How to Encourage Your Employees to Talk

Effective communication is vital in every organization. Everyone must talk and listen whether he’s the leader or he’s the follower. When you’re a manager, it’s important that you hear your people speak up. When you want to search for brighter ideas, you may want to hear and see what’s on the mind of your subordinates.  Two heads are better than one, right? Furthermore, there can be hidden issues and problems that must be uncovered to be prevented while they aren’t getting worse. You need to discover them from your people by encouraging them to discuss. However, making your employees release their voices can sometimes become a hard task. They can even resort to telling you the other way around when they are cornered. Thus, you really need something that can make them honestly speak up. The following are 8 ways on how to encourage your employees to raise their true voice louder.

 

1. Give them the privilege to speak. You cannot encourage your employees to speak if you don’t even want them to have a voice in your organization, team or department. Hence, don’t claim all that privilege; let them enjoy their inherent right to speak.

 

2. Be quite and listen. Your people will surely be discouraged to talk if they know that your ears are closed and you’re not paying any attention to listen to them when they speak of something. So even if you will award your workers with the privilege of speech, if you will only make them your mere listeners of your own talking, that will only put their privilege in vain. So learn how to shut your mouth and make your ears wide and open.

 

3. Value their voice. One of the most effective ways to motivate your people to talk is to follow their talking with actions. If they know that you have the answers to their questions and the solutions to their problems – they will definitely ask their questions and share their problems. So put their voice into actions.

 

4. Give them a great experience when they talk. Instead of humiliating your employees and making them clowns when they make errors in their speech, try to give them a credit for being confident and honest enough to show up. And when they let their words out just right, try to reward them and give them a hand.

 

5. Encourage them all as if no one is exempted. One of the most common complains of employees in any organization is the word “unfair”. Therefore, never show favoritism and don’t just give the right to talk or the encouragement to speak to only some of the people in your circle. Let it be one for all, all for one!

 

6. Fill up their minds. How could they talk if they don’t have anything to talk about? When a person doesn’t like to talk, it’s either he wants to hide something or he just have nothing. Thus, invest in training and teaching your employees to fill up their brains with important knowledge and wisdom.

 

7. Fill up their emotions. Probably, they don’t want to talk to you because they don’t consider you as a friend who’s close to their hearts. If you want to persuade your employees to become more transparent you’ve got to be a best pal to them. They key to do that is to be closer to their heart by showing them real love, trust and respect.

 

8. Encourage them consistently. Finally, accomplish all of these steps not only for a single day, but everyday. Don’t forget to listen not only to the voices from their mouths, but also to the voices from their hearts. Be a diligent, wise and consistent leader!