From a psychological perspective, sustainable behavioural change within organisations is enabled when leaders are open and truthful with themselves and their colleagues at a human level. As John Cooper, CEO at JCA explains, that is easier said than done.
Resistance to change amongst senior leaders is partly responsible for holding organisations back from rebuilding trust and fostering cultures of openness, collaboration and innovation in their organisations. But it is the lack of openness that can result in a culture of a fear of failure, blame which are the key inhibitors to achieving a positive change. When leaders behave in an open and transparent way, the benefits are two-fold; Not only does it have a positive effect on their personal performance, it can often catalyse behavioural change throughout the organisation. This openness can have a lasting impact on levels of trust and accountability of staff, which leads to higher levels of engagement and overall organisational performance. From a psychological perspective, sustainable behavioural change within organisations is enabled when the leaders are open and truthful with themselves and their colleagues at a human level.
When FTSE 100 senior managers attend training in Emotional Intelligence skills, they are asked; “what would happen if you always behaved openly in your organisation”? The initial response is usually along the lines of; “it would make me vulnerable, people couldn’t handle the truth, it would upset people, it would not be strategic and I would fall out with people”! Further discussion usually starts to produce some more positive answers such as; “people would feel more appreciated, we could resolve our differences more quickly, I would feel more trust and be more authentic”. Interestingly, the emerging view is that people would like to be more open but they are reticent to change, fearing possible negative consequences for their relationships and their career. On the contrary, changing behaviours through the principle of open communication has a number of proven benefits. It saves time and energy: people spend a lot of time and energy distorting, pretending or withholding what they think and feel.
More often than not these thoughts and feelings will come out eventually. It builds trust and accountability. Trust is at the heart of relationship, motivation, loyalty and many of the core principles that organisations hold. It improves relationships, by being open, people are more likely to sort out difficulties early on, rather than allowing them to fester and grow in to bigger issues. People often fear that transparent communication will open a “can of worms” that could damage their relationships. This may happen but the reason is usually not because the person is being more open; it is usually because they are not being open enough. We are not suggesting that a person should express their thoughts and feelings all of the time; the key is to communicate with emotional intelligence. When people decide to become more open, they often go from withholding to blaming. However, if they continued to the next levels to explain how they feel about the situation, what their inner story is and even what inner fears are driving their response, they are more likely to create a deeper level of relationship. In order to work through these levels of openness, the individual also needs to be truthful with both colleagues and themselves. Leaders within an organisation can facilitate an atmosphere of openness by keeping people informed, sharing information, encouraging the expression of feelings, giving constructive feedback and finding solutions to problems rather than seeking who to blame. This is an important aspect of being emotionally intelligent.
A lack of openness and truth has led to the demise of many organisations. For example, the Challenger Shuttle disaster (1986) was initially seen to be the result of technical errors but following a public enquiry, the underlying cause was later traced back to a lack of open communication within the NASA culture. The Enron fraud scandal (2001), the Iraq intelligence dossier (2002) and the 2007 sub-prime mortgage and banking collapse are all examples of how catastrophic failure can be traced back to a lack of openness and truth. Psychologically and emotionally, a business culture of openness rapidly builds trust and engagement between colleagues which, at a human level, leads to that crucial readiness to change and co-accountability. If managers lead by example and use appropriate openness behaviours, they can facilitate the necessary atmosphere to encourage and embrace change, which can have a positive “ripple” impact across the organisation.
