How to Build a Genuine Speak Up Culture

music music Do you have any tips and thoughts on if somebody, you know, we might say, and you mentioned this a little bit in a different way previously, you know, if there was a bad experience with change previously or maybe there was leadership that was toxic and you've got new leaders coming through and the culture shift is speaking up.

We want everyone to speak up, have robust conversations, challenge with curiosity.

Mm-hmm.

It's easy to say that and yet sometimes people won't feel comfortable.

What tips do you have or thoughts around really trying to draw people out to speak up if they have concerns, challenges, questions, if they disagree in a safe space but they're not quite there yet?

Yeah, two things here.

One, you've got to really consider how you're asking people to speak up.

Because just saying speak up, not everyone's good at that.

Some people will speak up in writing.

Some people will speak up one-on-one.

If the only opportunity you're giving people is saying in a meeting, speak up, that will appeal to your more extroverted or assertive communicators.

Your passive people are not saying boo.

So this is why, again, you've got to look at your communication in a more holistic way and make sure it's not about trying to be everything to everyone, but you want to make sure that you're not just communicating in the way that works for you.

You lead different people.

People have different styles and preferences and You know, a little one I use often if I'm doing this sort of work in a meeting and I'm saying, I want you to speak up.

I just did it recently in a workshop.

One of the things I wanted to draw out was what holds you back from giving feedback in this organization? Now, if I just post that question, no one's going to say it because God, they're scared to give feedback.

So I gave everyone post-it notes and I said, can everyone write down when I ask that question, what would your answer be? I went around the room and grabbed all of those post-it notes.

I stuck them all on a whiteboard, grouped them together, and then we had a conversation about the themes that came out.

So it's not highlighting one person and their voice.

So there's lots of little facilitation techniques that you can look at to say, what can I do to provide some different avenues for people to speak up or to make it safer to speak up.

So that's your role as a leader to make sure you've got some good facilitation skills in there.

The other thing, and this is absolutely crucial, courage and psychological safety are two sides of the same coin.

And what I mean by that is people will often say, we want to speak up culture.

We want people to, yeah, speak up, say the thing.