Innovation Leaders Foster an Innovative Mindset
What happens at work when you’re presented with a new idea?
Do you play devil’s advocate, punching holes in the idea or pointing out roadblocks? Do you shut it down with a quick retort or dismissive gesture? Or do you ignore it, hoping the idea (and the person who had it) will just go away?
What a leader says and does when someone comes to them with an idea can either spur innovation or stifle it. In fact, studies show that up to 67% of the climate for creativity in organizations is directly attributed to the behavior of the leader.
Caution, skepticism, judging, and dismissal are understandable — and typical — responses to new ideas. But those responses kill innovation.
How Leaders Should Respond to a New Idea
To counter this natural tendency and to foster innovation in their teams and among their direct reports, leaders can develop an innovative mindset — along with learning innovation processes, tools, and skills. What’s an innovative mindset exactly? Leaders with an innovative mindset:
- have curiosity;
- are able to tolerate ambiguity;
- practice affirmative judgement; and
- show persistence.
An Innovative Mindset Requires Curiosity.
People who are good at making things happen are curious. Curiosity fuels the acquisition of new information and is the source of creativity and innovation.
Innovation leaders are curious about why things are set up the way they are, open to doing things differently, and willing to try things that don’t neatly fit into their own assumptions. Curious leaders ask, What if? or How might we do something different? They shift their focus from, There’s no way we can do that! to I wonder how we could make that happen?
When you feel you already know the answer, there’s no curiosity.
An Innovative Mindset Requires Ambiguity Tolerance.
Ambiguity is uncomfortable and challenging. But the ability to slow down and be okay with ambiguity is necessary to innovate in the face of complexity.
Innovation leaders balance the need to move forward with the need to hold themselves open to options. Creative thinking and innovative solutions increase when leaders are willing to stay open to possibilities longer.
An Innovative Mindset Requires Affirmative Judgment.
Instead of telling people what they don’t like or what won’t work, innovation leaders let people know what they do like. They point out the strengths and value of a new solution or idea. This lets the team know they’re on to something new and useful, and ensures they retain the most valuable attributes as the idea evolves.
Affirmative judgment also provides recognition and promotes a sense of accomplishment and progress, which employees need to keep them motivated.
An Innovative Mindset Requires Persistence.
By definition, new ideas are strange, unusual, weird, and different. So selling that idea to others to get buy-in takes a lot of work and time.
A senior leader once told his people that if they propose an idea and he says “no,” don’t give up. If they still believe in the idea, he told them he wanted them to try another way to pitch it until he sees its value. For him, that was the definition of “empowerment.”
Innovation leaders empower themselves to do what it takes, which typically requires great persistence.
Innovation doesn’t happen without leadership. Regardless of the brilliance of your strategy, remember that the culture will support it or kill it. Since leaders have such a significant impact on the culture, it’s up to you as the leader to develop it. The next time you hear a new idea or are asked to weigh in on a new solution, make a choice to lead with an innovative mindset and foster innovation.
5 Tips to Protect a New Idea
In How to Treat New Ideas, authors David Magellan Horth and Michael T. Mitchell draw on decades of personal experience, data, and lessons from scores of organizations around the world. They identify 5 tips that can help companies nurture new ideas:
1. Resist the instinct to kill a new idea.
Leaders need to understand that their first reaction to a new idea is typically “fig