Episode 30

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Published on:

5th Jul 2023

Building an Engaged Culture by Leveraging Constructive Debate

Dr. Jim emphasizes the importance of handling disagreement and differences of opinion in organizations. He explains that in smaller organizations, conflicts can create chaos, while in larger organizations, they can be absorbed. To create a culture that encourages healthy debate and innovation, trust must be established across the enterprise, everything should be tied back to a shared goal, ground rules should be established, and everyone should focus on listening to understand rather than responding. These principles help build high-performance teams and organizations that fuel innovation and growth.

Timestamp

[0:00:00] Importance of dealing with disagreement and differences of opinion

[0:00:35] Building trust and relationships across the organization

[0:01:08] Tying everything back to a shared goal

[0:02:03] Establishing ground rules for healthy debate

[0:02:35] Creating an environment of listening to understand

Transcript

Building a Culture of Constructive Debate

Dr. Jim: [:

If you're the leader of a busy HR team or if you're a leader of a small to mid-size organization, you need to be really effective in creating a culture where debate can be had, innovation can be made without poisoning the well when it comes to how productive the team is going to be. What's the foundation for building that sort of culture?

First, you need to [:

Next, everything needs to be tied back to a shared goal. We often talk about debate the behavior or improve the behavior instead of attacking the person. It's a similar concept. You need to be rooted and centered on the goal. And it isn't about winning or losing. It's about achievement against the goal in reaching the best solution .

Reorienting that focus is gonna be helpful in fostering the type of healthy debate that's necessary for you to innovate and accelerate.

ers and busy leaders of busy [:

If those aren't defined beforehand and aren't embedded in your culture, you can see a lot of these interactions become a lot more personal versus focused on behaviors or business outcomes.

Another way that you can. Create a culture where debate is encouraged and debate actually drives the innovation that you need.

ples is gonna be critical in [:

By doing these things effectively, you're creating an environment where these sort of debates. Fuel innovation and accelerate your growth as an organization.

The goal of every manager is to build an elite team, is to create a legacy. You need to empower your managers. You need to have your employees engaged. And those two elements together help you build an elite organization.

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About the Podcast

Principal Office Hours
Real principals. Real talk. No hall passes required.
Finally—a podcast that proves school principals have personalities (and killer insights, too). Every week, join us for candid conversations with K-12 principals who are navigating the beautiful chaos of educational leadership without losing their minds or sense of humor.

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Our guests aren't afraid to share their epic fails alongside their victories. They'll tell you about the initiative that spectacularly bombed during assembly, right before revealing how they turned their school's reading scores around. It's educational leadership with the BS filter turned off.

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About your hosts

Jim Kanichirayil

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Your friendly neighborhood talent strategy nerd is the producer and co-host for The HR Impact Show. He's spent his career in sales and has been typically in startup b2b HRTech and TA-Tech organizations.

He's built high-performance sales teams throughout his career and is passionate about all things employee life cycle and especially employee retention and turnover.