When People Speak Up At Work

July 12, 2012

Interview with David Gebler, author of the book The 3 Power Values: How Commitment, Integrity, and Transparency Clear the Roadblocks to Performance

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Mike Carruthers:
In organizations sometimes good people do bad things if they feel slighted, ignored or mistreated.

David Gebler:
Every organization has potential to have some bad in it - both bad apples as well as circumstances that could cause people to do bad things.
 

David Gebler, author of the book The 3 Power Values, says there are several things organizations can do to prevent people from doing bad things. And probably the most important is encouraging people to speak up.

There is a tremendous correlation between high performing companies and those cultures in which it is accepted if not demanded that people can speak up. They can ask questions, they can challenge assumptions and they can feel confident and safe in raising questions about somebody’s questionable ethics.

When you create a culture where people feel free to speak up…

It’s very empowering for the employee to know that there are no such things as dumb questions – it creates a tremendous sense of commitment and engagement.

Of course in almost every organization there are bad people.

The research is quite clear now that just 1 or 2 bad apples truly can spoil the whole bunch. So leaders need to take definitive action and these apples what they’ve done is their creating a culture of “victimness”, blame and therefore negativity - which by virtue of the fact that leaders are not removing that creates the notion that this kind of behavior is accepted.