people regularly bring up ideas and the boss has a genuine and comfortable way to support those people and ideas?

Lastly, look around the work environment.  Do you sense a lot of energy and positive buzz?  Or is there a hushed, disengaged feeling? I know this is a bit touchey-feely, but the environment speaks volumes about whether it’s a place rebels can thrive. After walking around the offices of a big ad agency last year, I instantly knew the company was not steeped in creativity.  It was too quiet. People were heads down in their cubicles. There were few fun things tacked around cubicles and common spaces. Sure enough, eight months later I heard the agency had lost three big clients.

Ask your potential boss good questions, and find time to walk around.

What if every time a political leader sponsored a bill, gave a campaign speech, or pronounced a campaign pledge/message, we asked them this question:

How does this do the most good for the most people?

I’m weary of how politicians of every party cater to special interests and the issues that rile people up — or at least get them the most media sound bytes.  I’m disgusted with the blame game. I’m embarrassed that leaders and potential leaders manipulate people around issues that have little to do with governing, but a lot to do with garnering support to be (re) elected.

I want clear answers to this one question so that I can understand what I’m voting for. Or shouldn’t vote for, as the case may be.

Our country, our states, our cities and towns have limited resources, and are likely to become far more limited as we reduce the rate of government spending. So given these resources, how do we make decisions and support programs and policies that do the most good for the most people?

I’m fairly educated, but man oh man, I can hardly make sense of what I hear and read from our government leaders. Isn’t it time we demanded clarity so more of us can understand what’s what? So that more of us can actively take a role in helping our elected leaders serve us — the big collective us, not fringe and special interest groups.

Asking this question is a small action, but maybe if we all get behind it (or something like it) we can make a difference.

Please take this idea and make it yours. If you think there’s a more powerful way to phrase the question, please share that.

I intend to use this question often and with discipline — during my senator and congressman’s town hall teleconferences, adding comments to politician’s blogs and sites and on general media sites, Tweeting after watching campaign stump speeches, writing personal emails and letters to officials while they are debating on potential legislation.

What do you think?