How to Lead Your Innovators to Come up with Ideas

The world of business is becoming increasingly complex. Because of that, it is also much harder to really be a good leader nowadays. Leaders have a lot on their shoulders: they have to be visionaries, they have to be inspiration, they have to have a deep understanding of themselves, they have to grasp what motivates their team members and what they want, they have to be decision-makers, must be able to collaborate and delegate, and they have to be able to develop talent. And on top of all that, they have to be innovators! That means they have to find idea management software that works, but they also have to make I work.

How to Lead Innovators in Your Team

What you have to focus on is the specific things that will really make a difference to the organization as a whole. The following tips might help you in order to make sure your team is ready to become successful:

  1. You must believe in every member of your team. This may feel like stating the obvious, but you would be surprised to hear how many team members feel like you don’t trust them to really embrace your vision and mission of innovation. This vision and mission must be something that is shared. Your role in that is to make your expectations clear, but you then have to trust them with the execution. And do make that challenging!
  2. You must lead by example and have to be an innovator yourself. This was recently proven by Brigham Young University’s Professor Jeff Dyer, who showed that, when a manager is hands-on involved in the process of idea management and innovation, they foster this as a culture. This means you may have to leave your office to personally speak to customers, or to invite experts from other industry, challenging yourself and your team.
  3. You must have people on your team who love to learn. Make this part of your recruitment process. Wanting to learn is more important than excellent performance, as shocking as that may sound. People who want to learn want to develop themselves and, to do so, they must solve complex issues. They can also deal with failure, which means they are more likely to come up with ideas because they don’t mind being wrong.
  4. Have a skill base in your team. People don’t simply know things such as how to construct properties, set broken bones, or analyze P&Ls. Hence, they also won’t simply “know” how to innovate. It is your responsibility to give them the capabilities and skills to become innovative. Even creativity is something that can be learned (in fact, only 30% of it is genetic). Hence, train people the right way to uplift your innovation.

With these four tips, you should be able to properly lead innovation in your organization. It will mean thinking outside of the box, and that can be hard. But doing so will make you the leader that you truly are.

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