Can you remember a leader who encouraged you to think differently?
What questions did they ask? How did they behave with you and with others?
Your responses to these questions will give you insights into how leaders make it feel safe for you to speak up or to experiment with a new idea. Having the right environment is key for creativity to flourish and the leader’s behaviour is key to creating this environment. In the right environment team members will be curious, ask lots of questions and seek out new information.
Barbara Wilson and I have put together some useful insights into the role of the leader as a coach and facilitator that may help you in your efforts to encourage creativity. If you are the leader of a team you have multiple roles such as facilitator and coach. Let’s look at these roles in turn.
Leader as facilitator
Facilitation is an important and often undervalued competence. As a facilitator you will typically use a combination of individual reflection and group processes to get the best ideas and to help eliminate conformity of thinking.
In most groups, some people will be louder than others and it can be hard to ensure everyone gets a turn to speak. As a facilitator, it’s important that you invite the quieter ones to speak or you may have to break the group into pairs so that everyone can be a part of the conversation.
You should identify when individual reflection is needed. Working alone will work well if it’s an early input around perceptions of a problem, after which sharing in pairs and the whole group will be important.
Working as a whole group can produce more ideas, as with brainstorming; however it may be difficult for everyone to be involved. It will depend upon the group and how they work together. As a general rule of thumb, any group with more than six people needs to be broken down into smaller groups.
When facilitating a group session, start with some warm-up exercises, and have a couple of short energisers available to use later on when energy levels flag.
Leader as a creativity coach
Coaching as a leader is a different way of leading a team, quite unlike the normal ‘tell’ or ‘sell’ or even ‘consult’ styles of leadership. Coaching empowers the team members to act in their own right without having to ask for direction.
However, before taking on this role, you need to be aware of some important points.
As a leader you need to ensure that you team are able to manage autonomously or at least know in which areas they can be more autonomous.
In coaching, it’s the person being coached who takes on the responsibility for working through the challenge, with the help of the coach. The coach does this by asking relevant questions that act as a guide for reflection by the coachee.
For example, instead of stating what needs to be done, a leader as a coach might ask, ‘Tell me about the situation?’ ‘Describe what you have done that has worked?’ ‘What hasn’t worked, what can you do differently?’
Coaching for being more creative may also need input from the leader. For example, in order to open up to new ideas, ask ‘What exercises or tools might you consider using,’ and then, ‘Have you considered using this one?’ ‘If so, how would you implement it?’
We encourage you, as a leader, to challenge assumptions both in yourself and in team members. Again, consider how to do this in a coaching frame of mind. So, to challenge an assumption, ask permission, ‘Is it OK if I offer you a suggestion here?’ ‘Have you considered the impact of… ?’
Finally, below is a list of behaviours that support creativity and are typically associated with great leaders. Many of these will be familiar to you from your experience and from leadership texts. Barbara and I would love your feedback on other behaviours that we should add to this list.
• Listening actively and carefully to what people are saying – and perhaps not saying
• Reflecting back to a person what you have heard
• Displaying curiosity
• Asking questions
• Inviting team members to participate – particularly when they have been quiet
• Responding positively to new ideas and approaches
• Experimenting
• Showing an openness to taking risks with new ideas
• Spending time analysing a problem in detail
• Capturing and presenting information in a range of ways
• Reflecting on and exploring lessons learned
• Capturing these in a format which can be accessed in the future
• Recognising mistakes as learning points
• Encouraging play
• Providing recognition for effort as well as achievement.
We hope you found this article of value. If you’d like to learn more about how you can help you team think differently then buy our book, Creativity Cycling: Help your team solve complex problems with creative tools.