You will quickly discover that using the Lucidchart template invites collaboration. Encourage each of your employees to openly share their ideas and observations, as they work together to outline their primary goals as a team. Providing your employees with a strategy map also allows them to better understand the importance of their contribution to the organization at large.
Questions to ask yourself:
- Am I always clear and concise with others regarding my own strategic direction?
- Am I giving each my employees an opportunity to share their voice and be heard?
- Am I allowing my employees to see how their role plays in the bigger picture?
2. Give honest feedback
In spite of what we like to tell ourselves, most of us have a difficult time with honesty. It’s not that we set out to be deceitful or misleading with one another in the workplace. It’s that most people do everything possible to avoid hurting the feelings of an employee or colleague.
When it comes to holding back our criticism, avoidance of the truth is only a temporary fix. Whether you’re a direct supervisor or co-worker, failing to give a team member your honest feedback can detrimental in the long run. Especially when a team member is not fulfilling the responsibilities of their job and their shortcomings threaten their own career livelihood.
Honest feedback doesn’t mean being hurtful. According to author and coach Kim Scott, there doesn’t have to be a trade-off between being kind and being honest. As Scott learned over the course of her storied career as an executive at Google and Apple, the secret to being a good boss is to focus on giving, receiving, and encouraging guidance. For Scott, this “right kind” of guidance, a mix of praise and criticism, started as a tool she shared with companies like Twitter and Dropbox as a CEO coach. It’s also the name of her international bestseller: Radical Candor.
Radical Candor can offer a great framework to foster the exchange of honest feedback between colleagues in the workplace. When providing honest feedback to your employees, remember it’s crucial to be just as specific and sincere in your praise as you are in delivering your criticism.
Questions to ask yourself:
- Am I being clear in the praise I give others and why their work is good?
- Am I being clear in my critique of others and challenging them to improve?
- Am I fostering an environment where others give me their honest feedback?
3. Encourage mutual trust
In a poignant TED Talk, author and management theorist Simon Sinek deftly illustrates the stark contrast in how two different work environments acknowledge and reward individual effort:
“In the military, they give medals to people who are willing to sacrifice themselves, so that others may gain. In business, we give bonuses to people who are willing to sacrifice others, so that we may gain.” Sinek initially discerns that soldiers “are just better people,” which is what attracts them to the military and the concept of service. Based on further observation, Sinek concludes, “If you get the environment right, every single one of us has the capacity to do these remarkable things, and more importantly, others have that capacity, too.”
Whether it’s the battlefield or the boardroom, the right environment that Sinek suggests is one of belonging, of shared values and a deep sense of empathy. Such environments dramatically enhance trust, cooperation, and problem-solving abilities among each member of the team. The desire to feel safe is a primal need. The dangers we face in the workplace, both real and perceived, are not necessarily life-threatening. But they can harm our livelihood in the form of layoffs or losing customers and profits to a competing business. To encourage mutual trust, your goal as a leader is to give each employee a sense of belonging, along with the power to make decisions. Only when your team feels safe can they pull together against outside threats.
Placing value on everyone’s contributions and working together toward a shared goal not only provides your team with a sense of purpose; it inspires loyalty and camaraderie. Big corporation or small business, Lucidchart offers several tools that allow your team to work more effectively throughout your office or remotely across several site locations.