How can Managers Cultivate Open Communication?

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How can Managers Cultivate Open Communication?
🔥 "Learned silence is often a survival strategy for many people in the workplace", says Hering (2024). Even though managers (leaders of an organization) often do their best to encourage open communication or a bottom-up culture among employees, some of them will never express their opinions (positive or negative). Often times, employees tend to speak to each other on their views and one employee may deliver a message to the manager or not. Let's discuss tactics for managers aimed at motivating and empowering employees to provide feedback. According to Hering (2024), as a manager the following open communication approaches are helpful:

1. EXPRESS THE INTENT
   The manager must be sincere and clearly outline the type of feedback they need to hear. Hering also claims that if the manager becomes defensive or intimidates the employees when given negative feedback then employees will not likely share their views again. Thus, as the manager, one must be prepared to accept the reviews and reserve their emotions to promote authentic feedback.
2. USE NON-PERSONAL, STANDARD QUESTIONS
   
   Related LearningSelf-Efficacy Theory, Self Confidence, Self Esteem
   Communication Apprehension, Fear of Presenting, Presentation Anxiety
   Social Facilitation, Presence of Others
   Imposter Syndrome, Perceived Incompetence
   Managers should refrain from asking direct questions such as “What do you think of this idea?” Rather employ standard questions along the lines of:
   "What are the advantages of this idea?"
   "What are some of its limitations?"
   The use of such questions allow the employees to open up and share their different perspectives as it removes or reduces the chances of them being held responsible for their views.
3. DISCUSS COMMUNICATION PREFERENCES
   Before sharing their views, almost all employees estimate the challenge that might be raised for sharing their ideas such as losing their jobs or being hated by the managers. Hence, the manager should discuss communication preferences with the team which might include the use of suggestion boxes or typing the ideas and sending them to the manager’s email among others. This will take into account all the employees’ views in the firm as each one of them prefers one communication channel to another.
4. ACTIVATE ALL SOCIAL CAPITAL
   It involves giving room to the minor employees in the organisation due to several factors such as gender, race, position or race. Most of these employees feel less valuable in meetings hence they find it easier to keep their ideas to themselves despite them being good. Also, for the brave ones that speak up, they may be interrupted or shut down as “experts” are likely to underestimate their capability to raise good ideas Thus, one of the tactics which can be employed is for the manager to ask the minor employee to present on a particular topic thus promoting them to speak up.
5. ATTRIBUTE & REWARD ACCURATELY
   One of the factors that leads to employees in being silent is the lack of credit for the ideas or work they would have done. For instance, an employee may be assigned some research on a particular project and they work hard on it producing effective results, however the manager may fail to give credit to the employee and claim that his/her team made the research. The employee may feel demotivated to share their insights in the future thus the silence. Therefore, managers should try to give credit where it is due to employees who would have performed a particular task to motivate them to offer their ideas and research insights in the future.

To conclude, there are certainly various ways of promoting open dialogue in the organisation depending on the size, industry as well as the organisation norms. Managers should tailor their communication approaches to suit the organisations’ employees and structure. Apart from increasing trust between the stakeholders, obtaining feedback and ideas from the employees allows the managers to identify areas that need to be improved and weakness to resolve thus improving effectiveness and efficiency of the organisation.

⇨ What other tactics do you utilize to promote a culture of openness in in your organization or team?

Reference
Elaine Lin Hering (June 10, 2024): "How to Get Your Team to Actually Speak Up", HBR.

		Comments by date▼ Comments by rating Rating
		Jaap de Jonge Editor, Netherlands
	5 Open Communication Approaches for Managers Nice article. Thanks for sharing these strategies for managers to promote open communication in their team on 12manage. You might also consider: Coffee Talks (micro) Open Space Conferences (macro) And, especially if a communication you get is open and personal, remember these points about receiving feedback.

		Jaap de Jonge Editor, Netherlands
	4 Create Safe Psychological Environment Creating a psychologically safe workplace discussed earlier on 12manage is also a concept to keep in mind. This involves cultivating an environment where employees feel secure enough to express themselves without fear of negative consequences.

		MUNI DAVE Business Consultant, India
	2 How to Promote Open Communication at Work Manager has to sit with his/her staff to discuss various questions: - Are there any complaints related to the department from other depts or the customer and how can we minimize them? - What types of changes we need to do in our work system; (i.e. job rotation, changes in authority, change in documentation)? - Which new practices/disciplines have we learned? - Any resource requirement? - Are we enjoying our work? Is it giving us job satisfaction that we are growing everyday? - Has anybody come across an interesting technical article or book? - Where required and appropriate, family problems will be shared to accommodate the person; (i.e. death, major sickness, accident, marriage, etc) - Any additional issue someone wants to discus? Tea and snacks will be served.

		Anonymous
	0 Open Communication at Work in a Group or with One Person @MUNI DAVE: Yes. You can ask these type of questions in a gathering or meeting or to one person (a coffee talk). Keep in mind that asking such questions is good, but you need to do other things as wel (...)

		Melchiorre Calabrese Business Consultant, Italy
	2 Why is it Important to Discuss Communication Preferences? This topic is very important. In particular, I recommend to pay attention to: "#3. DISCUSS COMMUNICATION PREFERENCES". This is precious in a special way. In fact, from the preferences that will emerg (...)

		Judith Santizo Consultant, Guatemala
	1 Assertive Organizational Communication I have had the opportunity to manage work teams in different public organizations in my country, however, no matter how much there is an open dialogue, the leadership and attention that workers deserv (...)

		Maurice Hogarth Consultant, United Kingdom
	2 Communicate Openly Cautiously I was doing some work in Holland over an extended period. Open communication was one of the things that we were advocating. As a consequence of this, one of the managers on the programme shared with (...)

		Talent Maiwasha Accountant, Zimbabwe
	2 Leadership Styles Affect Open Communication Different leadership styles can either facilitate or hinder open communication. For example, consider these two leadership styles: - Authoritarian leadership - Stifles open communication as employees (...)

		Maurice Hogarth Consultant, United Kingdom
	1 Question Formats for Positive Mindsets Regarding point 2, USE NON-PERSONAL, STANDARD QUESTIONS I agree that starting by asking a direct question such as “What do you think of this idea?”, is potentially an attacking question and should be (...)

		Jimmie L. Scott Sr. Teacher, United States
	1 Communication is Key Communication is the key if communicated openly, honestly and genuinely! (...)