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Reed Hastings he said that was the secret of his success as CEO of Netflix, he calls it “the role of dissent.” Disagreements with the boss, he says, allow recent ideas and growth strategies to come to the leader’s attention, and the leader’s efforts to provoke dissent help people feel more comfortable with what they’re doing. While I understand the concept, the language will be negative: dissent, disagreement, discord; working against one other person. I prefer to explain what makes dissent so positive.
Ultimately, leaders want informed employees who feel encouraged to share ideas without fear of reprisal when they see ways to improve. Beyond the areas where we may disagree, I need every worker with a strong idea to share it. Rather than searching for dissent, the approach we take in our company is to seek constructive insights—helpful feedback on how to improve and an environment where everyone feels comfortable sharing it. Here’s how we cultivate this culture.
Educate and encourage
A gradual flow of constructive insights can keep a company flexible and adaptable, but not all disagreement is constructive. Disagreement in the type of shouting or inappropriate language can impede constructive communication. Emotions or ulterior motives can inadvertently exaggerate disagreement.
To practice constructive, positive “dissent,” or observations, you first need to be respectful of the practice as a part of the team’s commitment to doing so. Disagreeing with every decision just for the sake of disagreeing disregards the purpose of the activity and shows little respect for the team’s effort. Instead of providing constructive feedback, this approach simply presents one other problem for the team to solve. Dissent may also be less constructive when all the relevant information needed to be more thorough or precise is missing. Still, if someone has hung out and energy brainstorming and presenting an idea and their boss dismisses it without a second thought, they might feel less comfortable offering the idea next time. Bosses do this often enough, and people stop sharing their ideas.
Through education, training, and encouragement, leaders can assist amplify differing insights to be more constructive and to keep ideas flowing. This 12 months, our company has focused heavily on higher training all employees and understanding the business model. By facilitating this training, their ideas can be more thoughtful, informed, and metric-driven, and increasingly likely to be constructive. The higher our training becomes, the more constructive ideas we will start implementing.
Create protected spaces for higher feedback
Some employees may come from toxic workplaces where their ideas were rejected or ridiculed, making them hesitant to share. While we cannot change their past trauma in the workplace, we will create a protected, supportive environment that builds trust and encourages open communication.
Our goal is to be certain that all employees feel comfortable providing feedback, no matter their previous experience. By fostering emotional safety and demonstrating ongoing support, we help everyone feel confident contributing their ideas.
We send surveys to gather insights into individual experiences and work closely with HR and managers to solve deeper problems. Equipping managers with tools for effective one-on-one conversations allows them to ask higher questions and collect more constructive feedback. One-on-one meetings provide employees with a protected space where they’ll regain trust and feel valued for their contributions.
The most significant thing is to show the results
To develop a culture of trust, employees must not only feel protected from punishment for sharing ideas, but also must see their ideas being implemented. If we just talked and asked questions but never made changes, people would stop bothering to share. They need training and encouragement, but also motion to consider that their ideas can really contribute to the company’s development.
We recently began implementing “Start, Stop, Continue”. As a part of this company-wide activity, everyone breaks into teams to answer the same query: what would they like to see end, start, and what would they like to stay the same? Teams of six to seven people exchange ideas to create a strong list. They then prioritize their suggestions, agreeing on the most significant thing they need to start, stop and proceed, and send this more targeted list to management. We review and, if crucial, narrow down the ideas to those we support before sending this list back to the entire team to vote on the winning idea that we are going to implement. Sometimes ideas are more unanimous and easier to resolve on, but this process prevents ideas like “We’ve got half a year off” from getting any further than a suggestion, and great ideas are at all times promoted. We use “Start, Stop, Continue” to emphasize that everybody’s voice matters and we wish to listen and make changes.
Sometimes we have to reject good ideas. Our Business Intelligence manager has constructive ideas all the time and we implement many of them, but not all of them. Perhaps the idea will cost more or require more work than the potential advantages in return. The timing might not be right, too many ideas may already be in the pipeline or the ideas may require more attention to achieve sustainable results. Nevertheless, seeing that many of his ideas have been implemented encourages him to offer more, understanding that not all of them could also be immediately applicable. His confidence trickles down to his team, who also feel confident in offering him ideas, creating a continuous cycle of ideation.
I try to talk to everyone who shares their ideas and share the explanation why we have not been able to implement them, so they know I hear them. Making sure people feel heard perpetuates the vicious cycle of perceptions. As long as employees see enough of their ideas being put into motion, confident that they can be heard, they’ll dig deeper, looking for more good ideas, and trusting that when they work, we are going to implement them.