Fostering Creativity in the Workplace: Tips from Leading With Intention (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: Hi everyone, I'm Monique Denock, executive coach and host of the new Voice America radio show called Leading With Intention. Before I start on my topic for this video today, I want to say a little bit about the radio show, why I created it and invite you to join. I created Leading With Intention because as an executive coach, my mission and even my tagline has always been building better leaders worldwide. And I realized that there is very little support out there for people leading in the workplace or those who want to lead. So I created the show as a way to expand my reach to more people in the workplace. There's only so much that I can do in one-to-one coaching sessions or small groups. So I invite you to join me live every Thursday morning at 9am Pacific, or you can download the podcast and listen later. My guests will build you up, build your confidence and build your effectiveness in the workplace. They will provide tools, tips and strategies for you to lead more effectively and ultimately to lead with greater intention. My topic for today is fostering creativity in the workplace. First let me tell you the difference between creativity and innovation. Creativity is really implementing fresh ideas, something brand new that's never been done before. Innovation is improving current ideas or processes. Now there's a need for both in the workplace and there's ways that leaders can really enhance that and foster that. First of all, as a leader, you want to hire a diverse team. You want people who will offer unique ideas and not all be the same and not offer all the same ideas. You want to foster collaboration, which means creating psychological safety. And I've done another video on that. But once there's safety in the workplace, there's collaboration. So people will be more apt to brainstorm, to not be afraid to offer ideas. You don't want to micromanage your people or the creative process. People need to have their ideas flow and they don't do well if someone is managing that process or micromanaging their day-to-day work, their thoughts and their ideas. You want to allow time and space and brainstorming. And that means allow meetings to happen where people just chat and pass ideas back and forth, whether it's over lunch or a team meeting or an off-site or a team retreat. You want to create the space for that. You want to allow introverts a chance to contribute. And many times introverts have amazing ideas. They're just a little bit shy to speak out. They want to put some systems and processes in place. And again, that psychological safety is really important so that introverts feel comfortable sharing. And sometimes that simply means allowing introverts to offer their ideas in writing through email after they've had a chance to really reflect and think through their thoughts. You want to offer support and give direction. So your team will look to you to create space, to allow permission, to be creative and to brainstorm and to use meetings creatively, sometimes maybe not even having a formal agenda of things that you want to get through. So you can set objectives. Maybe you can have a brainstorming meeting and set some objectives that maybe consist of by the time we leave this meeting, everyone could contribute three to five ideas. So that way you're not micromanaging the process and you're allowing space and you're supporting, but you are creating an informal structure, so to speak, so that people feel comfortable being in a setting and being in a forum where they can contribute ideas. If you put some of these things in place, even pick one of the things that I just said and try it for a couple of weeks with your team and see what happens. See if you have allowed the team to generate ideas, creativity, or innovation. And again, I will highly recommend that you check out the show, Leading with Intention, because we'll be talking about this type of topic along with many others from the guests that I have on the show, again, 9am on Thursdays Pacific time, or you can download the podcast and if you need anything, feel free to email me at Monique at mdconsultingglobal.com. Have a great day.