"Unlike top management at Enron, exemplary leaders reward dissent."
Warren Bennis
Organizational Consultant
Organizational Consultant
Does your management encourage opinions that contradict the company's culture? If you are management do you?
Before you answer think about what this means.
If employees do not feel comfortable saying whatever is on their minds, either because they know they will be in trouble if they do or even if it they just fear it will lead to ridicule, it then follows that the company certainly does not reward dissent.
Is encouraging dissent a good thing? Always?
Before you answer think about what this means.
If employees do not feel comfortable saying whatever is on their minds, either because they know they will be in trouble if they do or even if it they just fear it will lead to ridicule, it then follows that the company certainly does not reward dissent.
Is encouraging dissent a good thing? Always?
Our management does encourage views they don't agree with however the trick is to do so in a respectful, not argumentative way and not everyone does that well.
ReplyDeleteI worked for a guy who had a way of getting to what those who reported to him really thought. If they appeared to agree with him or company policy, he made them defend their beliefs. He would push them to justify what they said they believed and in those cases where the employee disagreed, he did not object but instead listened sometimes changing direction because of their opinions.
ReplyDeleteIt didn't take long for all of us to conclude we could say what we really thought and that in fact, we were expected to.