What Have People Learned to STOP Doing Around You?

“What have people learned to STOP doing around you?”

This is a question I sometimes ask in my leadership workshops.

It always creates an immediate ripple of nervous laughter.

And then you see the tentative smiles erode, it goes quiet, and those leaders become really thoughtful.

Because if you’re a good leader you want to do better – and be better…

And candid questions like this can prompt you to wake up and build self-awareness around your impact.

What Behaviours Might Leaders Accidentally Shut Down?

I asked this question recently during an emerging leaders workshop for a professional services company.

“What have people learned to stop doing around you?”

Here are 3 of the insights those high-potential leaders shared.

People have learned not to…

1. Share their opinions around me
2. Challenge me
3. Admit they don’t know things

Feel free to suck in a gasp of terror.

If you’re a leader who wants the best from your team, learning that you’re accidentally shutting people down can be super sobering.

Of course, quashing other people is rarely a leader’s intent.

But it happens more often than you might think, despite a leader having those positive intentions.

And recognising what’s actually happening on your watch can be really, really valuable.

Because with awareness, you also get choice. And you can choose to work on this and become a better leader.

How Can You Build Awareness as a Leader?

In the workshop , this question promoted a period of self-awareness that resulted in a few revelations:

“That’s so depressing!” said one participant.

“How could I not have noticed that?” said another.

“How can we stop this from happening?” was the resounding conclusion from the group.

How to Build Engagement in Your Team

First up you want to acknowledge the behaviour that you’re accidentally shutting down (yep we have identified what’s not working already, so what’s next …?)

Second have a best guess as to why you think this might be happening. The key is to take responsibility and look at your own behaviours first.

Say your dilemma is that people don’t share their opinions around you. You can ask yourself, “What causes people to do this?”

There could be a number of reasons this is happening. Here are some ideas to get your thinking going (this list isn’t finite!):

1. Are you quickly shutting their ideas down?
2. Are you quick to tell people their ideas won’t work?
3. Perhaps you tend to share your opinions first in meetings?
4. Do you talk over people?
5. Or talk too much and dominate discussions?
6. Do you favour certain people’s opinions over others?
7. Or might you advocate so strongly for your own ideas, that it makes any alternate view hard to share?

Thirdly you can ask if you’re creating the right conditions for people to share freely.

1. Am I in any way diminishing this person?
2. What culture have I created in this team that is either empowering or diminishing this person?
3. What else could be at play?

It’s unlikely you want to have a negative impact on your team of course. But it’s possible that your behaviours could be accidentally dimming their light.

And when that happens people quickly move from feeling energised and enthusiastic, to apathetic and disengaged.

Stifling others’ ideas obviously hinders innovation and deeper thinking so it’s a cost to the business, as well as to your credibility as the leader.

If you are looking to develop your leadership capability, or are interested in team coaching to build a trusting, high-performance culture, book a call and let us help you build self-awareness, trust and team cohesion.