Leadership plays a key role in the process of bringing innovation in organizations. In fact, this could make or break innovation initiatives. Here's why:
As we all know, Leaders are accountable to build teams and lead them to optimal performance. If you are an effective leader, you are able to empower the team to solve problems by bringing ideas together, even those that you haven’t done before. You are able to support and guide the team to make this ideas to life. This process, however, may result to differences and conflict among teams but good leaders are able to connect the dots amongst those differences to get the best outcomes from the team.
Now this kind of environment allows for continuous improvements, innovation and initiatives.
So how can a Leader do it? Here are our 5 tips for you:
1. Trust yourself and your team.
This is the ultimate foundation. Successful teams trust each other, because if they don’t, they wouldn’t be able to accomplish anything! As a leader, you must also trust yourself which may mean allowing yourself to be vulnerable. Remember, you don’t need to know everything. Just trust yourself and the people you work with and work together to achieve your goals.
2. Be curious and collaborative.
Once you have established trust among the team, this is where you can get comfortable with the unknown. Start working on initiatives that you haven’t done before. You can even start with a simple thing as long as members of the team are encouraged to collaborate.
3. Communicate effectively.
Communication is always the key. In any growth or innovation journey, there will be heaps of discussions and decision making. And you will be in meetings where people would have different perspectives and this is okay. What’s important is for people to share their thoughts or ideas and later make decisions based on what will drive the outcomes you want.
4. Have the courage as it gives birth to change.
The success of bringing new ideas to life is never guaranteed. But as we’ve seen with innovations we enjoy these days, like watching movies and show anytime, communicating with people in different parts of the world just by tapping an icon, and many more. You and your team must have the courage to take the risk, prepare, and take action to move it forward.
5. Agile is the new way of working.
You can never have a perfect product or process. That’s why agility is now needed more than ever. Identify what you and your team needs, brainstorm ideas, prototype, seek feedback, iterate, until your team gets a minimum viable product. This is not the generation where you can be obsessed with perfection because you might not finish anything. Our tip is to go out there and bring your team’s creative ideas to life.
While these may seem easy, this requires new skills for leaders. So if you are a leader or a business leader looking to supercharge your leaders so they can lead their teams towards innovation, growth, and performance, then our upcoming event is right for you!
Join us as we explore emerging leadership insights and how we can develop ourselves as leaders who drive growth and innovation.
Hope to see you there!