The power of 'Speak up', exploring layer 2. High Performing Cultures - A piece of cake!

Let's talk about High Performing Cultures some more, shall we, and get our Culture Cake out and move nicely onto the next layer.

?Remember what those five layers are:

1.???? Make it easy

2.???? Speak up

3.???? Frustrations into focus

4.???? Learning from failure

5.???? Everyday learning

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We will look at the ingredients for the second layer – ‘Speak up’ which is all about encouraging and empowering people to have a voice in your organisation, across all teams and all layers of your hierarchy.? For your business to thrive and truly develop a High Performing Culture we need to hear from all parts of the business so they can share their expertise and ideas.? The challenges your business faces now and, in the future, you have already got the solutions, the ideas and expertise to solve but they are often trapped within your workforce. There is loads of information that’s going to help your business do work better and easier, but we can only release that information if we encourage and empower a speak up culture then actively listen when they do and you seek to make meaningful and sustainable improvements.

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Psychological Safety

The first component and the most important one, is to develop a Psychologically Safe environment where people feel safe to speak up and share ideas, concerns, thoughts and innovations, and feel like they can do that and be listened to. You want to empower them to believe that their voice and their contribution is worthwhile, and appreciated, and no one is going to tell them to stop talking, or humiliate them, or tell them their idea is silly or get in trouble for speaking their truth.

?How are you currently creating an environment where people can speak up?

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Just Culture

Creating a ‘Just Culture’ so people can speak up after either something has gone wrong, or you have had an unintended outcome - whether it's an accident or an incident, a customer complaint or a quality issue, we want people to be able to speak up without fear of blame and punishment.? We want people to share their context rich stories of what happened and how it happened so we can really learn.? But if you don’t have a ‘Just Culture’ in place then being will be fearful of doing that as they think they will be blamed, or treated unfairly, or as they are the last person who touched it, they will be the one who gets in trouble. But we know it's not the fault of the last person who touched it as there is always a whole heap of stuff behind that in the system.? We can only really learn if we have that speak up culture after something has gone awry and we encourage a curious and non-judgemental response to this.

How did you react the last time something went wrong in your business?

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?Ask better questions

The simple act of asking more questions rather than just telling people what to do, or what you want, or need can have massive positive impact.? Incorporating more questions into conversations and interactions you have with people at work, will naturally encourage their contribution and their opportunity to speak up.? Finding more ways to turn normal everyday conversations in the workplace, into more coaching style conversations, which mainly involves asking a lot more questions, especially better open-ended questions, and then really listening to their responses and perspectives.? This is a great way to encourage a healthy speak up culture and gives you a great opportunity about to learn and empower your people.

?How can you incorporate more questions into your interactions and conversations?

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Diversity & Inclusion

Being intentional and proactive with your approach to Diversity and Inclusion is in integral part. By having a diverse workforce, the benefits are fantastic to developing a High Performing Team and a High Performing Culture. But people need to feel included and be able to show up as their true authentic selves, to be able to share their thoughts, ideas and opinions. So, by creating a Psychologically Safe environment, whereby Inclusion is the first step in that process, if people feel included then they are in a much better position to be able to speak up and share. When we talk about diversity, there are three kinds - the diversity that we can see, the diversity that we can't see and there's the most important one which we really want to tap into, which is the differences in perspectives which comes from the diversity of thought.? By encouraging all of your people to be able to feel included and speak up will give you a whole range of different perspectives for your business to learn from.

?How diverse is your workforce? And what steps are you taking to ensure all your people feel included?

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Teamwork

A Speak up culture where all team members feel empowered to communicate openly and honestly, across their team, and the wider business, will help teamwork and their performance thrive.? It's as important to be able to speak up to your teammates as it is to speak up to leadership.? This will improve collaboration across departments and bring frustrations into focus to so you can take action.

Are your people able to speak up within teams?

Motivation & Morale

When people are empowered to speak up and share how they feel about working here, it helps identify how motivated they are and what kinds of things motivate them.? It's important to realised that not everyone in your team will be motivated in the same way by the same things. When you can tap into what motivates people and start to set them up for success this in turn improves morale, people start smiling, enjoying work more and having a sense of job satisfaction. Then you get something called ‘discretionary effort’ which is where your people actively and want to give the business more than they are paid to deliver.?

Do you know what motivates your people?

So, there we have a whole bunch of ideas to get you started on layer two – which is all about ‘Speaking up’ and empowering your people to have a voice.? It will definitely take more time and deliberate effort, but the rewards are incredible if you actively pursue this journey to a High Performing Culture.

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Stay around and we will get to layer three next – Frustrations into Focus!