How Leaders Curate Innovation and Ideas on a Personal Level

Often times leaders solely focus on strategically influencing innovation at the company level and can overlook the key role it does when ideas can come from within your company transformation leaders and company openness culture.

Here are 3 ways leaders can encourage innovation and how leaders can communicate with its own employees to bring out some really good ideas.

1. More conversations equals more clarity

Very often leaders talk about engaging with others through constructive conversations. Engage, bind, and debate.

Leaders can sometimes get carried away by their own status and ego that can suppress innovation. Forget your ego and listen to what others have to say. Ego closes innovation. Ideas cannot flow when everyone is arm wrestling; ideas flow when people are curious, inquiring and openly expressing their ideas.

Leaders should recognize that conversations are key to innovation, and they should be encouraging, cultivating and role modeling shared thinking. Like a think tank!

2. No Assumptions and Judgments allowed.

Do not pass assumptions or pass any judgment.

Leaders need to constantly think what’s best for the company and its employee’s, and suspend thinking about their own benefit and personal gain. Thinking this way is a sign of a visionary leader, and spurs innovation overall.

Two powerful books I recommend that help leaders suspend judgment and open to new and exciting ideas are Chris Argyris’ Ladder of Inference and Edward do Bono’s Six Thinking Hats.

3. Listen to what other people say.

Mark Twain famously remarked, “If we were supposed to talk more than we listen, we would have two tongues and one ear.”

Listening is a telltale sign of a wise man and a transformational leader. So, create an environment that encourages innovation, develop idea’s and doesn’t rely on what position or role you play in the company. I suggest a think tank with company employees to bring forward their idea’s.

Also, a great way is to communicate in a group setting and brainstorm good ideas. This helps lay the foundation for future transformational leaders to follow. When others have the floor, let them speak openly.

When people are constantly interrupting, talking over ideas, finishing sentences, and projecting negative body language, it breaks the creative flow and deters innovation. Rather than giving a person a good talking to, give them a good listening to.

From within your company, innovation is a great way to get a leg up on your competition, stay 10 steps ahead of the game and focus on transforming your company. It’s individual leaders who can make a difference by driving innovation within organizations and creating a conducive environment for innovation to thrive.

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