They drive their staff to bring ideas, no matter how wacky they are to the table. The application of better solutions that meet new requirements, inarticulate needs, or existing market needs come from some of the craziest creative brain storming sessions. In the end, this creates more effective products, processes, services, technologies, or ideas for increasing business.
Drive your people to create new ideas by talking about techniques like “Visualization”. For example tell a story about someone who has been recognized in doing what that subject matter is you want to achieve your group to improve upon.
Let’s take creativity. Give a background synopsis of a historic or famous person and their contributions, how they did what they did and then open the conversation up to the floor and see what happens with your team!
For example early in my career when managing teams I would find something that the team struggled with during the week. That weekend I would research about someone famous who dealt with struggles similar to what my team had gone through and prepare a research write up for the following Monday morning meeting (before 9a.m., like 8:15a.m). I’d read about this person’s achievements, talk about the things this person had to overcome and in doing so achieved greatness. I’d open the floor and ask everyone to share on something they took away from my research and that would set off all kinds of light bulbs and conversation within my team. That’s how we started the week and consequently had tremendous success.
Let’s say you want to get more creativity and ideas from your team:
Start your meeting with saying something like :Hey team, I know we are struggling with getting creativity and ideas about our goals, so I wanted to tell you about a historic figure I was reading about this past weekend”:
Nikola Tesla was a great inventor, engineer and futurist. (Ever heard of Tesla cars?!) He is best known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply system. He had patented the AC induction motor and transformer that were licensed by George Westinghouse, who also hired Tesla for a short time as a consultant. His work in the formative years of electric power development was also involved in the corporate struggle between making alternating current or direct current the power transmission standard, referred to as the War of Currents. Tesla went on to pursue his ideas of wireless lighting and electricity distribution in his high-voltage, high-frequency power experiments in New York and Colorado Springs and made early (1893) pronouncements on the possibility of wireless communication with his devices. In his lab he also conducted a range of experiments with mechanical oscillators/generators, electrical discharge tubes, and early X-ray imaging. He even built a wireless controlled boat, one of the first ever exhibited!
Tesla was renowned for his achievements and showmanship, eventually earning him a reputation in popular culture as an archetypal “mad scientist.”[8] His patents earned him a considerable amount of money, much of which was used to finance his own projects with varying degrees of success. He lived most of his life in a series of New York hotels, through his retirement.
Hopefully you’ve inspired some of the people on your team. Then go into some creative techniques you’ve researched, starting with one that the person you just talked about used:
Nikola Tesla could do eyes-open visualization so well that he could test his designs for machines before actually building prototypes. He would visualize the machine in front of him and set it running and observe what happened! We already do such eyes-open visualization. It’s called daydreaming. If you think about it, when you are daydreaming, you are lost in the visual images you are seeing in your mind’s eye and you don’t question their realness in the moment. The art of visualization is to develop the same kind of naturalness to your visualization as you have when you are daydreaming. Don’t sweat it. Just let it happen. Don’t force it. One technique is called Energy templating – To experience this you could try taking about 10 long, deep breaths, imagining energy growing in your body. Then rub your hands together really briskly until the palms feel hot. Then hold your hands about 6-8 inches apart, palms facing, and just move them really slowly back and forth towards each other. You should feel a sort of magnetic pulling and repulsion. If you can get that feeling, hold your hands as though they were holding a small soccer ball. Breathe and imagine energy building in your hands. Look at that energy ball in your hands and slowly circle your hands around it, moving them side to side. Feel the energy ball and imagine it there in your hands. How does this help you in business? If you can see and visualize the things you are working on, imagine how much more vivid your presentations will be about your concepts and how much more enthusiastic you will be when describing and pitching them to your boss and clients!
Then talk about some of the other things you can do as a group
This will foster an open dialogue between you and your group members and everyone can feel free to join in and talk about different things they’ve heard or would like to learn more about.
End with asking each team member to bring a creative technique they learned and found interesting for the next meeting, and to present why they think it is relevant to the group and how they think it will help them become more successful. Discuss and implement!
Now you are off to the races with a group that is focused and interested to try new and creative techniques for driving new ideas into your group’s business.
Vinay Singh is a subject matter expert in the HR/talent acquisition business transformation field with expertise in both professional services and corporate environments. He has helped hundreds of companies deploy all manners of talent and hiring strategies and represented thousands of job seekers over the past two decades — with a specialty in the tech field.
A consummate student of learning about the disruption around the “people & technology business,” he has studied at The Ohio State University, New Jersey Institute of Technology, and most recently New York University.
His passion is deeply rooted in research and analysis; he writes about people engagement and looks to find the solutions to the problems within the talent acquisition technology and processes today.
Author – Vinay Singh
The Intrinsicana human performance system provides a dynamic and practical solution designed to evolve with you, seamlessly adapting to your unique organizational challenges.
