What do you do if your team resists creative thinking?

There are activities that help point out paradigms that support fears. These help the participants open their thinking to new ideas and show them that the new ideas are not threatening.

Lead by example: Demonstrate your own openness to creative ideas and solutions. Communicate the importance: Explain why creative thinking is valuable for the team and the organization as a whole. Highlight success stories where creative solutions led to positive outcomes. Provide resources: Offer training or workshops on creativity and innovation to help team members develop their skills.

No growth happens in the fear realm. Often we try to move past this with not enough attention to listening and allowing grief and feelings to be heard. Practicing patience and caring while setting expectations that there can be a defined period of grieving change, is ok. It’s also ok to expect to move forward.

Resistance to change is deeply ingrained in our evolutionary makeup, serving as a protective mechanism that favors routine and minimizes exposure to potential hazards. As leaders and facilitators, our duty is to establish a nurturing environment, rich with empathy, that provides a sense of security, triggering neural connections linked to comfort and positive reinforcement. In such a supportive space, apprehensions about loss, uncertainty, self-doubt, and the fear of social judgment dissipate, allowing creativity and adaptability to flourish without the constraints of discomfort and anxiety.

Encourage open dialogue by sharing personal experiences of overcoming similar fears and the positive outcomes that ensued. Reinforce the idea that every contribution is valuable and that the focus is on exploration rather than immediate judgment. By creating a supportive atmosphere, you can empower team members to embrace creativity and actively participate in the ideation process.

Encouraging collaboration between different departments helps a lot. People with different areas of expertise can bring new ideas on table. Furthermore perfect collaboration between Experienced team and new members is a deadly thing for brainstorming with a growth mindset.

Diversity fuels creativity by enhancing neural plasticity and cognitive flexibility, breaking routines, and opening minds to new perspectives. Exposure to different cultures, viewpoints, and experiences enriches our collective knowledge, driving innovation and empathy toward diverse client needs. Embracing diversity unlocks human creativity's full potential, fostering meaningful progress and innovation.

Complexity stifles creativity by trapping teams in rigid structures and bureaucratic processes, hindering innovation. Simplifying procedures and fostering flexibility in idea generation can break these barriers. Creating an environment where creativity thrives involves removing unnecessary complexity, allowing teams to uncover fresh perspectives and solutions, and paving the way for innovation.

Creativity as a frame can mean so many different things that it is overwhelming. Do we mean to incrementally but meaningfully improve a process? Do we mean to take something that exists today and think about a new future iteration? Do we mean starting with a blank page and innovating from step one? If we start by def defining the creative path that we are trying to walk, then it is easier for collaborators to support one another in the process of creativity. Confidence is more likely to emerge when we know that our contributions correlate to how we will define a successful outcome.

I strongly believe that all people are creative. Perhaps the "resistance" to creativity is a distance between points of view. These are the steps I take in this case: 1) I invest time in getting closer to the vision of these employees. What are the problems that they are creative in solving? 2) I encourage a customer-focused vision. So that these employees also exercise creative problem-solving 3) Implement a creativity ritual. This moment needs to be light, fun, and have added secondary gains.

Create the culture! Be consistent in creating a space that communicates to the team that "no idea is a bad idea". Ideas are never bad, but they may not fit the mould the team maybe trying to create at that time. Provide spaces that allow people to present ideas that aid in valuing and developing diversity and in turn aid in confidence building, facing fears and ultimately providing space that oozes creativity.

Not everyone is comfortable with creative thinking. And that’s actually a good thing. We need people who are good at creative, analytical, and all kinds of thinking. With any group, there is normally diversity. So one of my favorite tools is Disney Strategy. Divide time and people in 3 different groups: ? Start with the creative people. Wild thinking, no limits, no bad ideas. ? Then move to the analytical people. Feasibility, pros and cons, scenarios, consequences. ? End with the pragmatic people. How will we get it done, timelines, resources and goals. In 6 hours you can have a good strategy to share with the stakeholders and decision makers. And by 5 p.m. have an approved plan to move forward the next day. Oh yes, you can!

Ask lots of questions to foster neurological networks... Have lots and lots of conversations... Dialogue, storytelling, sharing, answering beautiful questions all help us to relax, to connect, to create new neuronal pathways, and to build trust and these are crucial to creating psychological safety, encouraging curiosity and fresh thinking. I also think some fun thinking games can help to take pressure off and explore thinking differently.