Conditions for Speaking Up

In this episode, Bill and Ralph discuss the value of changing our thinking about the way we solve problems. When we think of problem-solving as polarity management  –  that is, managing two forces that are interdependent but seemingly opposite of one another, we can reap tremendous benefits for ourselves personally, and for our teams and organizations. Listen to learn more about the concept and get ideas about how you can introduce polarity management to your leadership.

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*Note: The following text is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors

Bill Berthel:

Welcome to the Get Emergent podcast where we discuss leadership team and organizational topics and best practices. We like to provide ideas, concepts, and pragmatic experiments to help you develop your potential in your work and your leadership. I’m Bill Berthel.

Ralph Simone:

And I’m Ralph Simone.

Bill Berthel:

Ralph, great topic today, the conditions for speaking up, what is the space of folks not speaking up? What’s happening?

Ralph Simone:

Well, I think a lot of our coaching experience is coaching people to have those missing or pivotal conversations. And as I was thinking about this, this is kind of a both/and opportunity. We need to have the structure and culture in place so people feel safe and comfortable speaking up. On the other hand, as an employee, I need to have the courage and I think take the responsibility that if I see it, I need to say it and perhaps even do something about it. So I think it’s not just one or the other. The culture and the employees have to be working to mitigate what we would refer to as missing conversations.

Bill Berthel:

Oh, absolutely. Having a culture of that psychological safety, that term of psychological safety means that people do feel safe to share ideas, speak up, and possibly if needed disagree. Sometimes speaking up is disagreeing. It doesn’t always have to be, but we have that sense that I’m going to be emotionally safe in this space. Something I say won’t be held against me.

Ralph Simone:

And I think for our listeners, I want to make the distinction that you may be a very open, very personal, very kind individual, but sometimes your passion around a particular topic could make it difficult for people to speak up. And I have a recent example where in our organization, I’m the founder. I’ve been around practicing this leadership development and coaching the longest, and we introduced a topic and we had our extended team at this meeting. And it was a topic that I felt strongly about, really passionate about, and instead of waiting my turn and giving people, I just kind of went full bore with how I felt it needed to be. And I didn’t catch it real-time, but I reflected a few minutes later. Now our newest guy, if he saw it differently, I don’t know that I created the conditions for him to speak up. So sometimes it can be just by how passionately we feel about something, we can make it uneasy for others to see it differently or to challenge our perspective.

Bill Berthel:

That’s a great point, Ralph. Recently I’m working with a client and it’s about a year-long program, multiple workshops and meetings with the same cohort group. And really everyone in the group is wonderful and really bright. This one individual approached me through email and said, I really want to share some content with you, but I’m really hesitant to do that because you seem so well-rea