Episode 2: Open Door Policies

Establishing a culture of open communication in your organization that promotes authenticity and people first. Drives innovation and empowers growth.

Introduction: What is an Open Door Policy 0:20

Welcome to the leading from the ground up podcast. I'm your host, John Hall. This week we're talking about open door policies. And before we get the title literal, let's talk about what it really means. One an open door policy is simply just that it doesn't necessarily mean that your door to your office is open all the time. It simply means that it lets your employees know that you are open for communication with them at any time and they have questions, concerns, or just opinions on some project that they're currently working on.

Benefits of the Open Door Policies 0:54

Let's talk about how this benefits us, benefits us in three ways. First, mutual respect. Second, trust and third open communications with our employees. Now let's unpack all three of those so that we understand them a little bit more. As leaders, we expect a certain level of respect from our employees simply because of position and title. But as we all know, respect isn't something that is just given, It's always earned. In this case, we want to know that our employees respect us for who we are as individuals as well as who we are as the leader. We also want our employees to know that we respect them as individuals and because of the job that they do. So respect is a two way street and we need to make sure that we develop that respect with our prospective employees or subordinates that work underneath us and that we foster and grow that. On the trust side, leaders need to develop a level of trust with employees so that they understand that they are coming to a safe work environment. Their opinions are valued and we trust them, as well as them trusting us. We know that since we've opened these lines of communication, which is the third one that I spoke about that our levels of trust are building with our employees and that we tend to learn more about them as individuals outside of work. They learn more about us as individuals maybe not necessarily as much outside of work, but we can open up to them and we probably should.

Purpose of the Open Door Policy 2:31

Some of the information that you glean from this is how the organization as a whole, the culture itself is going. The moment that you open up and communicate well or better with employees would be the moment that you learn things that you didn't necessarily know was going on in the organization simply because you don't have eyes and ears throughout the entire organization. You can't be everywhere at once. You don't necessarily have the time to spend looking for all of this. This opens up the opportunity for employees to let you know what's actually going on in the organization and gives you an idea of the true culture of the organization as opposed to what you think the culture of the organization is. Let's talk about transparency and communication. Earlier we talked about building trust, and here's where you start doing that. Levels of transparency in your organization or from you as a leader and your level of communication with your employees is really what starts to build the trust and what will keep the trust. There is rarely a reason to not be transparent about what's going on in your organization, or changes that need to that are that are coming down the pike. The more transparent you are the more open you are about what's what's happening currently what is going to be happening in the future. And the more that you communicate with your employees, the better the the trust will be between the two of you, the more respect that they will have for you and it will cut down on questions of why they are doing things. Those why questions will come to beginning when you're transparent with them when you let them know what's going on. And the levels of communication that you can have with them opens up the doors for them to ask questions for them to get clarification of what they need to do to make sure that their jobs are done to the best of their ability and it also opens up the levels of the door of communication between you as the leader and the employee. You can glean some new information about their their abilities and where they need to grow based on their questions based on the responses you get from the transparency that you are now exhibiting and it is an excellent starting point in building a more effective team.

Open Door Policies Promote a Culture of Equality and Employee Empowerment 5:10

This also brings us to a couple of extra topics that I'd like to add in here. One being of cultural equality, and secondly, empowerment. We’ve all been in situations where we've noticed that there is a specific employee maybe it's a co-worker of yours, maybe it has been in a business or an environment that you were in in the past, where it definitely seemed like that individual was the golden child or the most liked one in the organization and they seem to get the best assignments or they were promoted ahead of everybody else for whatever reason. And those individuals may have been very skilled at what they were doing but at the time, we couldn't necessarily see that because we were a co-worker, we were not necessarily in a leadership position or rather we could have been in a leadership position. But it definitely gives us a sense or it gives employees a sense of the environment or the culture of the organization is not one of the equality An open door policy gives employees the opportunity to to come in and discuss things like that in for you to have a heart to heart or heartfelt conversation with employees to explain why certain situations are the way they are. It is definitely an opportunity to to open your eyes that that maybe you're treating somebody a little bit different. It's also an opportunity to to to have a conversation with employees to where you can build on on areas that may be shortcomings for them. You can let them know where they're where they're. They may have opportunities for improvement. And you empower them to change the way things are happening for them in the organization. By being open, transparent and communicating well with your employees with your team. You open the door for them to be able to do the job that they love to do. Do it to the best of your ability and to to grow in ways that they didn't think that they were they were capable of doing before. You will empower them to do the job as opposed to you standing over them. And telling them how to do everything you've trained them, You've been transparent with them, You've had an open line of communication with them. You've developed this open door policy and you have given them or will be giving them the tools that they need to flourish in in their current role. The idea here is is to not is to not have a situation, as I stated before, where you don't have any free time and your employees are constantly coming into your office to talk to you. You have to set boundaries and you have to set it in these policies and you have to abide by those those boundaries. Otherwise no one else will will abide by those boundaries. If you don't have the time that day, to to have those conversations. You need to say in a in a in a way that everybody understands that you need to get things done. And if there needs to be some interruptions in your schedule that day. That there are important things that need to be that need to be you need to be interrupted for but for the most part, you want your employees to come to you you want them to talk to you. You want to learn things that you wouldn't necessarily learn unless they talk to you about them.

Pros of Open Door Policies 9:17

Alright now let's talk about the pros and cons of the open door policy before we wrap this up. One for the pros encourages effective communication with your teams. It helps employees who believe that they have been harassed have a avenue to open up and to have that communication have a conversation with leaders and let them know what's going on so that can be investigated and resolved. It prevents rumors and confusions within the organization and betters the culture because it removes those rumors in whatever communication or confusion in the communication that they currently have and it helps to foster collaborations with different departments with employees and leaders can foster that when employees come to them with with situations and then know that there is a another department or another employee that can help them out with that.

Cons of Open Door Policies 10:16

As far as cons go from time to time open door policies can be a time waster. They can, it can decline productivity for employees. But if you allow them to get to the point quickly, you don't sit there and have endless conversations about things that are not productive. You aren't solving a problem then it can cut down on productivity or the client productivity. But most leaders have a tendency to curve that and to get people back on task afterwards. It can also create dependency if people are constantly using the open door policy to have conversations about every single thing. That may be a different area of opportunity for improvement for the employee that you could discuss. And it also can disrupt the chain of command because if they are coming to you and there is a supervisor in between them and you and they are not having the conversation with that supervisor. A discussion about chain of command needs to happen. You need to find out why they are not comfortable with having that conversation with that supervisor and you need to have conversation with that supervisor. Maybe not in depth about what they talk to you about but definitely raise the concern and that may be an area of opportunity to improve the supervisor skills as well.

Freebie: Creating a Culture of Communication 12:05

If you’d liked some ideas about developing levels of communication there is a freebie on my website, www.apertureadvising.com that you can go right over there and download that will help you out with starting your open door policy and giving you an opportunity or heads up and getting that done.

Conclusion 12:26

Thank you for listening and continue with me on this journey. As always, if you have specific questions that you would like covered in an episode, please send those questions to John@Apertureadvising.com until the next time remember, I believe in your ability to Lead from the Ground up

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