Safety First: Removing Obstacles To Employee Engagement

I speak to organizational leaders every day who want to eliminate the obstacles that block their employees from excelling. They want engaged employees who care, create and thrive in their organizations. These leaders are full of ideas about how to engage employees most effectively, but they usually miss a critical question that will determine the success of any initiative they undertake: 

How safe do your employees feel?
 
We humans will not engage unless we feel safe. We won’t trust new situations or try new things. We’ll eye new initiatives with skepticism and doubt. We’ll hold back the best of what we have to offer until we know it’s safe to take risks. And for most people, safety comes only when a set of complex, nuanced and delicately balanced factors come together and stay consistent. Safety is not easy to achieve or maintain.
 
Signs of lack of safety:

• Gossip: an active grapevine signals mistrust, distraction and disconnection.When people don’t feel safe they retreat to fear-based conversations and behaviors.
• Indifference: lackluster results, middle-of-the-road ideas and an unwillingness to take initiative comes from people hiding to stay safe.
• Blaming others: deflecting to other people and circumstances allows people to avoid responsibility and stay safe from accountability.

 
How to create and maintain safety:

• Communicate, multi-directionally and multi-modally: use written and oral communication, formally and informally, to reach people across your organization. Think about what signals your culture sends, not just what you officially communicate.
• Lead by learning: show others what you don’t know, ask questions more than you solve problems and listen more than you speak.
• Love the messenger: shower praise on people who tell you the hard truth. It’s scary to speak up about bad behavior, product flaws or faulty thinking. If people are lauded for their courage in speaking up, you’ll get more honesty in your workplace.