When you share a great idea at work and your boss gives you the green light, you feel good, right? What if your boss greenlights your great idea and then delegates the implementation of the idea to you. How do you feel now?
Many of us will feel overwhelmed and regret we said anything because this all-to-common scenario adds yet another “to do” on our plate, piling up with the many tasks already there. Unfortunately, with more work, you might be less likely to proactively stick your neck out and share another new idea in the future because it might boomerang back and further load you down. Consequently, the next time you have a great idea, the sour experience of regret may taint your appetite for more work assignments and motivate you to simply keep the idea to yourself, even though that new idea could make your workplace better.
I have personally experienced this scenario as an employee and know how deflating it can feel to come up with a new idea and then seemingly be penalized for sharing it. I’ve seen it from the other end, too, when someone voluntarily shares an idea with me, and I mistakenly interpret their communication as volunteering to champion the idea. But if employees are given more work for merely sharing an idea, their morale will suffer and the organization will lose a source of good ideas.
How prevalent is this phenomenon, and what can managers do to keep lines of communication open so employees won’t feel overwhelmed or regretful for sharing new ideas?
To answer these questions, I led a team of researchers that surveyed more than 1,000 employees in the United States and China, which included both staff members and managers. Part of what intrigued us was the question of who does the heavy lifting in implementing change when employees speak up with a new way of doing things. Employees may have the illusion that if they toss a new idea over the fence, then the manager will be able to magically implement the idea. But managers are busy, too. So if a manager receives an idea and tosses it back to the employee like a hot potato, what do the people on each side of the fence think about that?
As we predicted, we found that employees who offered a suggestion and were then told by the manager to make it happen were less likely to voice their ideas in the future because they felt overloaded and regretted proactively speaking up in the first place.
So, what can bosses do to short-circuit this negative reaction to sharing positive new ideas? First, we found simple delegation that communicates to employees “good luck—you’re on your own with this” accentuates employees’ feelings of overload and regret, as well as their subsequent silence.
However, if managers delegated work back to employees while also offering their own help, guidance, and support in the enactment process, employees were more likely to feel better about speaking up and more likely to keep communicating ideas. Rather than merely equating voicing an idea with volunteering to enact the idea, we found supervisors would do well to say something like, “Great idea. Let’s do it. And I’m going to be here in the trenches with you.”
What other strategies can managers use to encourage employees to keep voicing their ideas for improving their organization?
- Managers should give employees the power to run with their ideas by being there and running with them.
- Managers should ask employees whether they want to enact the idea and have the bandwidth to do so. Rather than overloading employees, a simple conversation might help trigger feelings of empowerment and a sense of ownership.
- If an idea doesn’t get a green light, managers should explain their thinking. That way, employees won’t think their idea went into a black hole and disappeared. Employees want to know their ideas are considered and their manager is keen to keep hearing from them.
Daniel Newton is assistant professor of management and entrepreneurship at the University of Iowa’s Tippie College of Business.