Leaders often get it backwards. “We need to be more creative”, someone says so we brainstorm ways we can “get people to come up with ideas” to make things better. Let’s have a suggestions box. Conduct an anonymous survey. Make our meetings more fun. Of course in the right environment these can be useful strategies. But too often as leaders we fail to ask whether the culture of our team and the style of our personal leadership is helping or hindering those around us bringing their best concepts.

Culture is to ideas what soil is to seed. What kind of soil is your leadership? Remember, leaders are ultimately responsible for the culture of their team. Don’t just blame the plants for the poor harvest, check the soil. What if it’s not about getting people to “have more ideas”? What if it’s really about how you can “stop stopping” your team from being the innovators they already are?

So here are 7 Inhibitors of Innovation – bad soil for good ideas

Three leadership styles inhibit innovation-

1. Stealers. One of the fastest ways to stop people from contributing great concepts is to steal their ideas. Do you hijack things your team members initiated? Do you take more than your share of credit when ideas succeed? Are you secure enough as a leader to allow others to own their own achievements?
2. Shamers. Another leadership style that kills ideas before they bear fruit is the leader who makes people feel foolish for making a suggestion. Fearful of being embarrassed, most people will play it safe and keep their ideas to themselves. Passive shamers might allow people to run with an idea, but then shame them if it doesn’t succeed.
3. Stiflers. The stifler makes their team feel like the only good idea is the boss’s idea. They challenge every possibility with a problem. They suck all the creativity out of the atmosphere by making the bar so high that no-one would be so foolish as to suggest something new.

And four team cultures are toxic soil for creativity too-

1. Silos. As organisations grow it’s only natural that departments and specialisations appear. But when these groups become separated, insular, competitive and self-centred then a key advantage is lost. Many of the best innovations come from the cross-pollination of teams and the collaboration of diverse groups around common goals.
2. Superficiality. Does your culture allow the team to address the challenges that really matter, or is their forum limited to the trivial and window-dressing? Our best efforts tend to be reserved for the things that really matter. Are you seeking input on the superficial issues or the critical ones?
3. Stereotyping. Few people want to be labelled ‘creative’ if that title is used to box people or marginalise. Is creativity the job of a creative department or a certain type of person on your team? Remove the stereotype and you’ll find we’re all creative; it’s just expressed in different ways.
4. Swamps. The final culture that kills innovation is the swamp. In a swamp water goes in but nothing comes out. So is your team an idea swamp – all input, no output. People give ideas but nothing ever seems to happen with them. Remember that what you actually do as a result of feedback governs how likely people are to contribute again in the future.

So ask yourself honestly-
•    Do you need to “stop stopping” innovation and ideas?
•    How do your leadership style and the culture that’s developed around you need to change?
•    What are you going to do about it this week?

I write this edition from the Middle East where I’ve been training leaders in Qatar. Last week I was working with Catholic school principals to assist them in becoming coaches to their staff. Both of these diverse groups expressed the same challenge to acting on their priorities (one that I believe is common to leaders in most industries and cultures)… that there always seems to be more to do than time to get it done.

I don’t mind being busy up to a point if all that activity is in line with my priorities. The problem with our busyness though is that too often we use it as a smokescreen, a distraction from the real issue. The problem is not that we’re busy, it’s that we’re not focusing on what’s really important.

It’s very tempting to point to the aspects of my workload that I can’t control in order to let myself of the hook. People say things like, “Everything around here is urgent, it’s only a question of how urgent” or “My job involves lots of surprises and problems that I have to respond to straight away”. And that’s legitimate for many people. But it can also become an alibi for ineffectiveness – I blame those areas where I have little choice so I can draw attention away from what I do with the rest of my week. Are you ready to get honest with yourself?

Show me what you do with your discretionary time at work and I’ll show you what your real focus is. For all of our well-meaning explanations about how busyness is keeping us from being effective the truth is that nothing gives a clearer picture of your true priorities than what you do with those windows of time where you have a choice. How do you invest those opportunities? Is it something mindless or menial? Or do you pounce on those moments and invest them in what really matters?

For the next week why don’t you put yourself to the “Spare Time Test”?

• Where does your time go when it’s up to you?
• How much of your week is lost to the mindless and the menial?
• Has being busy become an alibi for being ineffective?
• What could you do to keep your priorities in sight when opportunity knocks?

Have a great week!

For those of you who communicate to audiences of any size, here are some common traps to avoid…

1. Be absorbed in yourself and how interesting you think you are
2. Keep talking long after you’ve communicated your point
3. Don’t have a point
4. Have 14 points (and 7 sub-points and 2 recaps)
5. Hope people will be equipped and motivated by your content even though you aren’t
6. Use clichés constantly
7. Ignore visual cues and verbal feedback that you’re missing the mark, because hey… you’ve got the microphone
8. Communicate only in the style that comes naturally to you
9. Say all the right words but in monotone, while slouching and avoiding eye contact
10. Decide you’ve got nothing to learn about communication