How do I get my staff to take the initiative and contribute their ideas?

I manage a team of six people who always look to me for answers. How do I get them to contribute their ideas and take the initiative?

There are many reasons why people don’t contribute in a team environment. They can include:

• Being disinterested and disengaged.
• Afraid to speak up due to past experiences or past consequences.
• A fear of humiliation, rejection, reprisal or conflict.
• Being belittled or dismissed therefore they decide it is safer to remain silent.
• Not being heard or listened to when they do speak up, so why bother.
• A lack of professional / personal confidence / experience.
• Stuck in a rut / comfort zone.
• It’s part of the culture; no one else speaks up so it’s wise to remain silent.

Look at the list above, do any of these factors apply?

• Have you spoken to your team?
• Do they know what your expectations are?
• What is preventing them from contributing? Do you know? If not, find out.
• Has this always been the case? If no, what has changed? (A place to look is in the culture, what happens when they do contribute, has there been a change of leadership, etc. What other factors could be contributing to this?)
• Was there a time (or are there times) when they do contribute, what happens when they do?
• What is your role in all of this?

Some tips to help you encourage your team members to speak up and contribute:

• Positively reinforce the behaviour you want to see more of, in this case contributing.
• Create the culture with your team that will foster open communication and contribution. Begin this by being open yourself.
• Encourage your team to contribute by inviting them with open questions, eg. What do you think? What does someone else think? (Use if in the room with all six of your team members), let’s brainstorm this together, who would like to begin?
• Take some time to think about each of your team members, do you have an example of when they solved a problem for themselves without asking you for the answer? Remind them of this, what was good about it, what did they do well, how did they do it? What was the outcome?
• Start to train them to offer their thoughts and ideas. When a team member comes to you with a question ask them what they would do prior to giving them a solution. If it’s procedural and has only one answer direct them to the beginning of the process where appropriate and get them to think about what needs to be done. If it’s a person to contact, ask them what would they ask this person. If they do not have an answer they may be lacking the experience required therefore consider some closer mentoring or training to fill skills gaps.
• Include contribution and taking the initiative as part of your performance development and review process. Different team members may have different needs.
  Create a blueprint for your team to become a high performing team. Engage your team members in this process and invite discussion on what a high performing team is. Cover your team’s vision, mission and purpose and deliverables. Build in accountability and reviews.
• Acknowledge team members when they do step out of their comfort zone and contribute. Stay away from compliments (they usually sound hollow and can have a negative impact) and focus on acknowledging the behaviour and who the person was being, eg. “Tom, I appreciated your input today, I could see that it took courage for you to speak up in front of everyone. Well done.”

If you want your team members to contribute it’s important that you give them a good reason to do so. Find out what inspires the individuals in your team and create alignment from this with your business outcomes, each other and the roles they perform. Paint them a picture of the future benefits that will be enjoyed by them personally and as a team when they invest themselves into the team and contribute. Also, show them the potential future (for themselves and the team) if they do not.

Be patient, most people are resistant to change and will need encouragement and time to test out the waters.

You are aiming to give the steering wheel back to your team members, some of them may still be on training wheels, others will be ready to take them off. Remember to always have your checks in place so that you can avoid any business mishaps.

Pollyanna Lenkic is the founder of Perspectives Coaching, an Australian based coaching and training company. She is an experienced facilitator, certified coach and a certified practitioner of NLP. In 1990 she co-founded a specialist IT recruitment consultancy in London, which grew to employ 18 people and turnover £11 million ($27 million). This blog is about the mistakes she made and the lessons she learned building a business the first time round and how to do it better second time round. For more information go to www.perspectivescoaching.com.au