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How can you develop workplace courage?
We've done a lot of thinking and research on workplace courage (which we're happy to share when it's completed) but are looking for practitioner / expert views on how to develop courage (both personal and cultural) in the workplace.
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2 Answers
Many people think courage cannot grow where fear exists. This thought asserts that by eliminating the fears that restrict a workplace's innovation, constructive opposition and anti-silo mindset, a courageous workforce is produced.
The problem is that the fears cannot be eliminated without such substantial organization change that few companies are able to reach that point. Many companies that try will fall back into the "old way of doing things" because it is more comfortable, and rustles fewer feathers. Instead of fear elimination as a goal, I believe the goal should be to constantly address acknowledged fears, observed, and potential ones.
When I work with a company that wants to start hiring people with disabilities in order to advance their diversity, they have usually done nothing to address people with disabilities currently working for them. Often disabilities are hidden and employees fear disclosure so much that they will work in pain, underperform, and post an unknown safety concern because they fear their employer's reaction.
Elimination of this fear does not lay in HR stating, "Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions." This is because the culture and workplace environment never fully integrates the meaning of that statement into the workplace. Because managers don't act in ways the reinforce the statement, employees don't believe the statement.
Ultimately, whether your tying to foster innovative courage, courage in dialogue, or sales courage, having a policy is only the beginning. Revisiting goals with managers to reinforce messages is vital to any OD initiative's success. High profile leaders must set examples, and these examples should be published within the company repeatedly.
Do not ignore courageous employees or their managers - openly reward them, even if they fail. Because, if you don't reward the efforts of few for attempting to do what you've "asked", then others will see that you're not seriously interested in them taking the plunge toward change.
Kim Kozak, SPHR, CPDM
www.DisabilityROI.com
It depends what you mean, by workplace courage. If you mean you want your staff to develop a level of independent thought, and the courage to take risks it's pretty easy to do.
But it starts at the top, you need a senior management team who are prepared to support this culture. If you don't have it, then it's not going to work, and I don't mean "yes, we support this, now can we get on with our jobs?" kind of support, but real genuine support.
The senior management team, then need to task middle managers with responsibilities including the right to think and act outside of the box. And then they need to reward this kind of behaviour, they also need to address issues as they arise where this kind of behaviour should have been present and wasn't. Not through punishment, but by coaching and supporting the individual to the next level.
They then need to encourage this behaviour to be cascaded down to the next level, and the next, and the next.
You could hold workshops to try and introduce the concept to each level as the change progresses, but coaching is the way forward to introduce a "blame free" culture, which is the only way "employee courage" can possible succeed in the long run.
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