The Vulnerability of Sharing Ideas: How to increase innovation through more ideas

This is part 1 of a 2 part series on the Vulnerability of Sharing Ideas. In Part 2 I share how as leaders we can help to encourage the vulnerability and increase sharing of ideas that leads to innovation.

“Vulnerability is about showing up and being seen. It’s tough to do that when we’re terrified about what people might see or think.” — Brené Brown

As the slogan for Ted Talks says, "Ideas worth Sharing", I truly believe that all ideas are worth sharing. Even the ideas we may think are "bad" are worth sharing, because even a "bad" idea may lead to a fantastic innovation.

I just took 2 days to attend the Global Leadserhip Summit 2018. At the conference, Carla Harris, Vice Chairman and Managing Director at Morgan Stanley, talked about how diversity can help breed innovation. I paraphrase her thoughts this way - Innovation comes from many ideas, ideas come from many perspectives, and perspectives comes from many experiences.

When was the last time your company's great innovation only required 1 thought, 1 suggestion, 1 idea? Most often it requires a variety of ideas or modifications to the initial idea by a group of people. So how can we increase innovation and ideas? Well, let us start by understanding why it may be difficult for some through the lens of vulnerability.

Why is sharing ideas vulnerable?

For some, this concept of the vulnerability of sharing ideas seems as strange as a martian race. For some, you just expect your team to share ideas as they have them. You feel that this is just their job, to contribute to projects with what they think of. You may even be frustrated that they don't seem to share when you ask for opinions on some kind of group call.

Why can I say all of that? Because I struggle with all of the above. To be honest, I didn't think I did until I finished writing those words and remembered just last Wednesday how I had this conversation with a colleague. We were discussing why more team members did not speak up for a call. I, personally, went right into being furious and not curious. I was frustrated they did not give opinions when asked. So I am not immune to forgetting or neglecting that sharing ideas is a vulnerable task. (I also could not share this post publicly at first because I felt, well, too vulnerable).

It is out of my experiences that I can now reflect on this perspective - Sharing any idea is vulnerable. Vulnerability is defined as "open to attack or damage". When we share ideas, we long for someone to acknowledge the idea and at least see it's merits. Sharing an idea is an open ended invitation for response. We have no control over what happens next. The act of sharing an idea is letting down the draw bridge to our fortress and opening ourselves up for attack or damage.

Our ideas are our greatest and most simplest form of creativity. Our ideas are also an extension of ourselves.

When we share an idea or even think about doing so, we immediately ask ourselves questions:

If you are an author - will anyone buy my book? What will my reviews look like?

If you write blog posts - will anyone read my post? Will anyone "like" my post?

If we share an idea at work or even at home - will my idea be received or dismissed? Will people rally behind my idea or think it is stupid? Will I face retribution for challenging someone else (especially a superior)?

I purposefully use "stupid" because we do think this. If the story we tell ourselves is that people think our idea is stupid then we make the only "logical" connection, we must be stupid for thinking of it and sharing it, at least that is what we think.

All too often we feel our ideas are rejected without consideration. This can almost be worse than someone considering the idea. Because our ideas are an extension of us, they are our creation of our own mind, when they are rejected without consideration we tend to feel rejected without consideration. We start to think things like "I am not valued", "I am not worthy", "I don't belong". These are big things. This is the difference between shame and guilt. Guilt says "I failed". Shame says "I am a failure".

So if all of these emotions can come up from simply sharing an idea, then we might start to see why so many people struggle to voice their opinions or concerns. Add in the idea that often times this can mean challenging someone above you in an organization or someone you respect, and the weight continues to grow.

How do we share ideas while embracing the vulnerably?

Listen, not just hear.

Often we just hear. We are not giving someone our full attention when engaged in a dialogue. When we present our ideas, what tends to happen is we hear a lot of voices in our head and self-doubt creeps in. We become too busy preparing the response to what we are afraid we will hear, we are not actually listening to the person providing feedback.

More often than not, the story we tell ourselves about the feedback we expect is worse than it actually is. If we strive to push away the self-doubt and truly just listen and take in feedback, it can make our idea better and stronger.

Again, to be honest, I struggled with this topic as I wrote this post. I had someone else take a look at this before I posted it. I saw he made 8 comments. I had to drive home and the entire time all I could think was "8 whole comments! He must have hated it! I bet he thinks it is dumb." My self-doubt and shame voices were creeping in. When I got home, I sat for a second and told myself that this person was just trying to help. I reset the shame voice and began reading. His comments were constructive and helped make this a better piece. This is a hard task, and in real time feedback we still need to take that pause sometimes, but it is worth it.

Assume the best intentions

When those inner voices are yelling, we have a tendency to quickly assume that any feedback is negative and unconstructive feedback. Along with listening and taking a pause, in those moments you need to assume the best intentions. Hopefully you are sharing your idea with someone who you respect and trust. Remember those feelings and that they will most likely not intentionally hurt you. Assume rather that they want to help. This mindset will change how you see their perspective and feedback.

Shame resiliance

Brené Brown wrote a great book called "Daring Greatly" and in it, she talks a lot about shame resiliance. I believe the above points are applications to do pratically, but they do not dig into the root of why sharing ideas is so vulnerable. Shame Resiliance helps us to deal with those voices in our head that is the root to our struggles.

Below are the 4 elements of what she calls Shame Resiliance and my thoughts on how it applies to sharing ideas.

1. Recognizing Shame and Understanding Its Triggers

According to Brené Brown, shame is a biological response. When you think about times you have felt ashamed, you may identify with this. You get tense, maybe your stomach is uneasy, you are sweating, or any other number of responses. These are biological responses to shame.

Shame also comes from our past. Things that trigger shame are therefore often events that remind us of some deep experience in our past.

Being able to learn to understand your biological responses to shame and then recongize what triggers them, allows you to eventually respond differently in the moment. At first, this is very difficult. You may instead strive to reflect later when you have a strong emotional response and learn to recognize them retrospectively. Eventually, that retrospective evaluation will turn in to real time evaluation which can turn into real time behavior adjustments.

2. Practicing Critical Awareness

This is all about reality-checking the messages shame tells us about the expectations. Read more about those messages and this practice in Daring Greatly

3. Reaching Out

The next two go together and it is a very vulnerable step. See, to beat shame, Brené Brown talks about how empathy is the way to crush it. But to receive empathy, we must share our feelings and our story.

4. Speaking Shame

Going right along with reaching out is talking about the shame when you do. When we have an idea and we want to share it and find ourselves struggling or battling our shame, we need to talk to someone about how we are feeling and try to process through what the trigger is (going back to #1). As Brené Brown puts it: "Are you talking about how you feel and asking for what you need when feel shame?"

So with listening, assuming good intentions, and shame resilance we can practically apply and fight the issues that cause us to not want to share ideas.

What do you think of this idea?

Did I miss the mark? Do you feel vulnerable sharing ideas? What have your experiences been in this arena?

Share your thoughts below in the comments or private message me! I would love to hear from you!