How You Can Building Trust With an Open Door Policy
How do develop a culture where people can speak freely
In 2020, I received my first chance to lead a team. Although I felt anything but prepared, I liked the idea of stepping into the unknown. What interested me, particularly in the opportunity I received, was how humble the CEO was. I remember asking him, what makes this place different? His answer gives me goosebumps even today.
“We’re all the same. Every day, I come to work to create an environment where we can speak openly to each other. I don’t have an office to reduce barriers, and I ensure hierarchies don’t block people from speaking their minds.”
That’s how I got my first contact with an open-door policy. Let me take this blog to share that with you. We will cover the following:
What an open-door policy is
Advantages and disadvantages of an open door policy
How to build up and cultivate such a culture
Strategy for maintaining an open-door policy
Conclusion and takeaways
What’s an open-door policy?
I define an open-door policy as open communication without repercussions. It means any employee can talk to anyone they’d like to without concerns. Hierarchies don’t block them from speaking their mind. As a result, they feel heard and know their opinions count, and the chance of a toxic culture diminishes dramatically.
Let me ask you a few questions:
How easily can you talk to people higher than your level?
How direct can you be with your ideas?
How complicated is it to approach high-level management?
How open is top-level management to criticism?
When you answer the above with ease, it means an open-door policy is in place. Otherwise, it’s a more hierarchical and traditional organization. Let’s explore its advantages and disadvantages.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of an open-door policy?
Returning to the example I started with, the CEO told me, “Making it easier for people to speak up accelerates solving problems. The harder it is to talk to management, the more problems grow unsolved.”
I got thoughtful when I heard that. Without an open-door policy, I observe teams trying to solve problems independently without asking for help. This can be good, but sometimes it’s unrealistic that teams can solve everything on their own.
Here are a few advantages of an open-door policy:
Less friction to bring problems to the surface
More collaboration, less coordination
Lightweight way of working
Closer connection to leadership
More ideas coming up from different organization layers
Yet, you may face the following challenges:
People confuse sharing ideas as “we can do whatever we want”
Extensive discussions because everyone wants to weigh in
Distracted leadership as ideas come from all over the place
Struggle to prioritize as multiple ideas become available
Focus on talking about the work instead of doing it
The advantages are worth the effort, while the disadvantages can be overcome with solid ways of implementing the culture.
How to build up and cultivate such a culture
The CEO of Virtual Identity (a company I worked for) realized that people wouldn’t approach him or even share problems endangering projects; he had to do something about it. As he became aware of an open-door policy, he designed to try it out.
First, the CEO told the team that hierarchies were functional but should not block communication. Anyone should talk to anyone whenever they see a need to keep moving the business forward. Then, he shared that his office would always be open, and he went even further by removing his office door.
A few months down the road, the CEO received more feedback, but people still resisted approaching him. He noticed he was one of the few people with an office, so he removed his office and sat in the open space with employees. That changed everything.
People felt he was more like a team player and started approaching him to bounce ideas and exchange concerns and opportunities. Slowly, the culture moved toward what he envisioned. In short, here’s how he implemented the open culture policy:
Communicate, communicate, communicate
Show, don’t tell
Make it easier to exchange with each other
Get closer to the team
Create opportunities to share feedback
Strategies do cultivate an open-door policy
After a few months, more people came in, some left, and the culture started drifting away from the open-door policy. The CEO had to act again. He got external help at this stage, which changed the game forever. Here are the few strategies he deployed:
Onboarding: Once a month, the CEO would invite the newcomers for breakfast, which he cooked himself. The difference is that he wouldn’t give any presentation about the company, but would give his time so employees could ask whatever they wanted. This attitude helped newcomers step in with the desired mindset.
Q&A: Knowing that people don’t speak up naturally, a few rooms for that had to be created. Once a month, the leadership team would stand before the whole company to answer questions. Anyone could ask whatever they wanted, and the leadership would answer honestly.
Anonymous Feedback: Another critical aspect is the multicultural team; not everyone wants to be exposed, share critical feedback in public, or even ask challenging questions. To solve that, an anonymous feedback mechanism was set. A simple survey where anyone could leave their feedback, ideas, or concerns.
Quarterly 360 Feedback: To ensure people knew where others stood, feedback became a continuous practice. Once a quarter, everyone would have a chance to give feedback to their peers, leaders, and staff. This ensured more natural talk and continuous feedback.
Feedback training: Giving feedback doesn’t come naturally to everyone. Different cultures have different ways of giving and receiving feedback, which tremendously impacts the message. The CEO set a feedback training session every second month so everyone could sharpen their skills.
The above enabled a proper open-door policy, but it wasn’t achievable in the short term. It took years to get everyone on the same page. Yet, the effort helped the agency get stronger than ever. Employee retention improved by more than 20%, and satisfaction rate and customer satisfaction also increased considerably.
Conclusion and Takeaways
An open-door policy helps businesses move faster as problems become known early enough. Also, accountability plays a different role as people feel they can move the needle. Yet, you need to be aware that setting an open-door policy requires a solid strategy and resilience to make it your reality.
Here are the takeaways from this post:
Open-door policy fosters collaboration over coordination
Feedback is a vital part of an open-door policy. Prepare your people to receive and give feedback frequently
The more you remove barriers, the more an open-door policy will work
Leadership needs to listen and act so people feel heard. Otherwise, they will see no reason to speak their minds
Let’s rock the product world together!