Why Making Your Employees Feel Heard Matters

When people don't feel heard, they don't trust the process.

Or as Patrick Lencioni puts it, people will only buy in when they're allowed to weigh in.

The book Blue Ocean Strategy unpacks this point brilliantly when the idea of 'fair process' is discussed.

Do you want to see transformation and change throughout your organization?

Do you want your exec team and teams throughout your organization to be high-performance and achieve extraordinary outcomes?

Blue Ocean Strategy explains that rolling out strategic transformation is about fair process.

People simply will not buy in they feel like there's been 'unfair process'.

Have a think about any recent PR disasters or leadership disasters in your world. What comes to mind?

I guarantee that if you look at that disaster there will be a sense of 'unfair process' somewhere in there.

Unfair process is the enemy of successful change management and transformation.

Blue Ocean Strategy suggests a three Es approach to fair process.

E1 - engage

E2 - explain

E3 - expectations

I won't go into all three Es right now, I just want to focus on E1 - engage.

The key to starting off fair process is to begin by engaging. Engaging is a two-way street. It means you talk and you listen.

So back to the title of this blog, making your employees feel heard is vital because it's half of the 'engage' step!

If your people don't feel heard, then you haven't successfully engaged and it's likely you'll end up rolling something out that looks, tastes and feels to your people like it's 'unfair process'.

And why does that matter? Because if that happens, it's likely the change and transformation you feel called to achieve either won't happen at all or will be severely delayed.

Do you want help engaging your exec team and your organization so people feel heard and you see change and transformation across your organization?

Book a call today to discuss how we can help you and your team.