Encouraging initiative

When you’re stressed, when you’re being pulled in a thousand different directions and you have no spare psychological bandwidth to think straight, seeing someone taking initiative is like watching a sunset on Waikiki beach.

It is glorious!

You cannot stop the gratitude that pours out of every cell in your body towards this person.

The trouble is the majority of us have been trained to sit quietly and await instructions.

If you want initiative to be taken, not only do you have to vocalise it, but you may also have to praise it when it goes well and show mercy when it goes wrong.

A huge hindrance to initiative is the fear of being scolded, berated and embarrassed.

I think if you want initiative to be taken you have to show that consistently.

It might even take staging an initiative mistake to finally get your message across but I think your team is going to be all the more better off for it.

Both in morale and productivity