We know that challenge is important, but it certainly isn’t always comfortable. It can be particularly uncomfortable to be challenged by someone junior to you in a hierarchy, depending on the setting and the way the challenge is presented. For a senior manager or chief executive in any organisation, how you handle these moments of challenge from within the team is very important for setting a culture of openness and reflection and modelling the behaviour you want to see from others.
I can remember quite a few moments over the years, particularly when I was the chief executive of a public body, when someone chose to give me direct and critical feedback about a decision taken or my approach to an issue – sometimes in private but sometimes in front of other staff or peers. I can remember having to work very hard to suppress defensiveness and occasionally outright anger, particularly when I felt that my actions had been misunderstood. I know that I didn’t always succeed in hiding my negative feelings, in which case there was nothing to do but apologise and try harder next time. When I did manage to put the ego away, however, the discussion following the challenge usually led to some really good learning – either making me re-consider decisions and approaches or highlighting where I needed to improve communication.
The Committee on Standards in Public Life recently published a review report on Recognising and responding to early warning signs in public sector bodies, which was prompted by recent scandals such as Grenfell Tower, Windrush and the Post Office Horizon IT system. This very thoughtful report includes 20 points for reflection for public bodies to consider which include, amongst other things, what is being done to build a culture where people feel comfortable raising issues and how listening to feedback and learning from it is included in the process of assessing leaders. There are other very important points, including the handling of public and board scrutiny, but it seems to me unlikely that other measures can be truly effective if the public body doesn’t have the right internal culture.
The culture doesn’t have to be perfect. Chief Executives and senior leaders are human beings too and are usually juggling far too many issues at any one time, so moments of exasperation are likely. It won’t always be practical to make time to talk an issue through at the moment that it is raised. Don’t brush off internal challenge, though – make time to discuss the issue at a (not too much) later date if need be and if you reacted in a way that may discourage someone from speaking up in future, do apologise and reset that relationship. No matter how good your judgement is as a leader, you will make mistakes. You need to hear what people are thinking so you get the benefit of all the expertise from your team and your team need to see that good leaders are open to challenge and willing to learn all the time.
Public bodies and many other organisations are facing tough times just now, so fostering an open and reflective culture may be particularly challenging but also particularly important. Is it worth having a discussion at your next team meeting about how you respond to challenge? I would be very interested to hear reflections from others on how they have tackled this issue.
