TOW#580 — Sharing ideas
In general, every manager wants employees to share what they know. This is now backed up by research which has found that sharing info between colleagues, friends and other groups leads to greater creativity, greater innovation and better performance by individuals, teams and organisations.
Nevertheless, despite the efforts of companies and management to encourage knowledge sharing (workshops, open offices, informal meetings, etc.), many employees retain what they know and simply don’t want to share it with others.
We won’t go deeper into the reasons why people don’t want to share ideas/info, but it’s usually because they’re afraid:
- Someone will steal their idea;
- Not to appear unprofessional or unintelligent in front of others;
- Lastly, they’re simply shy and don’t want to stand out.
Therefore, managers/team leaders/family should keep these in mind:
Awareness — many managers/team leaders/families are not even aware that the people around them are hiding knowledge and ideas, which is a problem. It’s safe to assume that employees, if properly instructed and encouraged, work as a team and share knowledge as appropriate. So, the first step is to monitor non-cooperative behaviour.
Confidentiality — one of the reasons why ideas are not shared could be a lack of trust between people. What is important is to first increase the perception of trust between colleagues/friends by emphasising mutual success, and then to truly work on trust (first from yourselves towards others). This is a shared company/project/task and if we ourselves succeed, then we all succeed together.
Sharing — employees (and managers) are influenced by the organisational environment and culture, which is not always very open to sharing and that’s quite natural and OK. However, what’s important is to improve the sharing climate by emphasising the vital importance of spreading information and knowledge, and rewarding it. You need to think of ways to do this, because if employees or anyone else finds themselves the target of criticism for sharing knowledge and information, then the chances of them doing so again in future are very slim!
Communication — as shown above, people aren’t fully aware of the consequences of not sharing information. That’s why increasing social interaction and communication between those involved is vital and will help, to a large extent, to understand the negative impact, but also the need to share with enthusiasm.
I’ll end with a message to those of you who have an idea/knowledge, but don’t want to share it for whatever reason: guys, don’t be afraid, no one will steal your idea or knowledge, and please know that everyone wants to hear your idea, since we all like to hear something new or learn something new!
Wishing you success with the changes to come,
@kalinbabusku
Member of the Team
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