Challenger Safety

1. Take your finger off the fear button.
Fear triggers the self-censoring instinct and causes people to retreat into silence and personal risk management. When a leader uses fear, it’s normally a punitive response borne of frustration and insecurity. More importantly, it’s an abdication of leadership.

2. Assign dissent.
If you assign specific members of your team to challenge a course of action or find flaws in a proposed decision, you remove much of the individual's personal risk and replace it with institutional permission. This allows intellectual bravery to become the norm rather than the exception. Be explicit in telling the members of your team that you have given them a license to disagree and you expect them to use it.

3. Encourage others to think beyond their roles.
Inviting your people to venture out of their tactical and functional silos creates more opportunity for divergent thinking, allowing them to connect things that aren't normally connected. Of course you must manage the process carefully and discern when constructive dissent is giving way to destructive derailment.

4. Respond constructively to disruptive ideas and bad news.
Your positive emotional response to disruptive ideas and bad news is a clear signal that you have a high tolerance for candor and will protect your people in their right to dissent.

5. When you reject feedback, explain why.
When you reject a team member's input or suggestion, explain why you didn't adopt it . Your considerate response will embolden the individual to continue giving feedback.

6. Weigh in last.
Speaking first when you hold positional power softly censors your team. Listen carefully, acknowledge the contributions of others, and then register your point of view.

7. Display no pride of authorship.
Make it clear to your team that your ideas are no better than anyone else's. Sometimes team members are too deferential to the ideas of the leader because he or she is the leader. Don’t let that happen, and don’t overvalue your own ideas. Welcome criticism of your own ideas. Reinforce the fact that just because you are the team leader doesn’t make suggestions inherently superior. In fact, admit that many of your own ideas in the past have led nowhere.

8. Model vulnerability.
Remember that vulnerability is exposing yourself to the possibility of harm or loss. If you model and reinforce a pattern of vulnerability, others will do the same

9. Reward vulnerability.
Remember, challenger safety must project the individual and the team at the highest point of personal and interpersonal vulnerability. Challenger safety is about generating and then harnessing diverse perspectives and even disagreement without emotional escalation and destructive social friction. If you reward a pattern of vulnerability to challenge the status quo, that will become the norm. Use your positional power to escort them through the vulnerability by encouraging them.

10. Reward shots on goal.
This means rewarding your team members with recognition and enthusiasm when they attempt to challenge the status quo. Not all ideas and suggestions will have merit, but if you encourage the attempts (shots on goals), those shots will increase and you will be more likely to have some successful challenges (goals) that add value and move the team forward.