How to Encourage Employees to Speak Up – Leadership Insights from Liddell Consulting

You hired them for a reason. Their perspectives and ideas and experience have to potential to cost you or benefit you. We say it almost every week, a healthy company culture is built on trust. Do your employees trust you and your leadership enough to speak up?

Establishing a trusting relationship with the people around you is an important step to ensuring the ongoing viability of your organization. Communicating your ideas, vision, expectations, and goals is another important part. But that doesn’t always mean that they will be quick to speak up.

Just opening the door for dialogue can make a difference. Although it can be discouraging to hold a meeting and invite feedback only to hear crickets, be persistent. It make take time, but providing an example of what you a hoping for and positively reinforcing small steps forward will begin the process.

Here are a few tips on how you can encourage your employees to speak up:

Get to the heart of it.

Look closely at why they don’t feel comfortable speaking up and determine if it is something you can change.

Reward them.

It may seem simplistic, but consider what might make them more likely to share their perspective.

Encourage teamwork.

If they communicate well together and talking among themselves, then talking to you will seem more natural.

Allow for multiple forms of feedback.

Speaking up in a large meeting or on a video call can be intimidating. Open the door for written or less public sharing of ideas.

Be the example.

If you are engaging and open, they will be too.

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“Good leadership requires you to surround yourself with people of diverse perspectives who can disagree with you without fear of retaliation.”

-Doris Kearns Goodwin

TED on Company Culture