Canton of Berne — Managing through influence: how can managers bring unwelcome information to light?
In the canton of Berne, federal administration, public health, telecommunications and precision industry form an environment where transparency requirements meet technical and institutional constraints. For SHR’s “Managing through influence” programme, this raises a precise question: how can managers advocate a course of action without discouraging information that might challenge it?
What the literature establishes
Amy Edmondson (1999, Administrative Science Quarterly) identifies an association between psychological safety and learning behaviours in work teams. Psychological safety is a shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking, including admitting an error or asking for help. For managing through influence, this suggests examining not only the strength of an argument, but also the perceived cost of raising an objection.
Openness is judged through behaviour
James R. Detert and Ethan R. Burris (2007, Academy of Management Journal) show that managerial openness is associated with employees voicing suggestions intended to improve organisational functioning. Their analyses support a mediating role for psychological safety in this relationship. An invitation to speak may therefore be insufficient: how a manager receives unwelcome information helps make that invitation credible.
The premature conclusion
One might conclude that better influence simply requires inviting more objections. Yet more contributions guarantee neither relevant information nor its use. The aim is not to make every proposal negotiable, but to allow an important constraint to be raised without immediately treating the person who raises it as an opponent. (our executive and employee training programmes)
What these findings cannot establish
These studies do not evaluate organisations in Berne, nor do they establish that a facilitation technique would have the same effect everywhere. The second study concerns relationships with a hierarchical manager, so extending its findings to influence among peers requires caution. In organisations operating under a public mandate, transparency must also accommodate confidentiality; in a bilingual setting such as Biel/Bienne, the language used may additionally affect how easy it is to contribute.
A practical check in Berne
Consider a hypothetical example in Berne: a manager coordinates a change to a health-data transmission system with administrative counterparts, a telecommunications operator and a precision-instrument supplier. Before presenting a preferred solution, the manager collects written constraints that could make it unworkable, in each participant’s chosen working language and without sensitive data. Over the next three sessions, the manager keeps a log of concerns and calculates the proportion receiving a documented, reasoned response accessible to authorised participants before the decision. Suitable as an exercise in the “Managing through influence” programme, this measure checks how unwelcome information is handled, not whether trust has demonstrably increased. To go further: explore the Influence Management training in Bern in the canton of Bern, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
In pictures: Influence Management in Bern
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