It seems we are ever urging and encouraging our employees to exhibit higher levels of customer service. We want them to be attentive, responsive, and innovative. Beyond this, we expect our staff members to treat each resident like their best customer—to communicate respect, appreciation, and value with every interaction. The tough question is, are we being unreasonable?

The truth is that our employees will rarely treat residents any better than they themselves perceive they are being treated as employees. That’s the watermark of customer service. If our people don’t feel heard, respected, appreciated, and valued, likely neither will our residents. In fact, to answer the question, it is indeed unreasonable to expect any output when the inputs are wrong. If you want your employees to provide world-class customer service, then you must first treat them like world-class customers, and it all begins with both listening to them and engaging them in making government better.

I have confidence, meanwhile, that most of my colleagues reading this have already “bought into” this concept of listening to their people. In fact, a lot of well-meaning managers will tell their employees, “The door to my office is always open,” insinuating that staff members should expect to be warmly greeted every time they show up at their supervisor’s door. It is a wonderful gesture, but let’s be honest. How many employees take you up on it? I once instituted a program called Lunch with Rick. As the name denotes, it was a chance for my employees to go to lunch with me. I’d even pay! I thought it would be a wonderful way to connect to line employees and hear their concerns and ideas. On paper, that seemed like something other cities would want to emulate. In practice, however, very few employees took me up on it. It wasn’t that the opportunity wasn’t well publicized. It wasn’t that it lacked sincerity. It wasn’t even that I picked lousy restaurants. In fact, employees could choose any restaurant in the city. So what was it? Why did so few accept my offer? There I was, all ears and heart, ready to listen to their ideas, concerns, dreams, and fears!

It boils down to human nature and cultures of the organization. Yes, I said cultures, plural. Your police department has a culture, your public works department has a culture, and oh boy, does your fire department have a culture! While these cultures vary in many respects, they all have spoken and unspoken rules of conduct and expectations to which new recruits are formally or informally introduced shortly after their first day.

Some of the unspoken norms of a department may not entirely support the idea of going out to lunch with the city manager, lest one be regarded a “brown noser” by one’s colleagues. And let’s be honest, it can be downright frightening to “break bread” with the guy or gal who you believe could end your career with the swipe of a pen.

Likewise, if you’re a supervisor, department director, or even the city manager, don’t be surprised if when you fling your arms wide open, your employees don’t immediately rush into them, confiding in you all their fears, dreams, ambitions, and ideas. The conundrum, though, is this: How can we listen if they aren’t talking? And if they aren’t talking, could it be that they don’t feel entirely safe doing so.

Author and inspirational speaker Simon Sinek reminds us that “letting someone into an organization is like adopting a child.” ¹ However, many employees don’t feel like adopted children, but rather the red-headed stepchild with his room in the attic. This is why Sinek suggests that the responsibility of every organizational leader is to create something he calls a circle of safety: A portion of cultural or organizational space free of intimidation, humiliation, isolation, ridicule, rejection, and all the other stress and shame agents against which employees often feel compelled to defend themselves instead of using that same energy on endeavors that would otherwise edify and elevate the organization. When our people know that the person to the left and right of them have their back, they are in a much better position to spend their energy on lifting our organization instead of simply playing defense.

Circles of safety are excellent places to listen to your employees, but they don’t just appear spontaneously or organically. They are intentionally constructed and should be relentlessly defended and fortified. In two of my organizations, I established a people empowerment and process improvement program modeled after the city of Denver’s Peak Academy. Both their program and ours mimicked a martial arts Six Sigma format where employees were awarded different colors of belts for completing levels of program competency. From yellow belt to green belt, and from black to red, we intentionally created a circle of safety under the guise of a process improvement and innovation program. Know what it really was? It was a place for our employees to be heard. It was a place where, for once, somebody listened to their ideas, concerns, and advice.

The course equipped them with some analytical tools that better enabled them to identify potential innovation opportunities, and they demonstrated their “mastery” of these principles and techniques by submitting one project/innovation for green belt and three for black belt. Classes were called “cohorts” and presented periodically throughout the year. And guess who we placed into the very first cohort—the city manager, assistant city manager, and every department head.

We called those first couple of classes “green belt for leaders,” and we started with the executive team for a very strategic reason. You see, their presence in that first cohort signaled safety to the supervisors and line personnel who reported to them. In the second cohort, we filled the class with frontline managers and supervisors. By the time we presented our third cohort, we had a waiting list of employees from every department in the city. The coast was clear, and they jumped in with both feet. From the more than 550 participating employees came more than $5 million in recurring annual savings in the first 18 months of the program!

If you’re now saying to yourself, “Five mil in 18 months…that’s not bad,” you might be missing the point. The Elevate Academy, as it’s called, represents a means to an end. It was simply a vehicle. While saving taxpayer dollars is a worthwhile endeavor, we established this program to create a circle of safety, a place where employees would feel safe to share their best ideas—a place where they could feel heard. Meanwhile, employees who feel heard, understood, and then have opportunities to act and make a difference are not only better, happier employees; they are employees who are ultimately more likely to trust their organizational leadership and listen to the residents they serve. ²

The Elevate Academy, once again, was simply a means to an end. You don’t need to mimic it or the Denver Peak Academy. However, you need to structure space inside yourlocal government organization where employees feel safe to express their thoughts, ideas, fears, and concerns. As your employees feel heard and acknowledged, they will be far more likely to reciprocate by listening and acknowledging the needs of your residents.

Do you see the absurdity of expecting your staff members to listen and respond to your residents when no one listens to or acknowledges them? Do you see how crazy it is to attempt to elevate trust in your community when the city/county staff doesn’t trust the executive and elected leadership? Regardless, you may be surprised by how many cities attempt to defy the laws of organizational physics by expecting an output from an entirely different set of inputs.

Once again, if you want your staff to listen to your residents, start by listening to them; and in order to listen to them, you’ll have to create a circle of safety.

RICK DAVIS, ICMA-CM, is assistant city manager of League City, Texas.

Resources and Endnotes

¹ Sinek, Simon. Leaders Eat Last, p. 27.

² Lee, A., Willis, S., & Tian, A. W. (2017). Empowering leadership: A meta-analytic examination of incremental contribution, mediation, and moderation. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 39(3), 306–325.