According to Justin Hale, a trainer at educational platform Crucial Learning, employees are often drawn to their more positive co-workers, but critical thinkers and those who can play devil’s advocate are vital to wider organisational success.
While these types of personalities can be seen as negative or working against popular opinion, he explained that those who freely speak their minds often provide valuable feedback in scenarios where positive, more self-conscious employees may be hesitant to contribute.
“If an organisation wants to be high performing, leadership in the company must build a social system that can do two things, execute flawlessly and innovate consistently. In order for an organisation to innovate consistently, there must be an environment for intellectual honesty.
“Each person in an organisation has meaning and they have ideas, opinions, experience and knowledge. So, when a team creates an atmosphere where all the available meaning can be shared, the level of critical thinking goes up dramatically. The quality of our decisions gets better and the ingenuity of our innovation goes up.”