30 Daily Tips How to Lead with Empathy: Creating a Supportive and Engaged Workforce - Day 17

Encourage innovation and creative thinking.

Encouraging innovation and creative thinking is essential for fostering a dynamic and forward-thinking team. By creating an environment that values and promotes innovation, leaders inspire team members to explore new ideas, challenge the status quo, and think outside the box. Encouraging innovation allows individuals to tap into their creative potential, enabling them to develop unique solutions, improve processes, and drive positive change. It cultivates a culture of continuous improvement and adaptability, encouraging experimentation and calculated risk-taking. When team members feel empowered to contribute their innovative ideas, it sparks collaboration, engagement, and a sense of ownership in the team's goals. By fostering innovation and creative thinking, leaders can unlock the full potential of their team, leading to breakthroughs, increased competitiveness, and the ability to navigate complex challenges with agility and originality.

A company that encourages innovation and creative thinking among its employees creates an innovation environment crucial for staying ahead in the competitive market. Consistently promote and motivate your team members to think outside the box and develop fresh ideas.

Reiterating your company's commitment to innovation and its value in driving success creates a safe environment for everyone to feel empowered to share their unique ideas, regardless of their position or experience.

It is crucial to have your team members open up and share their thoughts and ideas; you, as the manager, must create a safe place and time to enable them to open up. You shoot yourself in the foot if you don’t make that safe place for brainstorming and collaboration. Don’t expect your team players to initiate that conversation.

To set the stage for creative thinking, Introduce a warm-up activity, and present the team with a hypothetical scenario where they must market a product that defies the laws of gravity. The goal is to encourage imaginative thinking and push boundaries.

When no one starts, you as the leader must start yourself and invite others by asking a question like “What do you think?” Or, when you are brave enough, ask this question when you get stuck: “I am not sure anymore; I am stuck. Can anyone help me figure this out?”

It creates a safe environment for your team members to engage in the activity. Keep it loose, go with the flow of conversation only when it goes off-topic, then step in and guide it back to the topic's core.

Actively listens to each suggestion, acknowledging the creativity and effort put into every idea. Encourages everyone to build upon one another's recommendations, fostering a collaborative atmosphere where everyone feels valued and inspired to contribute. The result is always more significant than the beginning.

After the warm-up activity, transitions the discussion to the actual campaign/project that needs to be worked on. Encourages your team to apply the same level of creative thinking they demonstrated during the "Warm-up Activity" and emphasize the importance of challenging the status quo and finding unconventional approaches to make the campaign memorable and impactful.

Throughout every brainstorming session, choose two people to take notes ( keep track of who takes notes and who is part of the brainstorming exercise. Everyone needs to be a note-taker), ask probing questions, and provide feedback to guide the team's thinking. Encourage them to explore uncharted territory, take calculated risks, and learn from potential failures.

Over time, this creates a library of ideas, necessary resources, support, and autonomy to turn these ideas into actionable plans.

This is a great morale booster. It will ignite a sense of pride and accomplishment among your team members. Their creativity and innovative thinking can revolutionize and improve their professional and personal development.