REAL. Leadership Founder and CEO Steve Charlton looks at why, as you get more senior in a company, the team around you become increasingly reticent to speak to you about challenges within the business. Here Steve explains how he put a mechanism in place in his previous leadership role to build an environment where people are comfortable to share their thoughts.

“When I was leading in my previous job I set up a group called the Change Agents. They were a group of three or four people who were voted in every year by their peers. They were people who had a voice among their team, and who others trusted and went to with their problems. Every month I would take these Change Agents to lunch and they had the freedom to tell me everything – and I mean everything.  If I’d made a mistake or miscommunicated something, or something had happened, they told me. There was never any risk of retribution. It was a safe space for them, and I would listen and implement changes that were needed.

You can learn a lot from your juniors. Remember, your job is to lead and coordinate the success of others; you’re a master at that. So, there’s nothing wrong with saying to someone, ‘You’re fantastic at social media,’ or ‘You’re a great communicator, I’d like to learn how to do that.’ Someone I coached once asked me, ‘Doesn’t that make me look weak? Isn’t it weak to admit “I’m not good at this”?’ But good leadership is about having the humility to learn from people around you and below you, and I admire leaders who have the humility to do this – because not all of them do.”

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