One Question: What have we made difficult for people to tell us?

That's a very different question from asking, “What aren't our employees telling us?”

In this One Question episode, Mary Ricketts, President & CEO of Turning Point Training & Development, challenges CEOs and executive leadership teams to turn the question back on themselves.

Employees and leaders don't stop sharing difficult information for no reason. Over time, they learn what happens when they challenge a decision, raise a concern, question a strategy, admit something isn't working, or tell leadership something they don't want to hear.

And sometimes the result is an organization where the executive team believes everything is fine—while everyone underneath them knows it isn't.

Mary explores the difference between having an open-door policy and creating a leadership culture where people actually believe it's safe and worthwhile to walk through that door.

Then she leaves your executive team with two questions:

What have we made difficult for people to tell us?

And:

What do we do when someone tells us something we don't want to hear?

Take those questions to your next executive leadership meeting.

Then pay attention to the silence.

One Question is a short executive leadership series from Mary Ricketts and Turning Point Training & Development designed to put the questions leaders don't always ask—but should—directly on the executive table.

Learn more about Turning Point's leadership diagnostics, executive team development and executive coaching at tptrainingcenter.com.