Category Archives: Leadership

Rebuilding Trust When You’ve Broken It

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Rebuilding Trust When You've Broken It

GUEST POST from David Burkus

Trust is the foundation of every high-performing team. It’s the invisible force that enables collaboration, fuels innovation, and keeps teams resilient in the face of setbacks. But when that trust is broken – leaders need to focus on how to rebuild trust carefully and deliberately. Rebuilding trust isn’t as simple as offering an apology and moving on. In fact, that’s where many leaders go wrong.

They believe a sincere “I’m sorry” is all it takes to make things right again.

But it’s not.

Rebuilding trust takes far more than words—it takes sustained action. And if you’re serious about leading a high-performing team, you need to understand the process of how to truly rebuild trust when it’s been damaged.

Most Leaders Get Rebuilding Trust Wrong

Let’s start with the apology. A real apology – the kind that has the potential to begin the healing process – sounds like this: “I did this. I now know it was wrong. I see the impact it had on you. And I’m going to make it right.” That’s not the same as saying “I didn’t mean it” or “I’m sorry if anyone was offended.” Those aren’t apologies; they’re excuses dressed up in regret.

Even when leaders get the words right, they often assume the work ends there. But rebuilding trust doesn’t happen with a single moment of contrition. Trust isn’t built on words. It’s built on behavior.

What leaders fail to realize is that when they betray trust, they don’t just damage the relationship – they break an emotional loop. I call it the trust loop, and it exists in every relationship you have with your team, both collectively and individually. That loop is a cycle of expectation, action, and consistency. When everything is working well, the loop reinforces itself and trust grows. But when trust is violated, the loop shatters—and rebuilding it takes far more than a one-time gesture.

Why Words Aren’t Enough To Rebuild Trust

When you break trust and then try to move on too quickly, you’re sending an unspoken message to your team: “This wasn’t that big of a deal.” And that message undercuts any sincerity you intended with your apology. Research backs this up. Paul Zak, a neuroscientist who studies trust in organizations, found that employees in high-trust workplaces report 74% less stress and 50% higher productivity. Trust isn’t just a feel-good concept – it’s measurable, and it affects everything from performance to retention. But that kind of trust can’t exist unless leaders take full accountability, even for their mistakes.

Taking accountability isn’t just about admitting the error – it’s about acknowledging the impact. And that’s where a lot of well-meaning leaders go off track. They say, “I made a mistake,” but they don’t take the time to understand or validate how that mistake affected others. The result? Their apology feels hollow. The team sees them as principled, maybe, but detached. Or worse – performative.

To truly rebuild trust, leaders need to demonstrate both responsibility and empathy. Because your team needs to know not just that you’re sorry, but that you get it. That you see the ripple effect your actions had, and that you care enough to do better.

What Rebuilding Trust Actually Takes

So how do you rebuild trust?

It starts with a strong apology, yes. But it doesn’t end there. Here are four steps to guide the process—and none of them can be skipped.

1. Own the Mistake – and Its Impact

Rebuilding trust begins with full accountability. You must take ownership of what happened and openly acknowledge the harm it caused. That might mean calling out specific behaviors, admitting lapses in judgment, or addressing how your decision made the team feel undervalued or vulnerable. This isn’t a time to minimize, justify, or deflect. And it’s not just about your intention – it’s about the impact. The more specifically you can articulate what went wrong and why it mattered, the more credible your apology becomes.

2. Invite The Team Into The Solution

After accountability comes action. But not behind closed doors. Telling your team, “I’ll do better,” isn’t enough. They need to see you doing better. Better yet, they need to be part of the process.

Invite them into the solution. Talk through what happened. Share the thinking behind your original decision—not to excuse it, but to help the team understand where things went wrong. Then ask for input. What would they have done differently? What safeguards could be put in place to avoid a repeat? The more you co-create the fix, the more your team sees that you’re serious about change. Transparency builds credibility. And when your team sees you working on yourself, they’re more likely to work with you to rebuild what was broken.

3. Show Them You’re Changing

The most powerful way to rebuild trust is to demonstrate new behavior in old situations. If you made a decision that sidelined the team last time, then the next time a similar decision comes up, you need to do the opposite. Bring the team in early. Ask for feedback. Show them that the lesson was learned – and internalized.

They don’t need to see everything you’re doing differently. But they do need to see you behaving differently in the kinds of situations that broke trust in the first place. That’s how predictability is restored. And predictability is a cornerstone of trust.

4. Be Consistent—Every Day

This is where most leaders lose momentum. They start strong. They apologize, they make a few changes, they check in. But over time, old habits creep back in and the consistency fades. And when that happens, the message to the team is clear: “That apology wasn’t real.”

Rebuilding trust isn’t about grand gestures. It’s about small, daily actions. It’s about showing up consistently. Following through consistently. Making decisions with integrity—consistently.

The longer you sustain those behaviors, the more the trust loop starts to turn again. Slowly, day by day, your team regains their confidence – not just in your words, but in your ability to lead with integrity.

Always Be Rebuilding Trust

You don’t rebuild trust with a single apology. You rebuild trust by showing that your apology meant something. That you’ve changed. That the behavior that broke trust won’t be repeated.

And while that takes time, it’s worth it. Because trust is what makes teams resilient. Trust is what drives performance. And trust – when rebuilt the right way – can actually come back stronger than before.

So, if you’ve broken trust with your team, don’t aim for forgiveness. Aim for consistency. Start by owning your mistake. Involve your team in the fix. Show them the change. And then keep showing up – day after day.

That’s how you rebuild trust. And that’s how you restart the trust loop.

This article originally appeared on DavidBurkus.com

Image credit: Pixabay

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Modeling Good Board Governance

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Modeling Good Board Governance

GUEST POST from Geoffrey A. Moore

There are cartloads of checklists and commentary on the duties and responsibilities of a board of directors, none of which are particularly surprising, but collectively, somewhat mind-numbing. As a frameworks person, I need to see things in a more simple and integrated way, hence the diagram below:

Board of Directors Responsibilities Framework

Public boards should tackle this framework from the bottom up as they are liable for damages if the company fails to address risk and compliance properly, or improperly reports performance results. Foundational to their recruiting and staffing efforts should be securing strong chairpersons for each of the three anchor committees—Nominating and Governance, Audit, and Compensation. That’s table stakes. High-performing boards do their best to handle these obligations in committee so they can spend quality time on the upper levels of the framework. The obstacle here tends to be management’s presentation of the past quarter’s performance. This is necessary to bring the board up to speed on the current state of the company, but it is something that most boards spend way too much time on, given how little the board can do to move the needle. This limits the time available to devote to strategy and resource allocation, where their outside-in perspective can add a ton of value. Big bets, on the other hand, do get the full attention they deserve—they just should not happen very often given the risk-averse nature of public market shareholders.

Venture-backed companies, on the other hand, are a different kind of animal. They should approach this framework from the top down. They are big bets, and their first responsibility is to get those bets across the chasm and inside a tornado. Resource allocation and strategy are core to accomplishing these ends. Performance matters, but early on it is more about accumulating power than delivering profits. Risk and compliance are still relevant, but the shareholders have a higher tolerance for risk, and the relatively small size of the enterprise as a whole makes compliance a whole lot simpler. And finally, the board is typically comprised primarily of investors and founders with an independent director for balance—not really a governance model, built more for guidance instead.

The disparity between the public and private market board models creates a shock when venture-backed companies get acquired by public companies. The newly acquired team wakes up one morning inside a public enterprise with all its established processes and procedures and feels like it is being smothered to death. There is no halfway house here, so when we talk about acquisition integration, we need to include a deep-dive orientation to public-market expectations, and the work enterprises must do to address them. In parallel, the acquiring company needs to adopt zone management to ensure that they are holding the acquired company accountable to the right goals and metrics. This goes all the way up to the board, where people are likely still smarting from the high premium they had to pay and looking to get it back as fast as possible. Thrusting the new team into the Performance Zone is a proven path to crushing innovation and destroying shareholder value.

That’s what I think. What do you think?

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Why Are We Forcing People Back into Cubicles?

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Why Are We Forcing People Back into Cubicles?

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

Whether it’s placing machine tools on the factory floor or designing work spaces for people that work at the company, the number one guiding metric is resources per square foot. If you’re placing machine tools, this metric causes the machines to be stacked closely together, where the space between them is minimized, access to the machines is minimized, and the aisles are the smallest they can be. The result – the number of machines per square foot is maximized.

And though there has been talk of workplaces that promote effective interactions and creativity, the primary metric is still people per square foot. Don’t believe me? I have one word for you – cubicles. Cubicles are the design solution of choice when you want to pack the most people into the smallest area.

Here’s a test. At your next team meeting, ask people to raise their hand if they hate working in a cubicle. I rest my case.

With cubicles, it’s the worst of both worlds. There is none of the benefit of an office and none of the benefit of collaborative environment. They are half of neither.

What is one of Dilbert’s favorite topic? Cubicles.

If no one likes them, why do we still have them? If you want quiet, cubicles are the wrong answer. If you want effective collaboration, cubicles are the wrong answer. If everyone hates them, why do we still have them?

When people need to do deep work, they stay home so they can have peace and quiet. When people they want to concentrate, they avoid cubicles at all costs. When you need to focus, you need quiet. And the best way to get quiet is with four walls and a door. Some would call that and office, but those are passe. And in some cases, they are outlawed. In either case, they are the best way to get some quiet time. And, as a side benefit, they also block interruptions.

Best way for people to interact is face-to-face. And in order to interact at way, they’ve got to be in the same place at the same time. Sure spontaneous interactions are good, but it’s far better to facilitate interactions with a fixed schedule. Like with a bus stop schedule, people know where to be and when. In that way, many people can come together efficiently and effectively and the number of interactions increases dramatically. So why not set up planned interactions at ten in the morning and two in the afternoon?

I propose a new metric for facilities design – number of good ideas per square foot. Good ideas require deep thought, so quiet is important. And good ideas require respectful interaction with others, so interactions are important.

I’m not exactly sure what a facility must look like to maximize the number of good ideas per square foot, but I do know it has no cubicles.

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Bringing Energy Back to Work

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Bringing Energy Back to Work

GUEST POST from Geoffrey A. Moore

There are all kinds of survey data these days indicating that morale in the workplace is lower than it used to be and, more importantly, than it ought to be. This has got managers scurrying about trying to find ways to make their employees happier. One word of advice on this: Stop!

It is not your job to make the people on your team happy. That is their job. Your job is to make their work important. Now, as a bonus, there is a strong correlation between meaningful work and worker happiness, so there is a two-birds-for-one-stone principle operating here. It’s just that you have to keep your eye on the lead bird. Employee happiness is a trailing indicator. Customer success is the leading one.

Your team’s customers can be internal or external — it just depends on your performance contract, the one that sets out the outcomes your organization has been funded to deliver. To be meaningful, in one way or another, those outcomes must contribute materially to the overall success of your enterprise’s mission. Your job is to highlight that path, to help your team members see it as a North Star to guide the focus and prioritization of their work. That is what gives their work meaning. Their performance metrics should align directly with the outcomes you have contracted to deliver – else why are they doing the work?

Performance management in this context is simply redirecting their energy to align as closely as possible to the deliverables of your organization’s performance contract. The talent you recruit and develop should have the kind of disposition and gifts that motivate them to want to do this kind of work. If there is a mismatch, help them find some other kind of work that is a better fit for them, and backfill their absence with someone who is a better fit for you. Performance management is not about weeding out—it is about re-potting.

Finally, if we bring this mindset to our current challenges with institutionalizing remote/hybrid operating models, too often this is being framed as an issue of improving employee happiness. Again, not your job. Instead, the focus should be on how best to meet the needs of the customers you have elected to serve. That is, instead of designing enterprise-out, with our heads down in our personal and team calendars, we need to design customer-in, with our heads up looking at where the trapped value is in their world, aligning our energies to release that trapped value, and organizing our operating model to maximize our impact in so doing. If we are not in service to our customers, what use are we?

That’s what I think. What do you think?

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Do What 91% of Executives Will Not

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Winning in Times of Uncertainty

Do What 91% of Executives Will Not

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

In times of great uncertainty, we seek safety. But what does “safety” look like?

What We Say: Safety = Data

We tend to believe that we are rational beings and, as a result, we rely on data to make decisions.

Great! We’ve got lots of data from lots of uncertain periods. HBR examined 4,700 public companies during three global recessions (1980, 1990, and 2000).  They found that the companies that emerged “outperforming rivals in their industry by at least 10% in terms of sales and profits growth” had one thing in common: They aggressively made cuts to improve operational efficiency and ruthlessly invested in marketing, R&D, and building new assets to better serve customers have the highest probability of emerging as markets leaders post-recession.

This research was backed up in 2020 in a McKinsey study that found that “Organizations that maintained their innovation focus through the 2009 financial crisis, for example, emerged stronger, outperforming the market average by more than 30 percent and continuing to deliver accelerated growth over the subsequent three to five years.”

What We Do: Safety = Hoarding

The reality is that we are human beings and, as a result, make decisions based on how we feel and the use data to justify those decisions.

How else do you explain that despite the data, only 9% of companies took the balanced approach recommended in the HBR study and, ten years later, only 25% of the companies studied by McKinsey stated that “capturing new growth” was a top priority coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Uncertainty is scary so, as individuals and as organizations, we scramble to secure scarce resources, cut anything that feels extraneous, and shift or focus to survival.

What now? AND, not OR

What was true in 2010 is still true today and new research from Bain offers practical advice for how leaders can follow both their hearts and their heads.

Implement systems to protect you from yourself. Bain studied Fast Company’s 50 Most Innovative Companies and found that 79% use two different operating models for innovation to combat executives’ natural risk aversion.  The first, for sustaining innovation uses traditional stage-gate models, seeks input from experts and existing customers, and is evaluated on ROI-driven metrics.

The second, for breakthrough innovations, is designed to embrace and manage uncertainty by learning from new customers and emerging trends, working with speed and agility, engaging non-traditional collaborators, and evaluating projects based on their long-term potential and strategic option value.

Don’t outspend. Out-allocate. Supporting the two-system approach, nearly half of the companies studied send less on R&D than their peers overall and spend it differently: 39% of their R&D budgets to sustaining innovations and 61% to expanding into new categories or business models.

Use AI to accelerate, not create. Companies integrating AI into innovation processes have seen design-to-launch timelines shrink by 20% or more. The key word there is “integrate,” not outsource. They use AI for data and trend analysis, rapid prototyping, and automating repetitive tasks. But they still rely on humans for original thinking, intuition-based decisions, and genuine customer empathy.

Prioritize humans above all else. Even though all the information in the world is at our fingerprints, humans remain unknowable, unpredictable, and wonderfully weird. That’s why successful companies use AI to enhance, not replace, direct engagement with customers. They use synthetic personas as a rehearsal space for brainstorming, designing research, and concept testing. But they also know there is no replacement (yet) for human-to-human interaction, especially when creating new offerings and business models.

In times of create uncertainty, we seek safety.  But safety doesn’t guarantee certainty. Nothing does. So, the safest thing we can do is learn from the past, prepare (not plan) for the future, make the best decisions possible based on what we know and feel today, and stay open to changing them tomorrow.

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Should Owners or Employees Come First?

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Should Owners or Employees Come First?

GUEST POST from Stefan Lindegaard

“It’s crucial that we succeed in securing a competitive return for our owners and meet the expectations of consumers and society. But the foundation for all of this is creating a workplace and a culture that attracts the best talent.”

– Niels Duedahl, CEO at Danish Crown

Yes, it’s always a balance.

But it’s telling how Niels Duedahl sees people and culture as the true foundation.

I couldn’t agree more.

If we don’t get the workplace right, nothing else will follow.

What about you – how do you see it?

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Do You Have the Courage to Speak Up Against Conformity?

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Do You Have the Courage to Speak Up Against Conformity?

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

If you see things differently than others, congratulations. You’re thinking for yourself.

If you find yourself pressured into thinking like everyone else, that’s a sign your opinion threatens. It’s too powerful to be dismissed out-of-hand, and that’s why they want to shut you up.

If the status quo is angered by your theory, you’re likely onto something. Stick to your guns.

If your boss doesn’t want to hear your contrarian opinion, that’s because it cannot be easily dismissed. That’s reason enough to say it.

If you disagree in a meeting and your sentiment is actively dismissed, dismiss the dismisser. And say it again.

If you’re an active member of the project and you are not invited to the meeting, take it as a compliment. Your opinion is too powerful to defend against. The only way for the group-think to survive is to keep you away from it. Well done.

If your opinion is actively and repeatedly ignored, it’s too powerful to be acknowledged. Send a note to someone higher up in the organization. And if that doesn’t work, send it up a level higher still. Don’t back down.

If you look into the future and see a train wreck, set up a meeting with the conductor and tell them what you see.

When you see things differently, others will try to silence you and tell you you’re wrong. Don’t believe them. The world needs people like you who see things as they are and have the courage to speak the truth as they see it.

Thank you for your courage.

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How Knowledge Emerges

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Understanding Epistemology

How Knowledge Emerges - Understanding Epistemology

GUEST POST from Geoffrey A. Moore

Epistemology is that branch of philosophy that addresses the theory of knowledge. But what do philosophers mean by knowledge? Traditionally, it is defined as justified true belief, and it is established by applying logic and reason to whatever set of claims is under discussion. That is the path we are going to follow here as well. But to get the full picture, we need to look at both knowledge and knowing through the lens of emergence.

In The Infinite Staircase, we offered a global model of emergence that seeks to span all of reality, organizing itself around eleven stairs, as follows:

Infinite Staircase Geoffrey Moore

Justified true belief is a product of reason employing the top four stairs of language, narrative, analytics, and theory to test claims to truth. It is the cumulative impact of all these stairs building one atop the next that allows knowledge to ultimately emerge in its fullest sense. That is the path we are about to trace. Before so doing, however, we should acknowledge that there are seven stairs below language, all of which are “pre-linguistic,” that also seep into the way we know things. A complete epistemology would therefore go all the way down to the bottom stair, with particular attention to culture (what we learn from others) and values (what we learn from mammalian nurture and governance). Nonetheless, we are going to focus on just the top four because that is where the bulk of the action is.

Beginning with the stair of language, its major contribution to justified true belief is its ability to communicate facts. All facts are expressed through declarative sentences. Each sentence makes a claim. What makes a claim a fact is that we are willing to accept its assertion without further verification or validation. For the ultimate skeptic who is never willing to do this, there are no facts. For the rest of us, who are continually making real-life decisions in real-time, facts are necessary, and we accept or reject claims of fact based on the information we have at hand, including the reliability of the source and the probability of the claim given current circumstances.

That said, facts by themselves don’t mean much. What gives them meaning are narratives. Narrative is the cornerstone of all knowledge, the medium by which we communicate beliefs. The book of Genesis represents one such belief-supporting narrative, The Origin of Species another, the Big Bang a third. Each of these narratives not only explains how things have come to be as they are, at the same time they foreshadow how they can be expected to turn out in the future. Whether it is the hand of God, the workings of natural selection, or the ceaseless operation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, narratives spotlight the governing forces in whatever situation they describe. That in turn lets us identify actions we can take to turn our situation to best advantage. Narratives, in other words, are essential equipment for any kind of decision-making. The question, however, is are they credible?

This is where analytics comes in. The role of analytics is to justify belief in the claims embedded in the narrative. In The Infinite Staircase, I summarize Stephen Toulmin’s model for conducting such an analysis. It is organized around six elements:

  1. What are the claims being made? Are they clear, precise, and unambiguous?
  2. What evidence is there that these claims might be true? What are the facts of the case as best we can determine them?
  3. What warrants us to believe that this evidence supports these claims? Are there clear lines of reasoning that take us from the facts to the claims and back?
  4. Do the warrants themselves require additional backing to be credible? Is there evidence to support their claims?
  5. What counter-arguments could potentially invalidate our claims, and do we have a credible rebuttal to refute them?
  6. Where do we draw the line between our claims and these alternatives?
  7. Based on all five precious steps, is there some qualification we can apply to our claim to secure its overall justification more firmly? What is our final statement of our core claim?

By applying this model to our beliefs, we can transform them into justified beliefs. But that still begs one question: are they true?

To address the question of truth, we have to draw upon the resources of the highest stair in our model, the one labeled theory. There are multiple theories of truth, but three stand out in particular:

  1. The correspondence theory, which says that claims are true when they are consistent with how things actually turn out to be, leading to a verifiable view of the world.
  2. The coherence theory, which says that claims are true when they are consistent with all the other claims you believe, leading to a coherent view of the world.
  3. The pragmatism theory, which says that claims are true when you act on them and your actions are consistent with your intentions, leading to an effective view of the world.

Rather than think of these theories as competing with one another, consider them as three dimensions of one and the same thing, namely knowledge that helps further one’s strategy for living. In that context, knowledge does indeed consist of justified true beliefs. It emerges from language contributing facts, interacting with narratives contributing beliefs, tested by analytics contributing justification, and confirmed by theory contributing truth. In this context, it is neither complicated nor mysterious.

That’s what I think. What do you think?

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Three Reasons Change Efforts Fail

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Three Reasons Change Efforts Fail

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

There’s no question we have entered a transformative age, with major shifts in technology, resources, demography and migration. Over the next decades, we will have to move from digital from post-digital, from carbon to zero-carbon and from the Boomer values to those of Millennials and Zoomers. Migration will strain societies’ social compact.

Unfortunately, we’re really bad at adapting to change. We’ve known about the climate threat for decades, but have done little about it. The digital revolution, for all the hoopla, has been a big disappointment, falling far short of its promise to change the world for the better. Even at the level of individual firms, McKinsey finds that the vast majority of initiatives fail.

One key factor is that we too often assume that change is inevitable. It’s not. Change dies every day. New ideas are weak, fragile, and in need of protection. If we’re going to bring about genuine transformation, we need to take that into account. The first step is to learn the reasons why change fails in the first place. These three are a good place to start.

1. A Flawed Idea

One obvious reason that change fails is that the idea itself is flawed in some way. Barry Libenson found this out when he was hired to be CIO at the industrial conglomerate Ingersoll Rand. It was his first CIO role and Barry was eager to please the CEO, who he saw as a mentor. So he agreed to aggressive very performance targets for modernizing systems.

Yet while Barry was being financially incentivized to upgrade technology, each of the division leaders were financially incentivized to maximize profit growth. Every dollar they invested in modernizing systems would eat into their performance bonus. Perhaps not surprisingly, Barry’s modernization program didn’t go as well as he’d hoped.

There are a number of tools that can help to troubleshoot ideas and uncover flaws. Pre-mortems force you to imagine how a project could fail. Red Teams set up a parallel group specifically to look for flaws. Howard Tiersky, CEO of the digital transformation agency From Digital and author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller Winning Digital Customers, often uses de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats to help the team take different perspectives.

Most of all, we need to come to terms with the reality that our ideas are always wrong. Sometimes they’re off by a little and sometimes they’re off by a lot, but they’re always wrong, so we always need to be on the lookout for problems. As the physicist Richard Feynman put it.“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that.”

2. Failure To Build Trust

Proposed in 1983 by Ira Magaziner, the Rhode Island’s Greenhouse Compact is still considered to be an impressive policy even today, 40 years later. In fact, the bipartisan CHIPS Act is based on the same principle, that targeted, strategic government investments can help simulate economic development in the private sector.

The plan in Rhode Island was to establish four research centers or “greenhouses” throughout the state to help drive development in new technologies, like robotics, medicine and thin film materials, as well as existing industries in which the state had built-in advantages, such as tourism, boat-building and fishing. It quickly gained support among the state’s elite

Yet things quickly soured. There were a number of political scandals that reduced faith in Rhode Island’s government and fed into the laissez-faire zeitgeist of the Reagan era. Critics called the plan “elitist,” for taxing “ordinary” citizens to subsidize greedy corporations. When the referendum was held, it plan got less than a fifth of the vote.

Magaziner’s mistake — one he would repeat with the healthcare plan during the Clinton Administration—was ignoring the need to build trust among constituencies. Getting the plan right is never enough. You need to methodically build trust and support as you go.

3. Identity and Dignity

One of the biggest mistakes change leaders make is assuming that resistance to change has a rational basis. They feel that if they listen to concerns and address them, they will be able to build trust and win over skeptics. Unfortunately, while doing those things is certainly necessary for a successful change effort, it is rarely sufficient.

The simple fact is that human beings form attachments to people, ideas and things and when they feel those attachments are threatened, it offends their identity, dignity and sense of self. This is the most visceral kind of resistance. We can argue the merits of a particular idea and methodically build trust, but we can’t ask people to stop being who they think they are.

Don’t waste your time trying to convince the unconvincible. Your efforts will be very unlikely to succeed and very likely to exhaust and frustrate you. The good news is that irrational resistors, if left to their own devices, will often discredit themselves eventually. You can also speed up the process by designing a dilemma action.

What can be hardest about change, especially when we feel passionately about it, is that at some point, we need to accept that others will not embrace it and we will have to leave some behind. Not every change is for everybody. Some will have to pursue a different journey, one to which they can devote their passions and seek out their own truths.

Change Is Not Inevitable

People like to quote the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus, who said things like “the only constant is change” and “no man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” They’re clever quotes and they give us confidence that the change we seek is not only possible, but inevitable.

Yet while change in general may be inevitable, the prospects for any particular change initiative are decidedly poor and the failure to recognize that simple fact is why so many transformation efforts fall short. The first step toward making change succeed is to understand and internalize just how fragile a new, unproven initiative really is.

To bring genuine change about you can’t expect to just push forward and have everyone fall in line. No amount of executive sponsorship or program budget will guarantee victory. To move forward, you will need to listen to skeptics, identify and fix flaws in your idea to methodically build trust. Even then, you will have to outsmart those who have an irrational lust to kill change and who act in ways that are dishonest, underhanded and deceptive.

Change is always, at some level, about what people value. That’s why to make it happen you need to identify shared values that reaffirm, rather than undermine, people’s sense of identity. Recognition is often a more powerful incentive than even financial rewards. In the final analysis, lasting change always needs to be built on common ground.

— Article courtesy of the Digital Tonto blog
— Image credit: Pixabay

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Getting the Most Out of Quiet Employees in Meetings

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Getting the Most Out of Quiet Employees in Meetings

GUEST POST from David Burkus

Getting quiet employees to speak up in meetings can feel like a challenge, but it doesn’t have to be. The truth is silence doesn’t mean disengagement. Often, quiet team members are the most reflective, thoughtful contributors—they just need the right environment to share their insights. If you’ve ever wondered how to help them find their voice, you’re not alone. It’s a question many leaders face, and the answer lies not in fixing the individual but in fixing the environment.

Let’s explore how to create a space where everyone feels confident contributing and where the team benefits from the diverse perspectives that emerge.

What Leaders Often Get Wrong

A common tactic leaders use to engage quiet employees is calling on them directly during meetings. It seems logical—put someone on the spot, and they’ll contribute, right? Wrong. Forcing participation in this way often backfires. When you call someone out with, “We haven’t heard from you, what do you think?” you’re not creating an opportunity; you’re creating pressure. This can leave the individual feeling unprepared or even embarrassed, which only reinforces their reluctance to speak up in the future.

One-on-one conversations with quiet employees can also miss the mark. Phrasing like, “I haven’t heard from you in meetings lately,” may seem supportive, but it can come across as criticism. Employees may interpret it as, “You’re not contributing enough,” which puts them on the defensive. The issue isn’t the individual’s nature; it’s the dynamics of the meeting itself.

Build an Environment That Encourages Input

Instead of focusing on “fixing” the quiet employee, focus on creating a space that naturally draws out their input. The foundation of this approach is psychological safety, a concept championed by researcher Amy Edmondson. Psychological safety ensures team members feel respected and valued, even when sharing dissenting ideas. Leaders play a pivotal role in cultivating this environment.

One powerful tool is asking better questions. Broad, open-ended prompts signal that all perspectives are welcome and needed. For example:

  • “What perspectives might we not have considered?” This invites team members to think expansively without feeling the pressure to speak directly from their own viewpoint.
  • “How do you see this issue affecting our team or organization as a whole?” This leverages the natural reflective tendencies of quieter team members, giving them an entry point to share their thoughts.
  • “What insights from your work could help us solve this?” By focusing on an individual’s expertise, this question creates a comfortable way for them to contribute.
  • “What have you seen work well in similar situations?” Grounding the conversation in personal experience allows quieter team members to share insights on their terms.

These types of questions help build trust and demonstrate that every voice matters.

Rethink Meeting Dynamics

The structure of your meetings can either foster or stifle participation. Too often, meetings are tailored to the preferences of more vocal team members, leaving quieter employees without a natural space to contribute. To counteract this, vary the formats of your meetings to accommodate different communication styles. Some team members thrive in group discussions, others in chat-based brainstorming, and still others prefer to provide detailed input via email. By alternating your approach, you give everyone an opportunity to engage in the way that suits them best.

Another powerful tactic is structured silence. When you pose a key question during a meeting, instead of opening the floor immediately, give everyone a few minutes to think and jot down their ideas. If you’re meeting virtually, ask participants to type their responses into a shared chat or document. This approach levels the playing field by giving everyone equal time to formulate their thoughts before louder voices dominate the conversation. Research consistently shows that this kind of silent brainstorming not only generates more ideas but also produces better ones.

Support Contributions in the Moment

When a quiet employee does speak up in meetings, how you respond matters. A positive reaction reinforces their willingness to participate again. Start by praising their contribution and ensuring it gets the attention it deserves. Avoid allowing others to immediately dismiss or talk over their idea. Instead, amplify it by saying something like, “That’s an interesting perspective. Let’s explore that further.”

This approach sends a clear message: their input is valued, and this team appreciates diverse ideas. Over time, these affirming responses build confidence and encourage more frequent participation.

Amplify Voices Outside the Meeting

Sometimes, even with the right environment, a quiet employee may hesitate to contribute in the moment. In these cases, follow up with them privately after the meeting. Instead of framing the conversation as a critique, approach it as an opportunity. For example, you might say, “I’d love to hear your thoughts on what we discussed today. What’s your perspective?”

When they share, praise their ideas and encourage them to bring them up in future meetings. If they do, reinforce their contribution publicly. Highlight the value of their insights to the team, ensuring they feel recognized and respected. This two-step process—private encouragement followed by public amplification—builds their confidence and strengthens their connection to the team.

Create Space for Every Voice

Quiet employees aren’t a problem to be fixed; they’re a strength waiting to be unlocked. By shifting your focus from “Why won’t they speak up?” to “How can I create an environment where they feel comfortable contributing?” you’ll foster a more inclusive and innovative team dynamic. Start by rethinking your meeting structures, asking better questions, and supporting contributions both in and out of the meeting room. Over time, you’ll see not just one employee speaking up more but a cultural shift where every voice is heard—and valued.

By encouraging everyone to speak up in meetings, you’ll unlock the full potential of your team. After all, the best ideas don’t come from the loudest voices. They come from the collective brilliance of the group. It’s your job as a leader to make sure every voice has its chance to shine.

This article originally appeared on DavidBurkus.com

Image credit: Pixabay

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