Flip the Script E3: Unlocking employee autonomy

My guests today are Lisa Gill, organisational self-management coach, trainer with Tuff Leadership Training and associate with Greaterthan; and Kamila Sip, social and cognitive neuroscientist, as well as a consultant with the Neuroleadership Institute.

Together we debate how much autonomy we have really gained and lost throughout the pandemic; and how we can design a future workplace that is based on adult-adult relationships, rather than infantilising employees. 

Some of the topics we explore:

- Why we need to #flipthescript on autonomy: it’s not chaos, but it’s not automatic consensus either. It’s a ‘dance’ and delicate balance that needs to be negotiated between managers and employees.

- What happens to our brains in relation to the push-and-pull of autonomy & control: We want to have autonomy, but we also want to have some boundaries & guardrails in the workplace.

- How too much autonomy creates a similar threat response as too little autonomy; so for it to work, it needs to go hand in hand with self-responsibility, transparency and accountability.

- How the pandemic has shortened the distance between the ‘top’ and ‘bottom’ of the hierarchy, as it became apparent that leaders didn’t have all the answers and that exposed the (perceived) vulnerability of “I don’t know.”

- The 3 shifts we need to make holistically to create an environment of autonomy:

• Changing core systems e.g. info-sharing, conflict-management, decision-making

• People who have structural power need to unlearn the tendency to step in & give solutions automatically; listen more deeply, slow down, ask questions, invite in other perspectives

• People who haven’t had power have been so conditioned to be passive, defer to a leader and pass the buck >> now need to learn how to take initiative, challenge and propose new things.

You can learn more about Kami’s background here; and read this excellent Forbes interview with her.

Lisa’s podcast, Leadermorphosis, is one of my favourites. You can access her book, "Moose Heads on the Table: Stories About Self-Managing Organisations from Sweden", here.

If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to subscribe on Apple, Spotify or Google Podcasts and follow the Flip the Script YouTube channel.