Democracy is considered the perfect system of creating an organization that serves everyone equally. The workplaces that are more democratic can offer more freedom to the workers rather than a fear-based culture. Several of the Fortune 500 companies support a freedom-based mindset to keep a healthy environment in their workplace. Rather than controlling the employees with fear-based management, some industry leaders are focused on creating a freedom mindset. It helps the employees to take initiatives for the progress of the company without fearing the consequences. In order to build these freedom-centered organizations, the top leadership must have high self-worth. Here are some examples of world-class cultures that work democratically.
The accountability
If the employees can take accountability for their work, they also develop ownership for it. This allows people, the higher-ups, to judge their juniors for only what they are accountable for. It takes the pressure off the employees of being blamed by the higher-ups for everything that fails.
Choose your own manager
According to a study, 70% of the people who voluntarily leave their job do it because of a crappy manager. While it may not affect the manager in any way, it is a problem for the organization as a whole. A democratic workplace allows people to choose their own leaders when they take up tasks.
Decentralization
Decentralization gives power to the people to make decisions for the company. A voting system that involves all the employees can make them feel valued by the company. They can decide small matters like picking the right seats for themselves and big matters for the company like picking the next marketing campaign.
Dialogue and listening
Organizations like Mindvalley practice the “brutal honesty sessions” where employees can raise questions anonymously. They use dialogue and listening to communicate with their employees at all times. It helps the organization take valuable criticism from the team while also receive valuable ideas. Another company like kitchen remodel long island has benefited from this type of approach even though they are a smaller organization with fewer employees.
Individual and collective
Sometimes organizations have too much emphasis on individual performances or sometimes on collective performances. As a result, someone’s individual performance can overshadow the collective efforts of the teams, or a collective performance does not recognize someone’s individual efforts. That is why the individual and collective performances have to be in balance, so everyone gets recognized and also understands the role they play for the bigger picture.
Retrospectives
Democratic organizations value integrity while dealing with their clients. They value how the client is doing while working with them. They have special spaces and meetings to create retrospectives that help them understand their clients better while also working on themselves to adjust according to their client’s needs.
Singular vision
Democratic organizations want their employees to understand that they will be working towards a singular goal as a team. If the employee’s vision does not match that of the team, it can result in misdirected approaches that do not help anyone. That is why organizations make sure that they hire people who share similar progressive goals as the organization so they can ride the same bus.