Importance of Voice and Dignity in creating a Successful team

Last week, I wrote on “Importance of candor” in creating a successful organization. Candor is great. Candor should not hurt dignity of an individual in the team. I will talk today on the importance of “Voice & Dignity” in creating a successful Organization.

Every person in the world wants voice and dignity and they.deserve them. This is a great philosophy and gives voice and dignity to an individual as a right. However, this phenomenon has a great implication on the performance. Voice and Dignity allows people to express themselves freely. Some people are smarter than the others. No one has proprietary on great ideas. Creating a culture where everyone can express themselves brings many ideas on the forefront. Few of the ideas will be great, some of them will be average and others may not have great potential. But it is important to have a culture of free expression. People feel empowered; they give their best under such culture.

It is good as long as the culture allows idea generation and a free expression. Managers or anyone who is accountable for the result has to get the idea and take a call on the appropriateness and its implementation. That’s what management judgment is all about; it’s a tricky game. The giver of the idea tends to have a great passion for their ideas. In the long run people have to trust that ideas are shortlisted on the basis of merits. There could be judgmental error and every system allows for such error. But fairness in short listing of ideas and its acceptance helps in creating an environment full of trust. This leads to better outcomes.
Being too candid sometimes might hurt ones dignity. This is a delicate balance and it’s the work of the manager to balance candor & Dignity evenly. One may have their own way to bring about such a balance. But a proper balance between the two goes a long way to create a positive environment.

I have been privileged to interact with customers from the western countries. They have always squeezed out their reservations on Indian resources thereby expressing themselves freely. I have realized that there are certain inhibitions towards creating an open environment for Voice & Dignity. Few of them are as follows:

• Cultural issues: Certain cultures are more expressive as compared to others. If you are from such a culture where traditionally being extrovert is not encouraged; you have to realize this and do an extra bit to overcome such an inhibition.

• A proper platform is necessary. Like in a Scrum meeting everyone is supposed to talk about his work, his challenges and his plan. If Scrum master manages properly, such interactions are bound to create a proper atmosphere.

• For a given problem, one may have multiple perceptions. Perceptions lead to solutions and since perceptions are different, solutions are bound to be different. In order to come to an understanding, communicating ideas, listening to others point of view is necessary. Communication corrects a lot of gap and creates a better environment. It gives dignity to the participants.

• Sometimes we are impatient for results. We see through our own eyes and start cutting free expression. I think attempt has to be made to listen and then a proper decision can be taken. This could be time consuming but a balance is necessary. It has tremendous upsides.

In order to bring this culture, one will need
• A Process
• A measurement how we are doing and
• Independent feedback

This is an important aspect for building a successful team, a successful organization which can sustain and grow under all odds.