Do New Hires Quickly "Learn" Not To Speak Up?

Source: Inc.com 

Derrick Bransby, Michaela Kerrissey, and Amy Edmondson have published some fascinating new research on psychological safety in the Harvard Business Review. They found an alarming trend regarding new hires and their willingness to speak up. They write, "We studied more than 10,000 employees in a large organization and discovered that new hires’ psychological safety eroded swiftly. On average, newcomers joined the organization with higher psychological safety relative to their more tenured colleagues, then lost it and waited years to reach levels comparable to when they arrived."  Their findings proved consistent across various demographic groups.  

As I read the article, I thought about why new hires might experience a significant drop in psychological safety soon after joining an organization.  One can imagine that new hires might think that leaders welcome pushback and are open to new ideas.  After all, they probably heard a good deal of positive talk during the hiring process about how leaders expect them to contribute during meetings and to bring fresh ideas.   New hires might learn quickly, however, that some leaders react poorly to dissenting perspectives or the sharing of bad news.  In some cases, experienced leaders might not recognize how their reactions to new perspectives have discouraged new hires.  

Three other explanations might exist for this drop in psychological safety though, and it may not involve dysfunctional behavior by team leaders.  First, new hires might not be particularly adept at speaking up.  Perhaps they try to share a concern about a proposed course of action, or express a dissenting opinion, during some early meetings.  If they struggle to present their ideas, they might find that others do not seem receptive.  New hires could conclude that people don't want them to speak up, when in fact, others simply didn't find the arguments well-crafted and persuasive.  Or, others may feel that the pushback was not presented in a constructive fashion.  The remedy for this problem is some effective coaching and development for new hires, so that they can become more effective at presenting their ideas. 

Second, psychological safety may decrease for new hires as a result of their socialization into the organization.  New hires may hear from peers that they should "keep their heads down" and "not rock the boat."  Sometimes, peers are sharing accurate appraisals of the culture, and specifically, of the low level of psychological safety on that particular team.   However, at times, peers may be overly negative.  Take, for instance, a situation in which the leaders themselves are relatively new.  Long-tenured employees may be accustomed to prior leadership that led in a top-down fashion and did not welcome dissenting views.  These experienced team members may not yet have adjusted to new leadership and may not trust that the new leaders genuinely want to hear dissent.  Peers also might be wary of newcomers who question existing practices and challenge the conventional wisdom.  They might even feel threatened.  As a result, they may discourage new hires from speaking up. 

Third, new hires may come to the organization with a "grass is always greener" mentality.  Perhaps they concluded during the hiring process that this organization is clearly superior to their old company.  When their highly optimistic expectations prove not to be accurate, they may become discouraged.  Perhaps the new team does have higher psychological safety than their old team, but the failure to meet lofty expectations may be troublesome.  It's certainly true that it can be very challenging to assess psychological safety during an interview process.  

What Do I NOT Know?

Often, when leaders encounter a challenging problem, they naturally begin by asking themselves: "What do I know about this issue?  What expertise and past experience can I bring to bear on solving this problem?"  That would seem like the appropriate place to start.  However, I've recently been challenging leaders to begin with a slightly different question.  I encourage them to pose the question: "What do I NOT know about this issue?  What do I need to learn to make a more informed and wise decision?  From whom can and should I learn, both on my team and beyond my team?"  

Why begin with this question?  Here's my logic.  If you start with what you know, you frame the problem for others on your team.  You might even exert undue influence on them as discussion ensues about the issue.  They might defer to you and your expertise and authority, and in so doing, you may not gain access to vital information and perspectives.  Perhaps you even make yourself particularly vulnerable to confirmation bias.   As Harvard Business School Professor Amy Edmondson argues, effective leaders encourage people to speak up by acknowledging their own limits.   "I'd like to learn more about this specific issue.  I could you use your help to understand more about it." 

Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, put it best when he argued that the "learn-it-all" leaders outperform the "know-it-all" leaders.  Becoming a "learn-it-all" leader begins with asking the question: "What do I NOT know about this issue, and how can I learn effectively and quickly so as to fill the gap in my expertise?"  

What Happens When You Invite Questions From Your Team?

I'm reading University of Virginia cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham's new book, Outsmart Your Brain: Why Learning is Hard and How You Can Make It Easy.   The book offers terrific advice on learning strategies for students, as well as tips for teachers on how to help students learn more effectively.  In the book, Willingham writes, 

If your students consistently do not  ask questions, you should wonder about your relationship with them. They are not quiet because your explanations are so brilliant and clear.  They're quiet because they see asking a question as taking a risk.  Ask yourself why that is.  

What a terrific thought-provoking statement for teachers to ponder.  Now replace the word students in the first sentence with the words "team members" or "employees" and consider the implications for leaders at all levels.  If your people are not asking you questions, you have a problem.  Silence doesn't suggest that you have articulated your vision, goals, and strategies clearly and persuasively.  Silence suggests a problem with the climate you have created.  

How to Encourage People to Offer Suggestions & Ideas

Why do some front-line workers keep their best ideas to themselves?  How might we encourage them to bring their suggestions forward to their managers in a proactive fashion?  Jieun Pai, Jennifer Whitson, Junha Kim and Sujin Lee have published an interesting paper addressing these questions.  They conducted a field experiment at a large manufacturing company with several thousand technicians.  

Before the experiment, the firm had instituted an initiative to collect ideas for improvement from their technicians.  Of the 3,800 workers, 55 of them proposed suggestions in the first six months of the effort.   Then, the scholars began their field experiment.  They designed two sets of posters for the manufacturing company.   One set of posters featured technicians talking about how they were willing to offer an improvement suggestion because they worked for a supportive manager.  Morever, the posters encouraged people to think about a supportive manager at the firm.  A second set of posters also featured workers talking about submitting suggestions. However, the quotes described how the workers' own knowledge and expertise led them to propose an idea.  

Workers who viewed the first set of posters submitted 71 ideas in four days.   The technicians who viewed the second set of posters offered just 45 ideas in four days.  In both cases, the number of suggestions rose substantially from that prior six-month period.  However, the posters featuring discussion of supportive managers had a much more positive impact.  

These researchers argue that we need to act supportively as managers and to create what they call a secure relationship with employees.  Front-line workers need to trust their managers, and they need to have a relationship that makes them comfortable bringing ideas forward.  Moreover, the experiment shows that how we encourage workers matters.  We can't just ask for their ideas.  We have to design our call to action in a way that reminds them of how we really do want to hear their ideas.  

To me, those posters helped because they featured the voices of their peers.  They showed that fellow workers felt that their voices were heard, and that their suggestions actually made a positive impact on the organization.  People want to know that someone genuinely considers their views and actually takes action based on their recommendations.  

Changing Culture: Speaking Up at Boeing

Source: Wikipedia

Julie Johnsson wrote a story for Bloomberg this week about the attempted cultural transformation at Boeing.   The company has faced an uphill struggle trying to address safety deficiencies in the aftermath of the 737 MAX crashes and production troubles with its best-selling Dreamliner. As many have documented (including in my case study about the 737 MAX), Boeing seemed to be characterized by an enviroment of low psychological safety in which engineers were reluctant to speak up about safety concerns. The article focuses on efforts led by Chief Aerospace Safety Officer Michael Delaney to transform the culture and improve problem detection in the manufacturing and engineering operations at the firm. Here's an excerpt from Johnsson's story:

Delaney, who took over the newly created position last year, is trying to instill a more open and transparent culture where employees speak up without fear of retaliation. That’s one facet of a larger framework he’s putting in place, known as a safety management system, that uses data and other tools to address risks before they flare into broader issues.  His deputy, Al Madar, pointed to one counterintuitive sign the approach is starting to take root: Boeing saw a record number of safety reports filed by employees in March and April.  “That data tells me what we’re doing is working,” said Madar, who oversaw American Airlines Group Inc.’s operational safety program before joining Boeing.

This point about the data is very important for any organization on a journey to improve quality and detect problems or errors more effectively.  Remember that improving pscyhological safety is often a key element of a program aimed at improving product/service quality.   In the early stages of a successful effort to enhance psychological safety, reports will (and often should) show MORE reports of incidents or problems, not fewer.   At first, these data may seem alarming. Could quality or safety actually be getting worse?    Actually, the rise in reported incidents typically means people are becoming more comfortable speaking up and sharing their concerns.  A failure to see a rise in reported incidents would be concerning, as it would indicate that perhaps people are still reluctant to come forward with bad news.   Naturally, you need to examine other metrics to be sure that the rise in reported incidents does not represent a serious deterioration in your operations.  Hopefully, some additional research will reveal that incident reporting is being driven by higher levels of psychological safety. 

Fran Horowitz' Turnaround at Abercrombie & Fitch

Source: bizjournals.com

Fran Horowitz, CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch, has led quite a turnaround at the company over the past several years (the firm manages both the A&F and Hollister brands). She inherited a company spiraling toward a similar horrible fate experienced by other struggling brick-and-mortar apparel retailers in recent years. Horowitz managed to reverse the decline. Under her leadership, A&F has rebounded to reach a revenue level last achieved in 2014. The firm's share price has almost quadrupled during her tenure.  

Fortune recently published an in-depth look at the turnaround.  As I read the article, authored by Phil Wahba, I was struck by two key elements of Horowitz' leadership.   She offers us one important lesson about business strategy and another about organizational culture. 

First, with regard to competitive strategy, Horowitz noticed that the A&F and Hollister brands had converged to the point of becoming indistinguishable.   Horowitz noted, “The simple conclusion I came to was that the brands had really become melded into one.  It was essentially the same product with just a different logo across the chest, at a different price.  She set out to create brands with distinct competitve positioning.  I would argue that many multi-brand apparel retailers have faced a similar predicament.  In desperate search of synergies among their subsidiaries, the firms have watered down the distinctive aspects of each brand.  They have reduced costs, but at the expense of a developing strategies that stood out from one another.  Wahba writes, 

On a more fundamental level, Horowitz started to put distance between Hollister and Abercrombie & Fitch so they weren’t interchangeable and didn’t risk being seen by shoppers as commodities, something that was draining their pricing power. “We had an opportunity to separate the brands and get them each on their own path,” she says.

The problem was that for years, the two brands had shared a merchandising and design team, so the products were very similar. For instance, a Hollister parka and one at Abercrombie would have almost the same design, with only tiny touches—a difference in color, say—to set each brand apart. So Horowitz gave each brand its own dedicated teams.

She also zeroed in on making sure they served different markets. For Hollister, based on data drawn from tons of in-person consultations with shoppers, the company determined that the target customer would remain a 17-year-old looking for clothes that invoke the feeling of a carefree, endless summer. Abercrombie, meanwhile, would “age up” and look to cater to 25-year-olds looking for casual, quality clothing. (But 25 is an average: A&F does carry items aimed at an older shopper, including $40 Def Leppard men’s t-shirts.)

In terms of organizational culture, Horowitz tackled the transformation of a top-down culture where front-line employees' ideas and perspectives were not valued. Wahba describes the culture under the previous CEO:

Jeffries’ top-down management approach worked well...until it didn’t. By the 2010s, his my-way-or-the-highway approach meant the company was missing important cultural shifts and falling out of step with its consumers, who were becoming less interested in company logos and airs of exclusivity. And the CEO eventually became notorious for his imperious management style.

The point here is very important. Creating a culture of low psychological safety not only demoralizes your employees, but it means you miss KEY shifts in customer behavior and market dynamics.  The people closest to the customer are not able to provide critical feedback and information to senior managers plotting overall strategy. Hollister President Kristen Scott, hired by Horowitz to help lead the transformation, notes, "“It took years, really, to get everybody comfortable reporting back what the customer was really asking for.”

Apparel retailer is a highly competitive industry.  The future may still present major pitfalls for A&F.  However, Horowitz' turnaround reminds us not to sacrifice distinctive competitive positions in desperate search for corporate synergy, and not to forget the impact that low psychological safety can have on an organization's ability to sense changing customer behavior, wants, and needs. 

Leaders: Don't Say, "Tell Me Why I'm Wrong"

 

Some well-meaning leaders have tried to solicit dissenting views from their team members by saying, "Tell me why I'm wrong."  They invite team members to explain why the proposed course of action is not advisable or feasible.  However, I think leaders are asking the wrong question here.  Inviting people to openly oppose you doesn't necessarily create the type of constructive dialogue and debate you envision.  People may have questions or concerns about a proposal, but they might not be ready to stand in direct opposition to the boss.  Alternatively, they may not be sure if the recommended course of action is appropriate.  They may simply have some questions about key assumptions, beliefs, or data.   Ironically, asking people to oppose you openly may not create a safe environment for discussion at all; it may discourage team members from speaking up. 

What should leaders ask instead?  Here are a few alternatives:

• What questions do you have about this proposal?
• What assumptions do you think might need further testing and validation?
• How might this plan go off track?
• What obstacles might we face if we try to implement this plan?
• Here's how I see this scenario unfolding.  What am I missing?

Asking these types of questions can create a productive conversation, and even encourage dissent, without asking someone to stand on an island in direct contradiction to the boss.  

Substantial Consequences of a Culture of Fear

Source: Flickr

What happens when a culture of fear takes hold in an organization?  How can it put an entire enterprise at risk?   The story of Sasol, the South African integrated energy and chemicals company, offers some stark lessons.   Bloomberg reported this week on problems with two giant  projects at the company:  a ethane cracker plant in Louisiana and a wax project in Sasolburg, South Africa.  In both cases, massive cost overruns and schedule delays took place. The Board remained in the dark for quite some time, unaware of how bad things had really become. Here's an excerpt from the article by Antony Sguazzin and Paul Burkhardt:

But Sasol’s struggle to break with a long-standing command culture, in which executives are rarely questioned, threatens to bring the global expansion of one of South Africa’s most successful corporations to a halt.   Shareholders have turned on Sasol in the aftermath of massive cost overruns and delays at a chemical facility that’s now nearing completion in Louisiana. The company fired its co-chief executive officers, Stephen Cornell and Bongani Nqwababa, in October, saying a “culture of fear’’ of managers overseeing the Lake Charles project had contributed to its failures.

A report by South African law firm Werksmans Attorneys examined the troubles at the wax plant. The article states that, "The report showed how employees concealed bad news about the wax plant from the board and made overly optimistic assumptions pertaining to expected profits from the project."  Haven't we heard that description about so many other organizations that have found themselves thrust into a crisis due in large part to the consequences of a culture of fear?  

Now, Fleetwood Grobler has become CEO, and he's trying to change the culture.  Unfortunately, significant damage has been done.  It seems that it will be a massive effort to create a climate of psychological safety at the firm.  

Are Your Employees Afraid of You?

Source: Pixabay

Megan Reitz and John Higgins have written a good Harvard Business Review article titled, "Managers, You’re More Intimidating Than You Think."    They write, 

Most of us believe that we’re approachable to our employees. In a survey we conducted with 4,000 professionals, two-thirds reported they are never or rarely scary to those junior to them.  We’re even more sure that we’re approachable to those who are our hierarchical equals or superiors. Asked whether their peers and their bosses would find them scary, 75% of respondents said it was extremely unlikely in the case of their peers and 80% in the case of their boss.

Yet we know from our other research streams of the last five years that many people think twice before speaking up in organizations because they find colleagues intimidating. This doesn’t add up. Other research shows that managers in particular need to accept that people see them as much scarier than they realize — and it’s hurting their businesses.

My research and experience working with executives at many companies confirms the conclusions presented here by Reitz and Higgins.  The self-perception of leaders often does not match the perceptions of those who work for them.   Most leaders do not have any sense of the fear that they have instilled in their people.  At times, of course, it's not anything major that the leaders have done.  It's simply the fact that employees in many organizations have a natural reticence to speak up.  It seems to come with the territory in most large firms.   Leaders need to lower the barriers, and it starts with recognizing how intimating they may appear to others.  

The Power of Telling Hard Truths

Source: Flickr

As I prepare for teaching some new material during the fall semester, I came across this terrific article by Jena McGregor last year in the Washington Post.  It's titled, "A lesson from GE: The power of telling hard truths - and the peril of avoiding them."   She described the cultural deficiencies that conributed to the downfall of GE. She explains that these cultural flaws did not just manifest themselves in the past few years; they stretch back two decades. McGregor describes a "history of selectively positive projections, a culture of overconfidence, and a disinterest in hearing or delivering bad news."  She argues that the company had a strong "can-do" attitude; unfortunately, that created certain problems.  McGregor writes, 

"In professional workplaces where a can-do attitude is valued above all else, and fears about job security remain common, getting unvarnished feedback and speaking candidly can be especially hard... Add to that its history as a business icon - GE was known as much for its vaunted management practices as it was for its actual products - and leadership experts say it's easy for a sense of overconfidence to creep in."

She goes on to quote Peter Crist, Chairman of Crist Kolder Associates (an executive search firm) and Chairman of the Board of Wintrust Financial Corporation.  Crist explained,  "It's the mindset of invulnerability that iconic companies create - that we are a special entity.  There was a time when GE players had a certain arrogance to them." 

McGregor closes the article with some good recommendations from Ethan Burris, professor of management at the University of Texas - Austin.  She writes,

"Burris suggests they (leaders) have to model the behavior, being realistic about goals and forecasts and candid when things go wrong.  They should host town halls where employees can speak up without criticism, structuring them so bad news can flow to the top.  For instance, he recommends getting mid-level managers to first interview lower level employees about what's not working to make sure tough subjects are aired." 

This week, as I taught a case study about the Columbia space shuttle accident to a group of Japanese executives here in Tokyo, several of them told me that they have begun to start meetings in a different manner than usual. They ask first for bad news before people can begin to share success stories from the past week or month.   It reminded me of a startup back in Boston where the leaders used to tell managers that they had to share two problems or pieces of bad news for every celebratory brag that they shared in a meeting.  

Silencing the Specialist on Corporate Boards or Management Teams

Imagine that you have hired a specialist on your management team, and they are, by far, the most qualified and knowledgeable team member on a particular topic.  Perhaps they know far more about cybersecurity than anyone else on the team, for instance.  What happens when generalists on the team comprise a majority and push for a particular decision about which the specialist disagrees strongly.  How do you handle this conflict?   How do you reconcile the views of the majority with the lone dissenting voice of the specialist?  

Randall Peterson of London Business School has written about this topic in the context of boards of directors.    He describes how specialists can be silenced on boards in many cases, and how that can lead to big trouble.   Here is an excerpt of an article Peterson wrote several months ago for Strategy & Business. In the article, he argues that boards often lack "open and frank discussion" and makes the case for a process of "qualified consensus" to protect against truly disastrous decisions.  Peterson explains: 

I have found consistently in my own research that majority-rule voting actually fails when the will of the majority is used to silence legitimate and specialist minority voices. What is right for the many ought to prevail, but not at the expense of the rights and specialist knowledge of a minority. This means that boards must understand the full implications of their two duties — care and loyalty — especially at a time when they are hiring more specialists. And it’s worth remembering that the sincere embrace of those two duties on the part of each director is key if majority rule is to function effectively.

So if, say, the digital specialist director in my example ends up voting against a cybersecurity-related decision she believes to be ill-advised, but a majority of her fellow board members vote for it, that director needs to consider whether her peers truly understand the risks. She needs to ask herself whether their decision is fully informed, and if not, she is obliged to raise this issue, rather than simply accept the vote. What follows in practice is that when a director believes that a particular decision is fundamentally wrong, whether for ethical reasons or because it violates regulations or because it represents a disastrous strategy, that individual director should be able to challenge boardroom colleagues. This does not mean that each board member must entirely agree with, and vote in favor of, every decision the board makes. But there is an important distinction between a decision that an individual judges to be suboptimal and a decision that the board member believes is totally wrong.

Boards should therefore operate on the principle of qualified consensus. By qualified consensus I mean a state in which a majority are in favor, and no one believes the decision is fundamentally wrong. Board chairs should be giving every member the opportunity to explain a dissenting point of view, to which the others listen and respond. You might think that this already happens as a matter of course. Yet I often hear about cases where the board literally hears the dissent, but does not recognize the distinction between a suboptimal decision and one that is seen as truly wrong. Giving a dissenting member the opportunity to speak up is just not on the board’s radar screen often enough… Unfortunately, open and frank discussion that arrives at consensual and informed decisions — and thus incorporates understanding of the point above — is too often lacking among boards. For example, in another global study of board directors by the London Business School, scheduled to be published in late 2018, 64 percent reported misunderstandings in the boardroom to be commonplace, and one-third reported the need to revisit decisions.

Source:  Harvard Business Review

While Peterson writes here about boards of directors, one might apply his thinking to the top management team and other senior teams as well.   These teams have to think carefully about how they handle the specialist who dissents.  How do you treat that person's voice, and do different types of dissent matter?  I personally like the distinction between an undesirable decision and one that is fundamentally wrong.   Teams at the top definitely need to think about how to build psychological safety, and how to handle dissenting voices once candor is encouraged.    

Should Leaders Show Vulnerability?

Source:  Pixabay

Inc. magazine ran a headline this week that said, "Showing Vulnerability at Work Can Hurt You If You're the Boss, Science Finds." Frankly, the headline alarmed me quite a bit.  I've always believed that leaders who demonstrate some vulnerability at times can foster psychological safety, and thereby enhance learning and problem-solving efficacy in teams.  

I decided to dig deeper. The article cites a study by Kerry Roberts Gibsona, Dana Hararib, and Jennifer Carson Marr. Thearticle is titled, "When sharing hurts: How and why self-disclosing weakness undermines the task-oriented relationships of higher status disclosers." What do these researchers find? Based on a series of experimental studies, with undergraduate students as research subjects, they concluded: 

In three laboratory experiments, we found that when higher status individuals self-disclosed a weakness, it led to lower influence (Studies 1, 2 and 3), greater perceived conflict (Studies 1, 2 and 3), less liking (Study 1), and less desire for a future relationship (Studies 2 and 3) by attenuating the status of the discloser. 

The findings appear robust, but I wonder about the limitations of the study.   For example, I wondered:  What type of self-disclosure did the students exhibit?  How did they demonstrate vulnerability?  In one study, they disclosed that they were on academic probation.  In another, they told others that the doctor had chided them for being signicantly overweight.  These disclosures did not have direct relevance to the task though, and they did not come with any discussion of the importance of this issue to the work at hand.  Moreover, the people disclosing these weaknesses did not talk at all about how they were learning from their past experience and trying to improve.   Therefore, I have concerns about jumping to conclusions regarding the benefits or costs of leaders acknowledging vulnerability based on this research.   

An effective leader fosters psychological safety by demonstrating vulnerability through offering examples that show team members that he or she is not infallible.  However, the leader does not simply disclose failures from the past.  They should talk about how they have learned from those failures, or how experimentation helped them innovate.  They aren't simply blurting out personality flaws or weaknesses without some context!  

The scholars do acknowledge the limitations of their work, and they cite possible benefits of expressing vulnerability in work teams.  They cite Amy Edmondson's work, in fact.  She's the researcher who has done the most groundbreaking work on psychological safety.   By the way, Google found that psychological safety is an attribute of high-performing teams, confirming Edmondson's work.  Google also concluded that leaders who show some vulnerability tend to create higher levels of safety.   The scholars acknowledge some benefits of vulnerability toward the end of their paper. They write: 

Finally, although in our studies the goal of the discloser is to influence the receiver, and therefore we describe less influence and greater conflict as negative consequences for the discloser, there may be situations in which increased task conflict and reduced discloser influence actually results in more positive outcomes for the dyad or team (Nembhard & Edmondson, 2006). For example, a team leader might strategically choose to self-disclose a weakness as a way to increase involvement from lower status group members who may be intimidated by the status differences between members of the team.

In sum, be wary of such headlines in popular periodicals.  The underlying research often does not sync completely with the conclusion that has been reached by journalists.  

Signaling and Shame: Why We Don't Seek Information & Advice From Others... Even Though We Should

Source:  Pixabay

Arun G. Chandrasekhar, Benjamin Golub, and He Yang have written a fascinating National Bureau of Economic Research working paper titled, "Signaling, Shame, and Silence in Social Learning."  They examine how individuals make the choice to seek or not seek information and advice from others.  The scholars argue that seeking information has obvious benefits, in that it helps us to learn from others and make more informed decisions.  On the other hand, asking others for information may bring with a social stigma.  The potential seeker may ask himself or herself:  Will I look incompetent?  Will others question my work ethic?  Will people think that I don't have the adequate experience or education to handle this job?  

The scholars go on to argue that there are two mechanisms that may cause people to refrain from asking others for useful information.  First, signaling may be a concern.  They explain: "One mechanism—a signaling concern—is about managing others’ beliefs. For instance, a pupil concerned about how others perceive him may be reluctant to ask a teacher or a peer basic questions about an assignment, fearing that this person could infer that the pupil is slow or lazy."  Second, shame may be a powerful inhibiting force.  The scholars write, "There is another way stigma can inhibit interaction, which is not about managing beliefs but managing interactions in view of compromised beliefs. To illustrate, the pupil in the example may simply dislike interacting with those who have a negative assessment of him, no matter how this assessment came about. In particular, such feelings can occur even when signaling concerns are irrelevant, because a bad attribute (such as a pupil’s ignorance) is apparent to the potential Advisor irrespective of his seeking decision. We may call this type of inhibition shame." 

To study the mechanisms that might inhibit individuals from seeking information and advice from others, the scholars conducted a field experiment with over 1,200 pairs of individuals in 70 villages in India.   In this setting, as villagers often seek information from others about issues of agricultural production.   The experimental results confirm their hypotheses, namely that signaling and shame concerns inhibit information seeking and learning.  Moreover, they find that signaling matters more in some situations, while shame plays a major factor in others.   Put simply, shame proves to be a major concern when interacting with friends.  Signaling concerns dominate when interacting with strangers and/or acquaintances.  

What's the implication for leaders on teams of all types?  We need to understand how social stigma plays a key role in limiting the information sharing and group learning that may be crucial to solving challenging problems.   Teams do not always perform to their potential because members often focus their dialogue on information common to all members.  They often do not spend enough time sharing, discussing, and integration that is unique to particular members.   Why don't people request vital information from their teammates or their leaders?  Shame and signaling play a key role.  Leaders need to break down these barriers to facilitate more effective team learning and problem solving. 

"I Don't Know All The Answers"

Source: Fortune.com

The Wall Street Journal's Vanessa Fuhrmans interviewed IBM senior executive Bridget van Kralingen several months ago.  Kralingen comments on the traits and habits of the most effective leaders that she studied as an industrial psychologist, and how she tries to embrace those behaviors now in her role as a senior leader at IBM.  She explains:

I saw it was the leaders who were the most curious, the most open to change and learning themselves who were the most successful in a very changing, unstable world, which is the world we’re in today in many ways. I also saw that leaders who loved their companies, their work, their teams were able to do things that other leaders couldn’t.

I’ve always asked my teams if they’d like feedback. And then I will always ask them for the same thing. I find that if you keep on asking for it and then show you act on it, you will generally get it. The other thing I do is say to people, “I don’t know all the answers. I need your help.” I make sure I’m able to show positivity but also the vulnerability to be open to getting the feedback.

To me, the most important statement to her people is:  "I don't know all the answers. I need your help."  That statement promotes psychological safety, encourages people to express dissenting views, and promotes learning and improvement.  Many leaders are afraid to express such a sentiment to their team members.  Why?  Either they don't believe that they need the help, i.e. they think that they already have all the answers, or more likely, they are afraid to be seen as indecisive or incapable.  They are afraid to admit what they do not know.  However, acknowledging that you don't have all the answers is the important first step to actually gathering the information and input that you need to make sound decisions.  

In Search of Humble Bosses

Source: Flickr

Sue Shellenbarger has written a column for the Wall Street Journal today titled, "The Best Bosses are Humble Bosses."  Schellenbarger notes that many firms are now trying to assess humility right from the start, during the hiring process, because they believe that it's a vital attribute of effective leaders.  She cites a variety of studies suggesting that humility can be a positive characteristic for leaders.   When leaders exhibit humility, positive results include better collaboration among team members, more team learning, and lower employee turnover.  She doesn't discuss psychological safety specifically, but I suspect that humility on the part of leaders tends to make it safer for team members to speak up, and that open dialogue and collaborative learning leads to better team performance.    Here's Shellenbarger's summary of some of the research findings: 

Workplace researchers often rely on subordinates’ reports to assess leaders’ level of humility. In a 2015 study of 326 employees working on 77 teams at a health-care company, researchers asked team members to assess their managers’ humility, based on a scale including their willingness to learn from others or admit when they don’t know how to do something. Team members also assessed their teams’ attitudes and performance.

Teams with humble leaders performed better and did higher-quality work than teams whose leaders exhibited less humility, according to lead researcher Bradley P. Owens, an associate professor of business ethics at Brigham Young University.  The performance gains held up independently of how much team leaders exhibited other positive leadership qualities unrelated to humility.

I know what you might be thinking at this moment.  What about Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Bill Gates, and the like?  They don't strike us as very humble leaders, yet they revolutionized entire industries in many cases.  Of course, Shellenbarger is not suggesting that you MUST be humble to succeed.  However, she's making a case that, for most of us, pulling off the arrogant and largely benevolent dictator model of leadership is highly likely to lead to failure!  The bigger question is: Can firms actually assess humility effectively during the hiring process?  Plenty of research suggetsts that the hiring/screening process at many firms is highly problematic.  So, there's more work to be done, even if we know that humility is a desirable characteristic.   

How Do You Respond to Bad News?

Source: Flickr stock photo

As a leader, you should be creating an environment where people feel comfortable sharing bad news.  You don't want them hiding problems, or worse yet, manipulating data to make it seem as though things are proceeding smoothly.   When people do surface issues and concerns, leaders face a moment of truth.  How should you respond?   You only need to shoot the messenger once to poison the organizational culture for years to come.  People have long memories.  They will remember if a prominent leader reacted poorly to the messenger who delivered bad news.   

What is the right way to respond to someone brings forward a key risk or problem with potentially damaging ramifications for the business?   

• First, leaders need to express their gratitude and praise the courage that it took to raise the issue.  
• Second, they need to point out the harm that hidden risks can pose to the organization, and encourage others to come forward in the future with similar concerns or problems.  
• Third, leaders have to avoid the natural instinct to ask, "Why did this happen, and who is responsible?"  Certainly, there will be time to delve into the causes of this problem.  However, in the moment, leaders want to avoid finger-pointing and assigning blame.  Instead, they must focus on bringing people together to solve the problem.  They need to ask, "How can we resolve this problem?  What do we need to do moving forward?"  Naturally, answering these questions will require some investigation as to the cause of the problem.  However, the focus on problem solving rather than "investigation and interrogation" will mean a world of difference moving forward.  
• Fourth, leaders must encourage the team to look systemically at the problem, rather than individualistically.  They can't focus on the individual(s) involved, but instead must address the systemic issues that led to this failure.  It's not about the one rotten apple usually... it's about the damaged barrel that caused the apples to spoil.  
• Finally, leaders must look inward.  How did their behavior, leadership style, goal-setting tactics, and means of rewarding employees lead to this problem?  Acknowledging your own role in the situation not only helps the organization improve and avoid making a similar mistake again, but it makes others more comfortable discussing the mistakes and errors that led to this failure.  

Asking Engineers the Right Questions

In our extensive study of the Columbia space shuttle accident, Amy Edmondson, Richard Bohmer, and I examined the culture and leadership at NASA. Specifically, we analyzed the forces that made it difficult for engineers such as Rodney Rocha to speak up regarding their safety concerns, and we looked at how leaders did not ask probing questions to elicit dissenting views. 

When I teach the case to engineers and other technical experts, I often hear them say that management needs to understand how to ask engineers the right questions, and how to interpret their results. They argue that engineers were not going to scream, "There is a safety-of-flight risk!" unless they had conclusive evidence. The engineers' lack of complete certainty might lead to them to give answers that that are interpreted incorrectly by management. Organizational leaders might be looking for a definitive statement expressing alarm and grave concern, but they won't get it if there is scientific uncertainty. 

Today, I ran across a good quote (in Fast Company) from Google's long-time Chairman and CEO, Eric Schmidt, regarding this issue. Scmidt explains how you have to ask multiple questions, in different ways, to make sure you are getting the whole picture when working with technical experts: 

They are taught to think logically. If you ask engineers a precise question, they will give you a precisely truthful answer. That also tends to mean that they’ll only answer the question that you asked them. If you don’t ask them exactly the right question, sometimes they’ll evade you — not because they’re lying but because they’re being so scrupulously truthful.”

Kobe Steel, Middle Managers, and Unethical Behavior

The Wall Street Journal reports today about the results of an interim investigation into the product quality scandal at Japan's Kobe Steel. According to the newspaper, "Kobe Steel Ltd. released a report Friday that blamed lax management and overworked employees for a product-quality scandal, saying the company has to restore trust to survive." The report reminded me of research by Linda Treviño of Penn State University.  She and her colleagues have conducted research on unethical behavior that emerges from middle manager's attempts to cope with unrealistic targets set by top executives at firms.  She has found that middle managers sometimes react to highly ambitious and difficult-to-achieve goals by finding ways to deceive top executives as to the actual performance of the organization.  She describes the results from a study of a large telecommunications company: 

"What we found in this particular case — but I think it happens a lot — is that there were obstacles in the way of achieving these goals set by top management," said Treviño. "For a variety of reasons, the goals were unrealistic and unachievable. The workers didn't have enough training. They didn't feel competent. They didn't know the products well enough. There weren't enough customers and there wasn't even enough time to get all the work done."

Facing these obstacles, middle management enacted a series of moves designed to deceive top management into believing that teams were actually meeting their goals, according to Treviño, who worked with Niki A. den Nieuwenboer, assistant professor of organizational behavior and business ethics, University of Kansas; and Joa᷃o Viera da Cunha, associate professor, IESEG School of Management.

The researchers also discovered that middle managers took concerted actions to coerce individuals to comply with the deceit campaign.  They pressured people to go along with the efforts to fool top executives into believing that the organization was reaching its targets.  The most interesting finding, though, pertains to what the researchers did NOT find in their study.  They did not see managers trying to argue for a revision of unrealistic goals.  They were afraid to challenge top management.  Treviño explains: 

"Interestingly, what we didn't see is managers speaking up, we didn't see them pushing back against the unrealistic goals," said Treviño. "We know a lot about what we refer to as 'voice' in an organization and people are fearful and they tend to keep quiet for the most part."

The Dark Side of Board of Director Mentoring Relationships

Joann Lublin wrote a Wall Street Journal article this week titled, "Boards Try Buddy System to Get Newcomers Up to Speed."   Lublin describes how some boards have assigned mentors to new directors, so that experienced board members can help newcomers assimilate to the culture of the group.   Lublin offers the example of Carol Martz mentoring new director Amy Chang at Cisco Systems.  She explains, 

More boards are pairing new members like Ms. Chang with seasoned mentors like Ms. Bartz as they scramble to improve their oversight of management in the face of intensified investor scrutiny. Board buddies can help newcomers figure out the boardroom’s cultural norms, power brokers—and even the right place to sit.  Mentors make sure “you don’t come in as a bull in a china shop,” observes Steven R. Walker, managing director of the board services group at the National Association of Corporate Directors.

I certainly understand the importance of helping new directors learn the ropes when joining a board.  These mentoring relationships certainly appear to have a good intent.  However, I do have some worries about such systems.  What if the mentors provide the wrong message?  What if they encourage newcomers to refrain from challenging the status quo, expressing dissent, or asking the tough questions.  In the article, Martz acutally encourages Chang not to apologize for asking a challenging question.  However, some directors might provide very different advice.  They might promote norms that include conflict avoidance and deference to management.   Long-time directors might protect the harmony of the group, and in doing, send a signal that speaking up is not welcome.  Rocking the boat might not be the right strategy during your first board meeting. However, discouraging people from ever rocking the boat might also be a very dysfunctional dimension of some of these mentoring conversations.  

Etsy Engineers Share Their Failures in Company-Wide Memos

Many organizations exhibit of culture of blame and shame when it comes to failures.  In a case study that I co-wrote with Amy Edmondson years ago, a doctor described the "ABCs of medicine" - in the past, he said, health care practitioners and administrators tended to Accuse, Blame, and Criticize when it came to medical accidents and mistakes.  Yesterday, I read a fascinating article about one firm's attempt to transform its attitude toward failure.  Etsy has tried to create a culture that encourages people to acknowledge, discuss, and learn from failures.   Here is an excerpt from the  article posted on Quartz: 

In a conversation yesterday (Sept. 17) with Quartz editor-in-chief Kevin Delaney, Etsy CEO Chad Dickerson revealed that people at the company are encouraged to document their mistakes and how they happened, in public emails.  “It’s called a PSA and people will send out an email to the company or a list of people saying I made this mistake, here’s how I made that mistake, don’t you make this mistake,” Dickerson said. “So that’s proactive and I think really demonstrates that the culture is self perpetuating.”  He was referring to the company’s efforts at practicing a “just culture,” based on the idea that blamelessness makes people more accountable, and more willing to admit mistakes.As described by Etsy CTO John Allspaw in an Etsy blog post, engineers (and now others at the company) who mess up are given the opportunity to give a detailed account of what they did, the effects they had, their expectations and assumptions, and what they think happened. And, crucially, they can give that account without any fear of punishment or retribution, in what’s called “a blameless post-mortem.”

I love this technique!   Etsy has done something quite remarkable here.  They are not simply demonstrating tolerance for failure.  They are not simply avoiding the tendency to point fingers when failures occur.  Etsy has gone one step further with this practice.  They are encouraging serious self-reflection on the part of their people.   The employees do  more than admit a mistake in these PSA e-mails.  They describe what happened and they analyze why events did not transpire as they had hoped or expected.  The review and analysis provides the opportunity for improvement, not only for themselves, but for others throughout the organization who read these PSAs.