Help Your Team Become More Innovative!

First, ask yourself...
Do you feel that the environment at work prohibits your employees from being innovative?

As leaders, we definitely want our employees to be innovative and proactive. We want them to always be thinking about how they can do something better, or help to make some kind of improvement for the organization. The problem is that having a natural innovative and proactive mindset is not how the majority of our employees are wired. To compensate, we must do a great job of creating and promoting the type of environment that gives our employees as much opportunity as possible to choose the right mindset.

When it comes to leading change and innovation, there are two important terms to consider: Driving Forces and Restraining Forces. Driving Forces can be anything within the environment that helps individuals choose to be proactive and implement needed change, while Restraining Forces are just the opposite - they prevent employees from doing so. Some general examples of these forces are the attitudes of the leaders, the resources employees have at their disposal, the availability of training and learning opportunities, and the frequency that employees are put into positions to collaborate with each other and work as teams. These examples can go either way...when done right, they can act as a Driving Force for innovation, but when gone about in the wrong way, they can act as a Restraining Force.

As leaders, if we desire more innovation and proactive thinking from our employees, sometimes all it takes is us evaluating the current environment so that we may begin to eliminate the Restraining Forces, and build on the Driving Forces. By being honest with ourselves and evaluating these different elements, we are likely to find many opportunities to make small and subtle changes that can have a huge impact on the motivation and attitudes of the people on our team!

**This week's tip was taken from "Leading & Embracing Change" which is the February session of The Compass Program. Click Here to view the schedule of all 12 sessions for The Compass Program.