In every organization, the complexity of systems makes it a norm for information and directives to flow downwards. Unfortunately, the positional power of every leader makes it difficult for team members to share feedback with their leaders.

This is why it is important for leaders to cultivate environments where team members can feel safe to voice their concerns. Such environments enhance healthy cultures which in turn help to make better decisions and achieve superior results. Your team members should be able to give feedback about things that are not going well in their unit. If possible, you should enable them to give feedback about some of your strategies that are not working. That is what will improve your results.

However, the reverse is the case in many organizations where the team members are not allowed to raise objections concerning any policy or process even when it is not working as planned.

The phrase “Open Door Policy” has always been mouthed by organizations, but the reality is different. The real open door means the provision of psychological safety to team members such that they are not scared when they appear before you. Open door means the modelling of a vulnerable behavior where openness, empathy and self-awareness are demonstrated before team members. Team members must be free to share thoughts, ideas and observations without fear of judgement, ridicule or rejection.

The simple reason people keep quiet when they see things going wrong is the fear of negative consequences. A healthy culture welcomes contributions from everyone irrespective of background, gender, or position in the organization. The ability of leaders to allow contribution and complaints can unlock the full potential of employees, drive innovation and promote a positive work culture.

Google's CEO, Sundar Pichai, on assumption of office formalized a multi-layered approach to employee feedback. However, before his time, there was a project called Project Aristotle which was a comprehensive study of team effectiveness. This project identified psychological safety as the single most important factor in high-performing teams. In practice, the organization had TGIF (Thank God It's Friday) which was to increase transparency and employee engagement. Google's famous TGIF meetings allowed employees to question leadership directly about any topic.

Questions were collected anonymously beforehand, then voted on, ensuring the most pressing concerns received attention. Of note is the way Pichai handled the criticism of a controversial project called Dragonfly. When employees raised concerns about the project, he didn't dismiss their feedback but engaged with it seriously, ultimately leading to the project's reevaluation.

"To innovate, we must be willing to hear uncomfortable truths," Pichai observed in a company-wide memo. "The day employees stop telling us what's wrong is the day we begin to fail."

There must be a mechanism that helps people to open up to you on desired changes. Leaders can't know everything. Even if they know so much, their human nature makes their perspective on issues to be limited. Hence, transformative leaders must give room to people to tell them what they have seen, which will help the business grow to the next level. When Satya Nadella took over Microsoft in 2014, the company's culture was notoriously siloed and competitive. Nadella implemented a systematic approach to gathering employee feedback.

He gets regular surveys asking specific questions about team dynamics and leadership effectiveness. He also ensured regular sessions where employees meet their manager’s manager without the presence of the direct report. One more thing he did is a digital platform where concerns are raised without any fear of identification. These actions could be said to be part of the reasons the organization is scaling heights including an increase of market capitalization from $300 billion to $3 trillion.

Nadella personally reads a selection of unfiltered employee feedback each week, a practice he credits with helping identify the company's cultural issues early in his tenure. "Leaders who don't listen will eventually be surrounded by people who have nothing to say," he wrote in his book "Hit Refresh." This systematic approach to gathering complaints and feedback contributed to Microsoft's remarkable turnaround, with employee satisfaction scores rising from 68% to 93% under Nadella's leadership.
Amy Edmondson, Harvard professor and psychological safety researcher, notes: "In organizations where leaders punish messengers, problems remain hidden until they're crises. In organizations where raising concerns is rewarded, problems get solved while they're still manageable."

The most effective leaders don't just tolerate complaints, they actively seek them out, recognizing that employee concerns are often early indicators of larger issues that will eventually affect performance. By developing robust systems for gathering feedback, responding to concerns, and demonstrating that input drives meaningful change, leaders can transform potential dissatisfaction into powerful forces for organizational improvement.

Lastly, Alan Mulally, who led Ford's remarkable turnaround, observed: "The culture you want is one where everyone knows the plan, knows their part in it, and isn't afraid to tell you when they see a problem. That's when leadership becomes truly effective."

Never ever suppress your team members' ability to give feedback.

Oluwole Dada is the General Manager at SecureID Limited, Africa’s largest smart card manufacturing plant in Lagos, Nigeria.