Episode #23 - Dr. Denise Cumberland on CEOs in Touch with Frontline Employees - Permission to Speak - Leadership Podcast - Interview with Kelly Vandever - a podcast by Kelly Vandever

Permission to Speak Podcast. Hosted by Leadership Communications Expert Kelly Vandever. Episode #23 - Dr. Denise Cumberland. Permission to Speak is the video blog and podcast that loiters at the intersections of leaders who want their people to speak up, technology that facilitates connections, and results that serve an organization’s higher purpose. Topics covered in this episode include:
- Denise discusses her leadership research based on the show Undercover Boss.
- Denise interviewed 13 of the CEOs that had been on the television series
- How could the scandals like GM’s ignition scandal and VA scandal, how could they happen and these leaders not know
- All but one CEO said they really wanted to know what employees really thought, they had a desire to learn about their own organization
- The main thing all the CEOs learned was how hard and demanding their employees’ jobs are
- They learned what it was like to have to do something when you’d never been taught
- The CEOs learned what it felt like to be yelled at by customers or by managers
- The CEOs learned about the personal lives of their employees and hearing their stories
- The CEOs learned the human side of the organization, not just the financial side
- Changes were made as a result of the CEOs experience working with their frontline employees
- Adding new training programs was the most common response to the experience
- Part of our human nature is to want to fix problems and the CEOs fixed the problems they found. But the bigger question is how and why did these problems happen to begin with? Cultures need to be open and transparent. Employees have to have the confidence that when they report things to their supervisor that their supervisor is going to report the problem up.
- CEOs need to be connected vertically within the organization and not just with the couple of management layers down.
- Only 4 of the 13 companies put processes in place to continue to seek employee input
- It’s hard to do and organizations struggle with what formal and informal structures can help get that employee input to flow up the organization
- What else is needed for employees to speak up?
- A supervisor who is open to new ideas versus one who is just “get your job done” and is very transactional
- Employees trust that there is safety, even if they bring information to their supervisor that’s hard to hear
- Culture was mentioned by 10 of the 13 CEOs as being an important factor
- Smaller or mid-sized companies are more likely to have a more open communications and CEOs who work to stay connected with employees
- We can tell people that your voice is heard and your voice matter, but we also need to let them know that it doesn’t mean everything will always go the employee’s way. There may be other things that influence the decision and there may be things they know seeing the bigger picture.
- Denise’s research, found that safety needed to be present, but that engaged employees were more likely to speak up, being engaged was a predecessor to speaking up.
- Denise’s recommendation would be that every voice matters, every voice is going to be heard, your opinions count, then set up formal processes and informal methods to support the desired level of culture
- CEO’s don’t wait for employees to come to them, they go into the environment to understand what’s going on or inviting them to breakfast to get regular input
- What went right? What could we optimize?
- Research supports that the more employees speak up, the better business results we get

Further episodes of Make Your Move Easier - Advice for People Selling or Buying a Home

Further podcasts by Kelly Vandever

Website of Kelly Vandever