"My door is always open" may be the most common sentence in leadership. It is sincere. It is well-intentioned. And it does almost nothing to get people talking. The research on leader inclusiveness explains why, and what works instead.

"My door is always open"

Most leaders have said it. Most of them meant it. 

And if you asked them how it's going, they'd tell you the door really is open. They're not hiding. They answer messages. They'd welcome a hard conversation. 

So here's a harder question . . .

In the last month, how many people walked through that door and told you something you didn't want to hear?

If the number is zero, it's tempting to conclude there's nothing to hear. I'd read it differently. An open door is not an invitation.

An open door waits. It puts the whole burden on the other person. They have to decide whether the issue is big enough. They have to pick the moment. They have to walk over, knock, and start a conversation you didn't ask for, about something you might not like. 

That's a lot of walking! And it isn't the same distance for everyone.

What the research calls it

In 2006, Ingrid Nembhard and Amy Edmondson published a study of neonatal intensive care units. These wee teams where speaking up matters in the most literal way, and where the hierarchy is steep and visible: physicians, then nurses, then respiratory therapists. 

They found two things. 

First, status predicted psychological safety. The higher someone's professional status, the safer they felt speaking up. Physicians felt safest. Those lower in the hierarchy felt less safe, in the same units, on the same teams, caring for the same patients. 

That part won't surprise anyone who has ever been the most junior person in the room. 

The second finding is the one that matters for leaders. In units where the physician leaders were inclusive, the status gap shrank. Lower-status team members felt much closer to as safe as everyone else. And psychological safety, in turn, predicted how much people engaged in the unit's quality improvement work. 

Nembhard and Edmondson named the behavior leader inclusiveness, and defined it this way:

 

"Words and deeds by a leader or leaders that indicate an invitation and appreciation for others' contributions."

Read that definition slowly, because everything useful is inside it. 

Words and deeds. Things a leader says and does. It's observable.

An invitation. Someone asked.

And appreciation. Something good happened to the person who answered.

Two behaviors. Invite. Appreciate.

Your title talks before you do

Here's why the open door fails, and why the invitation works. 

Last week's piece made the case that psychological safety is a read on the room. Every person, before they speak, runs a quick calculation about their own exposure. If I say this, what happens to me?

Status changes the math. 

The senior person who asks a basic question is "making sure we're aligned." The junior person in the room who asks the same question is worried they'll look like they don't belong. Same question. Different price.

So when you, the leader, say nothing and leave the door open, you haven't created a neutral situation. Your title is already in the room, and it's already talking. It's saying, "I decide your assignments. I write your performance review."

Your title talks before you do.

That's not a flaw in your character by any means. It comes with the role, but it means silence from you is never neutral. If the hierarchy is speaking and you aren't, the hierarchy wins. 

An invitation is how you talk over your own title. 

A behavior, not a trait

This is the part I find the most encouraging. 

Leaders often tell me, "I'm approachable." And they usually are. They're warm. They're easy to talk to. People like them. But approachable is a description of you. It lives in your personality, and it asks the other person to act on it. 

Inclusiveness, as the research defines it, isn't a personality at all. It's words and deeds. Which means a quiet, reserved, introverted leader can be highly inclusive, and a charming, friendly leader can silence a room. 

Approachable is what you are. Inviting is what you do. 

And anything you do, you can practice. 

Half one: invite

Most leaders believe they're already inviting input. Usually, they use one of five phrases that sound like an invitation but aren't. 

"My door is always open." It waits. They do the walking. Try instead to go to them. "I'm coming to you. What's one thing I should know?"

"Any questions?" Asked at the end, with two minutes left on the clock, and this becomes a closing ritual of a team meeting. The easy answer is no, and any question now means that "I didn't follow along." Try instead asking, "What did I explain badly?" That puts the gap on you, and not on them. 

"Does everyone agree?" It asks for a yes... almost demands it. Anyone who disagrees has to break up the party, and silence gets counted as a vote. Try instead by saying, "What would make this fail?" Now the dissent is the assignment. 

"Be honest with me." Too big to answer. It hands the other person all the risk and none of the direction. It could be feared as career suicide. What if you asked this instead, "What's one thing I should do differently in this meeting?"

"Bring me solutions, not problems." Yikes. That puts a price on the door. No solution yet? Get out of my sight. That's fine, I guess... You'll hear about the problem when it's too late and will cost a small fortune to fix. Perhaps, you should consider making it small and specific: "Bring me the problem early, and we can figure out the solution together."

Notice what the replacements have in common. They're out loud. They're specific. They assume there is something to hear. And several of them put the leader's own fallibility on the table first. 

One more habit belongs here, too. Ask before you tell. Once your opinion is in the room, your title has already voted on the topic at hand. If you want to know what people think, find out before they know what you think. 

Half two: appreciate

Asking is half of it. What you do in the seconds after someone answers is the other half. 

The research on why employees stay silent keeps finding the same two reasons. One is fear because speaking up will cost me. The other is futility, because speaking up won't change a damn thing. Frances Milliken, Elizabeth Morrison, and Patricia Hewlin heard both in their interviews with employees back in 2003. The pattern has held up since.

Inviting answers the fear. Appreciating answers the futility.

Three moves.

Thank it. "Thank you for raising that." Out loud, where the room can hear. Everyone else is watching to decide whether they'll go next.

Dig into it. "Say more. What are you seeing?" Curiosity is the most convincing form of appreciation. It tells the person their input was worth a second question.

Close the loop. "Here's what I did with what you told me." This is the one leaders skip, and it's the one that defeats futility. Even when the answer might be, "I thought about it and we're not changing course, and here's why," the person learns that their words went somewhere, even if it did not result in the change they were hoping for. 

And that's the important distinction. Appreciation is not agreement. You can value the contribution and still decide differently. What you can't do is ask for input and then punish it, ignore it, or let it vanish. One invitation that ends badly teaches the room more than ten that were never made. 

Wherever you sit

If you're new to managing people. You may worry that asking, "What am I missing?" makes you look unsure. It reads the opposite way. Leaders who ask specific questions look like people who intend to get it right. Start with one ask per meeting.

If you lead a team that's gone quiet. Don't announce a new era of openness. That would look disingenuous, no matter how pure your intentions are. Pick the smallest real question you can, ask it of the room, and then handle the first answer well. The first answer is the whole game.

If you lead other leaders. The status distance between you and the front line is the largest in the building, which means what reaches you is the most filtered. You need more invitations than anyone, and you need to take them further down.

If you develop leaders for a living. The encouraging news from this research is that inclusiveness is observable and teachable. You can watch for it, count it, and coach it. "Be more approachable" is not a developmental goal. "Ask one specific question before giving your view" is.

What to do this week

Pick one meeting. Before it starts, choose one real question you don't know the answer to. Ask it before you share your own opinion. 

Then wait. Longer than what might be comfortable. Silence after a real question isn't failure. It's people checking to see whether you meant it or not.

When someone answers, thank them, dig into their comments to learn more, and before the week is over, close the loop.

Then, ask yourself who you haven't heard from, and go to them directly.

An open door is not an invitation

The leaders I work with aren't hiding from their teams. Their doors are open. They'd welcome the hard conversation.

They're just waiting for it to walk in.

It won't. Not from the people who have the most to lose by starting it. 

Your title talks before you do. So say something first. Ask, specifically, out loud. Then make it worth it for the person who answers. 

Invite. Appreciate. Repeat until it's normal.