Do Nothing!: How to Stop Overmanaging and Become a Great Leader by J.Keith Murnighan

Author:J.Keith Murnighan [Murnighan, J.Keith]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781101571965
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2012-06-13T14:00:00+00:00

Have you ever had a question or an idea when you were working in a group, but you were afraid to raise it because you thought that someone might respond by treating you like a fool? Most of us have had this experience. We feel this way when we don’t feel safe: we are afraid that our leaders or our colleagues will not consider our ideas and our questions at face value and respect us for asking them.

This is an issue that goes beyond democracy, and it is exactly the atmosphere that the best cardiac surgeons established in their MICS surgery teams. In Amy Edmondson’s terms, the successful team leaders created an atmosphere that was psychologically safe: their team members could make observations; they could ask questions; they could comment on what they were seeing and they were encouraged to do so. This represents a truly radical shift for cardiac surgery teams.

Was everyone now of equal status in these groups? Obviously not. Everyone still accepted that the cardiac surgeon was the top gun. At the same time, however, everyone in the psychologically safe—and successful—teams knew that their ideas would be heard and respected, and that they needed to share them for the team to succeed.

This then begs another important leadership question: Do the members of your team feel psychologically safe? Can they ask a question or make a comment or even disagree—anytime? If not, they won’t be as motivated as they might otherwise be.

It is up to you as the leader to make sure that your team members feel safe. You must bend over backwards to make this happen, because team members know that their leaders are always evaluating them and they have perfectly natural fears about the outcome of those evaluations. You must work doubly hard to help them feel safe: you must treat your team members’ questions and observations as if you love hearing each and every one of them and you must entertain thier ideas and even invite them to disagree with you. You must make it eminently clear that you want them to participate, to question, to comment, and to disagree—and you need to reinforce them when they do.

Think of it this way: what would it be like if all of your team members felt that they had voice and that they were psychologically safe? This is an amazingly potent combination, one that results in people feeling like owners—like they truly have a stake in their team, their company, and their organization. This increases commitment and dedication, almost immeasurably. It’s the kind of reaction that every leader wants.

Experience also indicates that it is extremely rare for any individual to repeatedly ask truly stupid questions. People do ask stupid questions now and again; that’s natural. But competent team members don’t do this repeatedly. So if you are going to make a leadership mistake, it pays to err on the side of voice and safety: if people have a natural tendency to stifle themselves and refrain from asking

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