Leaders face rising pressure to include more voices in day-to-day decision making. Soliciting diverse perspectives across the organizational hierarchy makes good business sense: It’s been shown to improve innovation and help employees feel valued and avoid burnout. But have these pressures resulted in more ideas reaching fruition for the average team? Not really.
How the Best Teams Keep Good Ideas Alive
Five research-backed strategies.
May 18, 2022
Summary.
Many leaders feel stuck. They know that employee perspectives are crucial for retention and innovation, but they struggle to single-handedly create a culture where employees are empowered both to speak up with ideas and to see them through — where it’s the good idea that matters, rather than the role or status of the person who initially raises it. Based on their research on “voice cultivation” — the collective, social process through which employees help lower-power team members’ voiced ideas reach implementation — the authors have identified several tactics leaders and their teams can use to help ensure good ideas make it to implementation: amplifying, developing, legitimizing, exemplifying, and issue-raising.