Leaders: Your Team’s Experience Matters
You’ve heard the phrase in airports, subway stations, and public squares: “If you see something, say something.” This rallying cry for public safety has resonated for years. But how many leaders have ever considered the profound impact of applying this principle to organizational culture, employee engagement, and business performance?
Contextualizing “See Something, Say Something” in Leadership
So, what does a public safety campaign have to do with leading an organization? In essence, it’s a plea for proactive awareness. It asks individuals to snap out of their everyday routine and take a moment to scan their environment. The core principles—intention, bravery, and awareness—are hardly limited to identifying abandoned backpacks or suspicious activities. In the corporate world, they are the cornerstones for dynamic leadership, innovation, and a thriving workforce.
A Call for Leaders: Your Team’s Experience Matters
When was the last time you seriously reviewed your employee experience? Digital technology, particularly in the wake of remote work models, has provided organizations with quick and simple methods to conduct employee surveys. However, according to our extensive research in human behavior and psychology, many organizations are going astray by relying on impersonal, “low-touch, high-tech” approaches.
Here’s the rub: your employees aren’t algorithms. No amount of advanced metrics can substitute the nuance of human emotion, which is pivotal in the employee experience. Automation in feedback collection often undermines the element of trust. Are you asking for anonymous responses? That hardly builds the psychological safety net for authentic dialogue. In fact, anonymity usually signals that honest feedback is risky—which defeats the very purpose of an open, collaborative culture.
Intimate Employee Engagements: A Practical Pathway
So, how should you, as a leader, approach this? Whether your workforce is remote, hybrid, or in-person, cultivate more intimate forms of engagement. Consider organizing small focus groups or town halls with employees from different departments and hierarchical levels. The aim here is twofold: one, to provide an open platform where people can share without fear; and two, to glean actionable insights from these sessions.
Note the use of the word “can” over “should” in seeking what can be improved. Why is this significant? The language we use shapes the context of the conversation. Asking what “can” be improved provides a bounded focus, ensuring you receive targeted, actionable feedback.
Beyond ‘Training’: Creating Learning Experiences
Let’s tackle the elephant in the room: traditional training methods are antiquated. Employees today crave experiences, not lectures. In an era where TED Talks are a click away, your in-house training must be more than an information dump. It should be an immersive journey woven with insights, data, and practical applications—much like the methodologies I’ve designed for global companies over the decades.
Gone are the days when training was a one-size-fails-all approach. Organizations need to re-imagine learning and development (L&D) in a manner that is flexible, diverse, and engaging. Using multi-platform resources allows for a richer learning ecology. But don’t just nod along with this. It’s vital to involve your employees in the redesigning process. Let them be the architects of their own learning paths; that’s the essence of true engagement.
The Competency Trap: Elevating to the Realm of Proficiency
The term “competencies” evokes a bygone era where the mere understanding of a concept was enough to merit its mastery. This is a simplistic, even outdated, perspective. Allow me to shed light on what my decades of experience in human behavior and organizational development have shown: The real currency in today’s rapidly changing business environment is proficiency.
In a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) landscape, merely knowing is no longer sufficient. Knowledge must translate into actionable skills that can navigate uncertainties and turn challenges into opportunities. The gold standard here is not theoretical competency but applied proficiency. This is the theater where innovations are born, and effective solutions to complex problems are discovered. Leaders need to focus on shaping and measuring these proficiencies, which can be likened to a “skills-plus-application” framework. In layperson’s terms, this is where the rubber meets the road—where theories are put to the stress test of real-world applications.
Breaking the Silence: Not Just a Leadership Mandate, but an Organizational Imperative
One of the most significant yet overlooked threats to organizational health is a culture of silence. Employees often spot inefficiencies, ethical lapses, or even dangerous practices but hold back from speaking out due to fear of repercussions. It’s not just a failure on the part of the employee; it’s an indictment of the leadership and the organizational culture.
Let’s be clear: the act of breaking the silence is not simply a responsibility; it’s an organizational imperative. Encouraging open dialogue doesn’t merely tick a box for employee engagement; it drives innovation, improves operational efficiencies, and, most importantly, nurtures a culture of continuous improvement. Leadership that seeks to create a platform for this dialogue takes on more than a managerial role; they become enablers of a transformative culture. This involves creating systems for feedback that go beyond anonymous surveys. These systems should encourage direct, open dialogue and reward constructive criticism, thereby elevating the collective wisdom of the organization.
The Takeaway: See, Say, Act—The Trifecta for Organizational Excellence
“See something, say something” extends beyond its roots in public safety and serves as a potent maxim for any organization striving for excellence. To put it succinctly, this principle manifests in three actionable steps: See, Say, Act.
First, cultivate an environment where people are trained to notice—not just the glaring problems, but also the subtle inefficiencies that, when aggregated, could lead to significant bottlenecks or setbacks.
Second, encourage a culture where saying something is not only accepted but celebrated. Your employees are your eyes and ears on the ground. Their insights could be the next big innovation or solution to a longstanding problem.
Finally, action is the linchpin. Seeing and saying are precursors to taking effective action. Leaders must act decisively on the insights gathered, whether it’s a minor adjustment to a process or a major strategic shift.
When you employ the “See, Say, Act” formula effectively, you’re not just checking boxes; you’re crafting a culture of vigilance, dialogue, and transformative action. This is what sets apart organizations that survive from those that thrive.
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