6 Keys to Forging the Innovation Connection to Your People

As an innovation leader, you need to create what I call the “innovation connection” with your employees and partners. Here are key ways to do that—and keep the innovation pipeline flowing!

1. Be responsible for making the connection to your stakeholders on an intellectual, emotional, and aspirational basis. Your employees are all individuals, and a cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all approach is no longer enough. To maximize innovation, maximize your personal involvement with your people.

2. Know enough to ask the right questions. If making the connection seems like a big load to carry, remember that you need to hire strong managers who can handle the details. You cannot possibly know everything—but you’d better know which questions to ask.

3. Be authentic. You’re not playing a part in a movie. As the innovation leader, you have the same authority whether you act like a king or a real human being. You can still hire and fire, and give direction. You’ll find that if you act like your authentic self, you’ll get a better response. Productivity and profits will follow.

4. With the LeaderLogic Model, learn about what it takes to be a innovation leader and follow that path. Are you committed to getting the very best from your people? Are you prepared to leverage disruption to your advantage? Do you trust the people around you? I hope the answer to each question is “yes”!

5. Take a good look in the mirror! We all have our shortcomings. In every one of us there’s a tiny bit of the gossip or the person who isn’t totally honest all the time. Don’t beat yourself up… but don’t blithely sail through life assuming you’re perfect. Remember that people are driven by their emotions, and if you want to lead, you need to reach people emotionally. You can’t do this if you’re also engaging in unprofessional behavior.

6. Recognize dysfunctional partners and help them to improve. You may have some of them serving above you—if so, you may want to make a job change. Do you have any serving with you? Can you work around them, or help them? And do you have any serving below you in managerial capacities? How can you remediate their behavior?

You may need to enroll one or more of your managers in sensitivity training. But if you’re like many leaders, you may blanche at the thought. To many, “sensitivity training” conjures a vision of unwilling employees being herded into auditoriums to be lectured by super-liberal activists wearing sandals and granny glasses. The goal is for everyone to become “politically correct” and tip-toe around certain groups of people as to not offend them.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Professional sensitivity training is not about being politically correct. It’s also not based on the belief that an individual employee has been singled out as being prejudiced, bigoted, or racist. Instead, it raises awareness of the employee’s own beliefs, feelings, and culture before raising awareness of other groups’ beliefs, feelings, and culture. This in turn fosters genuine understanding and improves communication.

Above all, focus not on damage control but on employee development. Be sure to be clear about what good behavior looks like, and model it in your own actions.