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Fostering Creativity

by Miki Saxon

bright-ideaDo you work at fostering a culture of innovation? Encourage your people to think creatively? Do you want them to come up with ideas, large and small, to improve products and processes?

Most managers do.

Do you unintentionally stomp on their creative efforts?

That happens more often than you might think.

How many times has a member of your team (at any level) had an idea or made a suggestion and your initial response was along the lines of, “I know…,” “we tried that already…,” or “Jill already…”

Such reactions dump ice water on the creative process and if it happens several times most people won’t bother mentioning their next idea. Employees understand ideas may not be used, but that’s different from feeling you don’t want to hear about them unless they are perfect.

This happens most frequently with new employees, because they have no history to guide them, but new or not, the result is to kill creativity, instead of nurturing it.

I frequently hear from clients and others about their exciting breakthroughs/ideas for motivating their people, for their culture, or whatever, and it’s often simply their rephrasing of ideas we’ve been discussing or that I, or others, have written about, sometimes for years.

It doesn’t matter; and I make sure not to say anything that detracts from their breakthrough—causing them to feel that it’s not a big deal and that they merely reinvented an old wheel.

You see, the big deal is that they thought of it independently and that’s what I want to encourage—ideas, creative thinking, thinking beyond their knowledge, not necessarily historical knowledge.

To nurture the thinking that leads to creativity you need to acknowledge it, you don’t need to convince them that no one ever thought of it before, they’ll figure that out for themselves or a peer will tell them, what you focus on is the accomplishment.

The critical point is that they came to it on their own, and, because it came from inside, they own it.

And that makes the idea far more potent than anything you or I or anybody can say from the outside.

So when that old idea comes up yet again acknowledge the creativity of the thought first, then gently explain its history, being sure the person understands that the value is in the creativity it took to think of it and that you are looking forward to more creativity in the future.

Stock.xchng image credit: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1156284

One Response to “Fostering Creativity”
  1. October Leadership Development Carnival: Autumn Fun Edition | Aspire-CS Says:

    […] Miki Saxon of MAPping Company Success reminds us that managers need to mind their unconscious reactions in order to have creativity flourish in its splendor in Fostering Creativity. […]

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