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First thing’s first: An open door policy in and of itself is not a terrible idea.

This is the idea that says, “Hey, if something is up, you can come and talk to me about it."

I get it.

But, using this as a form of leadership or a fallback method of collecting feedback or dissenting opinions is not an acceptable way of leading people. I’ve talked about this before but the reality is it is not enough to assume people will come to you if they have an issue.

Any open door policy has to be paired with leaders who initiate open, direct conversations on a semi regular basis. Go to your team and ask them, “Is there anything we need to talk about?”

And that’s uniquely on you, you have to initiate them and demonstrate that that is safe. Even if you’ve never done anything to show them otherwise, the majority of employees have been jaded by previous employers and are too afraid to tell you real things because they don’t know how you’ll react to them. Just saying, “You can tell me anything and I’ll react well,” it’s still too risky for them.

Initiate those conversations and tell them, "I specifically want you to tell me the things that you're afraid to tell me so that I can adapt in service of my growth as a leader, in service of your experience as part of this team."

Do not fall back on the “open door” fallacy.

You cannot say, “Well, I have an open door policy.”

Well, you can, but also at least every or months with every single direct report that you have if you're a leader, you need to sit down and have a direct conversation to collect some feedback.

Ask: "What am I doing great, what is my biggest area of opportunity to improve, what would a 10 out of 10 look like for me as your leader?"

You cannot expect or rely on your employees to do that. They won't. They're too afraid to damage their relationship with you, which can hurt their career and completely ruin their experience as an employee. You have to be proactive about it. It has to belong to you.

One final note on the topic of dissenting opinions:

If you're choosing a direction or you're getting feedback from the team about, "I'm thinking about doing this, do you have any thoughts?" You can't expect that members of your team are going to willingly volunteer dissenting opinions.

You have to clearly state that you want to leave space and invite any dissenting opinions.

Ask, “Does anyone disagree with this? This is your chance. This is a chance for us as a team to have some dialogue and have a conversation about this now, not after we've made the decision to move forward. I don't want to find out that you hated this idea before we started or that there were things that you thought of that could be pitfalls that you didn't talk about. So please, I am inviting you to give dissenting opinions. Let's have some dialogue about this.”

Again, you have to invite it. You have to initiate it. You cannot expect employees to have the courage to do that because most leaders out there in the world are garbage, and they will retaliate against bad feedback. Prove that you’re different.

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This article was created by Galen Emanuele for the #culturedrop. Free leadership and team culture content in less than 5 minutes a week. Check out the rest of this month's content and subscribe to the Culture Drop at https://bit.ly/culturedrop 

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