{"id":3515,"date":"2025-04-01T13:54:28","date_gmt":"2025-04-01T13:54:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aomtodayprod.wpenginepowered.com\/?p=3515"},"modified":"2025-07-09T15:11:40","modified_gmt":"2025-07-09T15:11:40","slug":"insecure-leaders-discourage-employees-from-speaking-their-minds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aom.org\/today\/insecure-leaders-discourage-employees-from-speaking-their-minds\/","title":{"rendered":"Insecure Leaders Discourage Employees from Speaking Their Minds"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Daniel Butcher<\/a><\/p>\n

Some iron-fisted leaders consciously discourage lower-ranked employees from contradicting them or initiating fierce conversations. However, many more senior executives and managers do so subconsciously. They may have an \u201copen-door policy,\u201d but believe that they\u2019re more approachable and open-minded to criticism and off-the-wall ideas than they actually are.<\/p>\n

Academy of Management Scholar Sean Martin of the University of Virginia<\/a> noted that people in positions of power can be bad judges of how safe they make other people across the organization feel about speaking up, especially with regard to criticism, contrarian or out-of-the-box ideas, or anything else that could ruffle leaders\u2019 feathers. That makes sense given that bosses decide which employees get promotions and raises\u2014and who gets let go.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would highly recommend people carry around a healthy paranoia about their degree of approachability and ask themselves, \u2018Do people view me as someone to come to with their best ideas and their thorniest problems?\u2019\u201d Martin said.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can start making headway on that by getting out of your office, walking around, spending time with people in informal settings, expressing an interest in them, and asking for input\u2014and, when someone does speak up or challenge the status quo, not being dismissive or reactive, but instead saying, \u2018Thank you for challenging the way that we\u2019ve done things; thanks for pushing us in a new direction,\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd look, while you can\u2019t take every single suggestion, the third piece of advice is, if someone gives you an idea, you have to follow up with them about it and explain why you did or didn\u2019t take this suggestion\u2014otherwise, people get this idea in their head that it\u2019s completely useless to speak up anyways; even if you seem nice, they won’t speak up because \u2018What\u2019s the point?\u2019 so you need to correct those kinds of misconceptions actively.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Daniel Butcher Some iron-fisted leaders consciously discourage lower-ranked employees from contradicting them or initiating fierce conversations. However, many more senior executives and managers do so subconsciously. They may have an \u201copen-door policy,\u201d but believe that they\u2019re more approachable and open-minded to criticism and off-the-wall ideas than they actually are. Academy of Management Scholar Sean […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":3519,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[71,19,44,79],"tags":[],"sp_smart_badges":[],"ppma_author":[70],"class_list":["post-3515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-communicating","category-leadership","category-motivation","category-teams"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nInsecure Leaders Discourage Employees from Speaking Their Minds - Academy of Management Today<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aom.org\/today\/insecure-leaders-discourage-employees-from-speaking-their-minds\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Daniel Butcher\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.aom.org\\\/today\\\/insecure-leaders-discourage-employees-from-speaking-their-minds\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.aom.org\\\/today\\\/insecure-leaders-discourage-employees-from-speaking-their-minds\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Daniel Butcher\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.aom.org\\\/today\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/d1297a59039d9ca7bac9d9f0952e508c\"},\"headline\":\"Insecure Leaders Discourage Employees from Speaking Their Minds\",\"datePublished\":\"2025-04-01T13:54:28+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2025-07-09T15:11:40+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.aom.org\\\/today\\\/insecure-leaders-discourage-employees-from-speaking-their-minds\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":322,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.aom.org\\\/today\\\/insecure-leaders-discourage-employees-from-speaking-their-minds\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.aom.org\\\/today\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2025\\\/03\\\/man-covers-mouth1.webp\",\"articleSection\":[\"COMMUNICATING\",\"LEADERSHIP\",\"MOTIVATION\",\"TEAMS\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/www.aom.org\\\/today\\\/insecure-leaders-discourage-employees-from-speaking-their-minds\\\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.aom.org\\\/today\\\/insecure-leaders-discourage-employees-from-speaking-their-minds\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.aom.org\\\/today\\\/insecure-leaders-discourage-employees-from-speaking-their-minds\\\/\",\"name\":\"Insecure Leaders Discourage Employees from Speaking Their Minds - 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However, many more senior executives and managers do so subconsciously. They may have an \u201copen-door policy,\u201d but believe that they\u2019re more approachable and open-minded to criticism and off-the-wall ideas than they actually are. Academy of Management Scholar Sean…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aom.org\/today\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aom.org\/today\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aom.org\/today\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aom.org\/today\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aom.org\/today\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.aom.org\/today\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3515\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aom.org\/today\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aom.org\/today\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aom.org\/today\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aom.org\/today\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3515"},{"taxonomy":"sp_smart_badges","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aom.org\/today\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sp_smart_badges?post=3515"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aom.org\/today\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=3515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}