Is this silent problem stopping you from growing?
CEOs, managers, team leaders - I’m calling you out!
How confident are you that you’ve created a working environment (remote or otherwise) that welcomes different points of view? How open are you personally to opinions that might challenge your own?
In fact, I’m also going to aim these questions at solopreneurs - are the people you’ve surrounded yourself with actually contributing to your success or have you just collected a group of Yes People?
I already know some of you are thinking, “What’s wrong with people who support my point of view and encourage my opinions?” The answer is nothing…when they actually mean it.
The truth is, you might not even realise that you’re dealing with Yes People. Here are the most common signs:
They agree with you all of the time
Oh, did you expect a long list of signs? Nope. Once you’ve spotted one, you can spot them all. This means people who always concede in arguments with you; people who immediately apologise and change their minds if they ever do disagree with you; people who agree that a wall is green when it’s obviously yellow.
Of course, things are usually a little more nuanced than this but when you take a moment to rethink some of the conversations you’ve had with your team, it starts to become pretty obvious.
But, I know you’re now wondering, “So what if my team or peers are Yes People? It saves a lot of time that could be wasted having difficult conversations.”
Sure, it does save time but it’s time that could have taught you or someone else a valuable lesson; time when you could have spotted a fatal flaw before it became an issue; time when honest feedback could have contributed greatly to the growth of your business.
One of the biggest problems Yes People create in organisations is building cultures that don’t align with the one you want to create. You might not be actively discouraging people from speaking up but anyone who does want to challenge something will be too intimidated to do so; they’ll be afraid to stand out from the crowd of Yes People.
There’s a hard truth you have to accept when you realise that you’ve built a team of or surrounded yourself with Yes People…
You are the one who invited these people into your business/life. However, this also means you’re in control of changing the dynamic. Not everyone becomes a Yes Person because they want to ‘suck up to the boss’ or just can’t be bothered to have an opinion of their own. Unfortunately, those kinds of people are out of your control.
The solution isn’t as simple as replacing a team or your peers either. The first thing you need to do is give people the option to challenge you, doing this will reassure them that they are safe to do so. Encouraging honest and open conversations like this will set the groundwork for people to speak up on their own in the future.
Acknowledging when you are wrong or when something didn’t go as planned is one of the hardest things any of us will do, but it’s a significant factor in showing people that there are different ways of doing things. Next time, you might be able to avoid missing the mark or you’ll have the tools you need to recover from it quickly.
Never allowing or welcoming people to challenge your ideas/opinions when it’s appropriate will rob you of innovative ideas and solutions. The next big break in your business could be hidden in your team or among your peers right now. Don’t let something like ego or the fear of being wrong prevent you from growing your business.