Leaders are innovators
This week my friend Dr. Neal Anderson is taking over The Data Daily emails. He’s the Founder of CARTO Leadership, a leadership development and coaching firm. This week he’s writing about leadership.
Leaders are innovators. They have to be. The world changes so fast that if you can’t adapt, you won’t have anything left to lead. For entrepreneurs, this truth is innate. In order to develop innovative leadership, we should consider leading with an entrepreneurial framework.
One of my favorite leadership concepts is generative leadership, leadership that multiplies. Generative leadership includes the ability to set high aspirations in uncertain economies, to bring together various experiences and perspectives from diverse backgrounds, to adopt innovation quickly, to provide space and incentive for risk and new initiatives, and to reward experimentation without punishing failure.
It's developmental and growth-oriented.
So, do you want to be more innovative in your leadership mindset? Do you want to embrace a generative leadership mindset to allow your team, division, or organization to grow and adapt?
Here are 3 things you can do:
1. PROMOTE CREATIVITY
Modeling and encouraging organizational creativity is essential for a generative leader.
Leaders who seek to develop their creative leadership capacity and foster an organizational value of creativity should consider assessing their risk tolerance and work to increase it; incentivizing creativity among employees through a reward system, and working toward detaching performance from compensation.
2. BE CURIOUS
Increasing an organization’s curiosity is key to developing a creative and innovative company.
Numerous studies have found that giving employees greater autonomy to exercise self-leadership is one of the best ways to foster curiosity that pushes conventional boundaries. Consider this the resource of freedom and trust to self-direct, lead, and manage.
3. RETHINK COMPETENCY
Innovate leadership is the framework and strategy a leader or organization uses to drive free thinking, creativity, and entrepreneurial initiatives. The generative leader understands that competency must be understood in terms of trajectory rather than a benchmark. When competency becomes a trajectory, it becomes dynamic and something that can grow.
Neal Anderson, PhD
p.s. I invited Neal to contribute to The Data Daily because I think he is an exceptional leader and coach. His skill and expertise can offer value to this group. This is not a paid ad and there is no financial relationship between The Data Shop and Carto Leadership.
