If you have ever worked with a bully, you understand the deep-seated fear that comes with coming to work every day. No one wants to work under fear and constant anxiety. I venture to say that no leader wants to create an environment where their employees work in fear. Organizations task leaders with the mission of inspiring their teams and fueling innovation. Needless to say, innovation cannot happen when employees feel unsafe at work. No one can find solutions to challenging problems when they do not feel respected by their leaders and safe to be themselves. If you’re a leader and believe that you have never disrespected one of your team members, chances are, you may be mistaken.
A 2016 study by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Kenan-Flagler Business School professor Christina Porath found that 62% of employees felt disrespected by their colleagues at least once a month. As a leader, creating a safe environment requires respecting employees in the manner they want to be respected. You may be saying to yourself, Jessica, I respect all employees. Well, perhaps you respect them in the way that you perceive respect. But what about the way they perceive respect?
Respecting people only in the way you perceive respect is short-sighted. Truly cultivating a respectful workplace environment requires that you respect people in the way they experience respect. The way each person experiences respect is shaped by their unique, lived experience. Disrespectful workplace behaviors, even unintended ones, can make team members feel bullied, leading to turnover, employee physical and mental health issues, team dysfunction, and a total lack of innovation. Below are three ways that you might be killing innovation on your team by being an unintentional bully.
1. Shutting Down Ideas Before They Have a Chance
If you were to ask me how I feel respected when working, one way is by feeling like my team members support my ideas. That means having space to articulate my ideas, welcoming challenges while feeling safe to bounce ideas off my colleagues. This is part of my innovation process. For those who feel respected by experiencing support, shutting down an idea before it has had the chance to roll off the tongue can be perceived as disrespectful. Quashing an idea quickly by calling it “impractical,” “too risky,” or “not worth the time” can erode the sense of safety employees feel in offering new ideas. Innovation is typically risky, takes time, and appears impractical at first glance. Instead of quickly shutting down your team members’ ideas, ask them how you can work through any challenges together.
Offer resources to help overcome the challenges your team member might face with executing their new idea. If someone feels like their idea will be quickly squashed, they will hesitate to share in the future. If you work in an industry where creative, out-of-the-box thinking is required, the way you listen to new ideas will determine how easily ideas flow from your team members. Make it clear to your team members that all ideas are welcome and that there is no such thing as a “bad idea.” Beyond this, make it clear to your team members that if they offer an idea, you will brainstorm ways to make their ideas come to life instead of letting the idea die with a quick, knee-jerk counterargument.
2. Micromanaging Creativity Out of the Creative Process
Employees want to feel trusted. In the 2024 Trust Survey conducted by PwC, 61% of employees surveyed across diverse industries reported that a perceived lack of trust from their company leaders affected their ability to perform their jobs well. This survey found that only 60% of employees believed their leaders highly trusted them. One way to respect your team members is by showing deference. The Cambridge Dictionary defines “deference” as “respect shown for another person [especially] because of that person’s experience, knowledge, age, or power.” I am not suggesting blind deference with no accountability or feedback, but I am suggesting respecting the position and expertise of your colleagues once they have earned your trust through consistent high-performance.
Once you respect their knowledge and expertise, you will build trust with them. This trust will likely result in them feeling more comfortable at work and free to think outside of the proverbial box, resulting in innovative solutions. Innovation requires freedom—the freedom to make mistakes, the freedom to take the time to completely throw away an idea, and the freedom of trust from colleagues to start over again. If you are a leader who constantly checks in before the deadline you have set for your team member to come up with a solution to a problem, you may be disrespecting their need for deference and killing their ability to innovate.
The 2024 PwC Trust Survey indicated that 72% of employees believed that if companies allowed flexibility in when work gets done, this would build the employee’s trust in their employer. As a leader, it is natural to want to ensure your team member is on track, but if you have given them a deadline, respect that deadline and let them know that you are there if they have questions. However, resist the urge to continually contact them “just to see how they are doing.”
You do not have to stop checking in altogether, but make those check-ins less frequent unless your team member has shown that they are a person who needs more continuous check-ins. Respect their expertise, knowledge, and judgment. When you do this, you are building trust—you are showing them that you trust them and their knowledge; this trust is an investment in innovation. When someone feels respected by having their knowledge deferred to by their team members, they are more motivated to innovate. Moreover, they are more motivated to take ownership of their work because they feel like it is theirs—not something that has been usurped by constant micromanaging.
3. Ignoring Emotional, Physical, and Psychological Safety Risk Factors
Ignoring psychological safety or the emotional and physical well-being of your team members is one of the most certain ways to kill innovation. Whether you are inflicting disrespectful behaviors onto your employees or allowing others to do so, permitting toxic workplace behaviors can make employees see you as a culprit in perpetuating a toxic workplace. As a leader, it is your responsibility to set the cultural tone for your team. Allowing a culture that dismisses sarcastic language, rude jokes, culturally insensitive remarks, and other acts that jeopardize the well-being of team members creates a toxic environment where creativity and innovation die. From day one and continuously thereafter, make it clear to all team members that the psychological and emotional well-being of your team is paramount and any behaviors that do not foster respect based on how each team member perceives respect will be addressed promptly.
Working in a respectful, psychologically safe workplace is the foundation upon which innovation thrives. Engaging in thoughtful introspection into which behaviors might be stifling your team’s full potential to innovate is critical to creating a workplace where creative, outside-the-box thinking regularly occurs.