How to help your staff to think brilliantly By Alf Rehn

In today’s competitive environment, the last thing leaders can afford to do is to waste their staff’s capacity for innovation and creative thinking. In many organizations, the full scope of this is neither understood nor engaged with, leading to companies wasting much of their “cognitive surplus”.

For leaders, this is a call to think not only about how to manage a knowledge-intensive company but also about how to actively support people in doing their very best novel thinking. Whilst this might seem like the same thing, in reality there are critical differences.

Helping people in thinking brilliantly is less a case of management, and more a case of creating the kind of culture in which creative thought can flourish. You cannot command people to think better like you can command them to work longer, but you can do things to ensure that the environment in which their thinking occurs is beneficial to creativity. In order to do so, you need to consider that creativity is something that comes naturally to people, yet at the same time it can be disturbed or hindered by even seemingly small things.

To move your organization towards being a more hospitable environment for brilliant thinking, you need to work on at least two fronts – space and support. Space here refers to making sure that people have the time and the resources, as well as the mental space, to better be able to think freely. Support, on the other hand, has more to do with how ideas are treated once they emerge in an organization. Succinctly put, whether they are nurtured or killed. Both are highly important, yet I often come across both being overlooked by managers.

In the following, I’ve thus tried to isolate some ways in which leaders can start addressing idea space and idea support, all in order to make sure that the idea environment in their companies is such that their teams can flourish. These are of course not all that is needed, and your mileage may vary, but they are given here as a handy guide for at least building the basis of a culture of deep creativity.

Stop cheerleading.

One of the least helpful things a manager can do is to insist people start to “think outside of the box”. Not only are such clichés cringe-inducing, but they can also make people less keen to think creatively. When creativity is seen as a performance to engage in to fulfil vague criteria, teams often end up just going through the motions. When leaders become cheerleaders who push for creative thinking, this takes away agency from teams. Your people are capable of creating all on their own, so stop talking, and start listening.

Give time off to your staff

If you want great ideas, you have to accept that these take time. Creativity research has shown time and time again the importance of free time for novel thinking, yet many managers seem to think that one can be creative whilst having an already full calendar. In fact, things like a nap or a walk in nature might be just want people in your team need to think in novel ways! Find ways to take away busywork and stress-inducing tasks from your staff, and watch their creativity skyrocket.

Eliminate idea killers

I’ve never met a company that lacked ideas, ever. I have, however, met many companies that had toxic cultures, where ideas were routinely killed in ways both subtle and explicit. Idea killers come in many shapes and sizes. Sometimes it can be small gestures that signal a lack of caring, such as sighs and shrugs when someone tries to present an idea. At other times it might be all about exclusionary practices, where only some are invited to present their ideas. In all cases, leaders can do better by eliminating idea killer than running more ideation exercises.

Think like a farmer

Here’s the scary truth: Ideas are seldom brilliant at birth, no matter what you do. Leaders must stop looking for fully formed instances of genius, and instead see themselves more like nurturers of weak “idealings” that can grow into something magnificent. Just like a farmer tends to tiny shoots and helpless calves, the leader is needed most when ideas are at their weakest. Here, resources and friendly encouragement, even when one isn’t sure about the viability of the idea, are critically important. Remember, if you’re not prepared to show support at this stage, you’ll end up with no-one wanting to bring you any ideas at all.

Alf Rehn is a professor of innovation at the University of Southern Denmark and a leading keynote speaker. His new book Innovation for the Fatigued is out now, priced £14.99. Visit alfrehn.com to find out more.

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