!
CELEBRATE IT.
MODEL IT.
Honesty without Fear Unleashes Creativity, Ignites Imagination
Be constructively contentious. Every company has in some way taught its personnel to be dishonest–to be silent.
Some of the Problems:
- Fear of losing job, privilege or status
- Shame of being undermined, marginalized, betrayed
- Routine discounting of people, problems and solutions
- Destructive management projections going without challenge
- Inconsistent standards and messages
- Organizationally sanctioned bullying
- No sanctioned safe outlet or trusted relief valve
- Bottom line cost of trust lost
In the Presence of Honesty Other Virtues Follow Suit
Honesty in relationships encourages an open environment in which hunches, chance observations and “mis-takes” engender valuable creative solutions. Fear and shame, on the other hand, prevent employees from communicating, holding themselves accountable and risking creativity. Reward honesty without fear. Life-giving creativity will flow through your business from sources you least expect. Ignite everyone’s imagination –everyone’s involvement.
Call the Play Early
For example, deal with succession before it deals with you. Is anyone truly ready to take the reigns of leadership if you’re not here? Unless you have a plan, you will wait until it’s to late to fully prepare the next senior executive. You can stoke their success or feed their failure. The choice is yours.
The Brightman Process® Solution:
- Trust, integrity and fairness do matter to the bottom line
- Make genuine and authentic communication the norm
- Stop discounting people, problems and solutions
- Learn that it can take an ending to make a beginning
- Master inclusive language and listening skills
- Use authentic, participatory, performance reviews
- Care-front every triangulated relationship
- End victim-rescuer-persecutor games
- Understand the role of projection in communication
- Make dissent an obligation
- Forge family baggage into new beginnings
The Antidote for Fear? Knowledge!
Fear is among the most destructive elements in the human mind. Fear consumes creativity. Fear demoralizes. Fear produces fatigue. Fear invites aggressiveness. Aggressiveness creates hostility. Hostility leads to conflict. Fear compromises every possible return on investment. Fear is a diminishing leadership ploy. The first step out of fear is to name it, say it. Acknowledged, fear will disappear, as long as fear-based practices cease and trust building begins anew. Jawaharlal Nehru sums it up: “There is perhaps nothing so bad and so dangerous in life as fear.”
Hope Feeds Every Soul, While Fear Destroys
Hope makes all things possible. Hope gets people cheerfully out of bed each morning. Hope energizes. Management benefits most by instilling hope, not fear. Hope heals while fear destroys. By maintaining an environment of open and clear communications every day, a company insures that hopes will be high and performance will exceed expectation. “If we all did the things we are capable of doing we would literally astound ourselves.”–Thomas Alva Edison.
When You Expand Minds, You Extend Horizons
A new viewing point is far more powerful than an old point of view. As William Blake put it, “What is now proved was once imagined”. More contemporarily, Christopher Reeves said, “At first dreams seem impossible, then improbable, then inevitable.” For an expanded view of creati