Is Bravery at the Top of Your Leaders’ Qualities List?
Working with creative ideas in order to create and then produce a breakthrough result most leaders don’t realize you need to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Being used to leading your employees in the traditional, routine work they have been doing is easy knowing their specific processes to achieve the end-result. Shifting your organization from traditional to unconventional takes on more understanding of what needs to happen on the creative side.
“Those who do not take chances are on the path to “guaranteed failure”.
– Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg
By shifting into the non-traditional mode, you need to understand what it takes to work using creative ideas for innovative breakthroughs. Leaders need to feel more comfortable with taking risks. If you do nothing and your status quo stays the same, you are taking a bigger risk than being innovation. You are aware your organization needs to change or it will stay afloat for some time and then cease to exist. You know you need to take a risk to change with the times. In today’s innovation economy, this means everything you do as a leader changes your entire organization. There are several things you need to shift gears on besides the obvious business ways of getting things done. If any leader is to be successful, he/she must be willing to take some risks.
Shift Your Mindset
Generating a new idea or approaching a new angle to a product needs you to embrace a growth mindset. This helps you be more open to the things around you and to the ideas generated for solving what problems, challenges and difficulties you encounter.
Challenge yourself to think differently and not being afraid of failure to take a risk. The more you question and challenge yourself, the more you are able to see things from a different perspective.
“Doing things the way they’ve always been done is the ‘most risky thing you can probably do’”
– Bill Aulet
Inspired Leaders Leading Employee’s Risk
Risks are a necessary part of moving your business forward. Embrace the unknown for new projects to innovate. Risk-taking is critical in the business world. Without it, ideas would be would be impossible to create and produce. Leaders encouraging risk-taking in your employee’s shows support by the leader. Empower your employees to make their own decisions, generate ideas and solve problems, challenges and difficulties.
Going Beyond Your Comfort Zone
Stepping out of your comfort zone in order to be innovative needs you to take a risk to explore yourself more within your creative environment. Having courage and self-confidence allows you to step out of your comfort zone. Risk-taking builds employee confidence. Anyone who is too afraid to step outside their comfort zone is also too afraid to take the risks that are often needed as a leader. Successful leaders know that they must get out of their comfort zone to succeed.
Never Stop Experimenting
“I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.”
– Pablo Picasso
Experimentation for many leaders is where you must repeatedly reinvent your business on a consistent basis due to the way business climate changes. By doing this, it challenges you as a leader and your employees for learning new ways to innovate breakthrough results.
You need to effectively marry creative ideas with execution for innovation. Business leaders need to set experimentation processes in place. This helps employees create and produce breakthrough results.
Start Keeping a Journal or Notebook
By carrying a journal or notebook, notice everything around you. Write down your thoughts, ideas and opinions of what you see and think about. This will be a great reference point for now or at another time when you need it.
“Never let the odds keep you from doing what you know in your heart you were meant to do.”
– H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
Seize the opportunities to create and innovate with the risks you need to grow and make your business better than it has been. Taking risks helps you lead new capabilities, processes and it gives your employees the opportunity to use their creative thinking skills and talent. Going beyond from where you have been allows leaders the chance to explore your own creative leadership skills. Leaders need to accept the responsibility of taking on the risk to execute an idea. This needs to feel comfortable to you and help move your organization forward.
“Do one thing every day that scares you.” – Eleanor Roosevelt