Speak Up, Listen Up
Diagnostic
The topic of culture and conduct has never been higher on the agenda. News headlines have been dominated by stark examples – from business, media, politics and beyond – of the human, reputational and financial damage inflicted by toxic cultures or poor conduct, where inclusion, values, behaviours and the safety to speak up, have fallen short. Expectations around culture and conduct – and what is socially, ethically and legally acceptable – are rightly changing. Regulatory and media scrutiny and the demand for transparency are intensifying.
Why this
Product Is Needed
A culture where colleagues feel empowered to speak up is not just one simple idea, mandate or set of policies. Instead, it is a deep cultural orientation that allows the voice of employees to drive the heart of your organisation.
A culture where providing challenge, sharing different perspectives, asking questions, raising concerns, speaking truth to power, bringing fresh thinking and taking risks is psychologically safe – for everyone – throughout the organisation.
How we use this
Product to help you
Our approach leverages the principles of ‘triple-loop learning’ and Schein’s ‘Three Levels of Organisational Culture’ to help organisations, leaders and individuals identify, acknowledge and reflect on the long-standing beliefs that might be contributing to silence or an ineffective culture of speaking up.
We use these root causes to implement interventions that tackle the mindsets, behaviours and practical mechanisms needed to drive ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ change.
Establish a foundational principle
Establish a foundational principle or value across your organisation and your people that speaking up and listening up are important for the success, satety and growth of all.
Make space to explore existing limiting mindsets
Facilitate dialogue amongst leaders and colleagues to identify and reset the underlying limiting beliefs that sit across all levels of your organisation, so that everyone is paying attention to the employee voice.
Co-create speak up and listen up behaviours
Designing, with your people and leaders, the behaviours everyone will commit to demonstrate what we’re actually doing to empower speaking up across your organisation.
Prioritise enabling and reinforcing actions
Implementing the practical mechanisms and artetacts in vour organisation that enable. individuals and leaders to trulv listen to one another and speak un odenly and nonestivi without tear of consequences. Recognising and rewarding the right mindsets and behaviours to reintorce transtormation towards your established principle
How it works
The science behind it
Speaking up is influenced at many levels
At its core, speaking up is something that happens within a relationship. However, that relationship always exists within a multi-layered system, which means that a ‘speak up culture’ needs to be addressed at many levels. One of these levels cannot succeed without the other.
Listening up is as important as speaking up
To truly hear your employees’ voice, there needs to be an equal focus on building the capabilities, skills, attitudes and actions of receivers – and particularly leaders – to listen up. For speaking up to flourish, it needs to be absolutely clear it is welcomed, encouraged, celebrated and acted on.
There are different types of speaking up
Speaking up is more than just formal processes such as whistleblowing, it also happens in the semi-formal town halls through to informal day-to-day interactions between colleagues. These interactions can be both ‘prohibitive’ (where people share concerns or challenges), and ‘promotive’ (where people bring new ideas and celebration).
The Impact
The topic of culture and conduct has never been higher on the agenda. News headlines have been dominated by stark examples – from business, media, politics and beyond – of the human, reputational and financial damage inflicted by toxic cultures or poor conduct, where inclusion, values, behaviours and the safety to speak up, have fallen short. Expectations around culture and conduct – and what is socially, ethically and legally acceptable – are rightly changing.
More likely to attract top talent
Higher customer satisfaction scores
See their cultures as bringing advantage
We know how this works
Our methodology has been tried and tested with 100+ organisations, defining cultures that have created measurable results like the ones below.