How to stop misfiring with well-intended actions

We often guess, hypothesise and act without checking. This can be driven by the pace of change and the emphasis on ‘having an action plan’. It neglects listening, reflecting, sense-checking, and then acting. After several years on various boards, I realised too many times I felt relief agreeing on actions, only later realising the rush and demand for ‘someone doing something’ didn’t address problems.

My time at Henley Business School challenged this. On day one in September 2020, Dr. Rebecca Jones explained, ‘in year three of this Masters in Coaching and Behaviour Change, you will do your own pioneering research’. My own research! Contributing to the literature! It felt overwhelming.

I chose the area of psychological safety with the whole process teaching me several valuable lessons, including how to stop misfiring by taking solace in having an action plan.

70% of leaders overestimate how safe colleagues feel to speak up, for example challenging the status quo, asking pokey questions, and openly discussing mistakes. This leads to colleagues pulling their punches, too much groupthink, ineffective decision making, and suppressed creativity and innovation. It puts downward pressure on motivation and moral when colleagues do not feel safe to share ideas and concerns.

Leadership teams misfire with well-intended actions when they discuss business critical dynamics like engagement without real insight from their colleagues. They may have some survey data or have a sense suboptimal motivation exists and come up with ideas of how to address it in a vacuum, without truly understanding ‘why’ and without their key stakeholder – the colleagues who answered the feedback - in the room.

For my masters dissertation research, I was sponsored to find out the circumstances contributing to colleagues feeling less comfortable speaking up in a progressive organisation who valued its people. Through reviewing sixty years research on psychological safety, qualitative research groups and in-depth interviews, I developed a diagnostic measurement tool to understand the team dynamics related to connection and performance. It includes statements colleagues rate on a likert scale (agree/disagree etc.). It would take your colleagues less than three minutes to complete it, and it is confidential and anonymous.

The real meaningful insight comes from combining survey data with the lived experiences of colleagues in the team. It reveals the why behind the data. This leads to breakthrough moments. Consistent feedback I have had from clients in elite sports, consumer goods, professional services, charities and creative agencies is ‘we have had conversations about how we can connect better we have never had’. The data is the catalyst for conversations about barriers and enablers to organisations getting ideas for growth and colleagues’ concerns about the things inhibiting progress. Teams see the average scores for each dynamic and the spread of perceptions of colleagues they work with daily. It's a reminder for us all, psychological safety is in the eye of the beholder.

Forced change that lacks real insight is a waste of time. Reflecting on why team dynamics score highly or not; discussing the behaviour changes colleagues would like to see; and then committing to change with collective accountability, drives adoption, and engagement in the changes. Many colleagues don’t just want to know the action…they want to know ‘why we are doing this’.

Don’t guess and misfire. Measure and combine data with team input.

Spend less time pondering and hypothesising, and more time empowering your team to drive collective changes they believe and buy-in to.