Truly innovative teams are a culmination of the inclusion, openness, diversity, and synergy of team members and their creative contributions.
There is a fundamental human truth that we are all creative. We each have a unique perspective, unique experience, and unique contribution to make life better in some meaningful way. There is also a fundamental human truth that everything is created in relationship.
As human beings, we are inspired to open up and bring the best of our ideas forward when we are supported in community. When supported this way we are energized to create what we all find meaningful, something so innovative it hasn’t been done before.
As a leader you want your team to be highly energized and innovative to make a really big and meaningful difference. A difference so profound, it accelerates learning and careers. It’s a difference that is absolutely critical to your organization: not only does it result in delivering the mission and economic impact, it enables the next cohort of leaders.
As a team leader you are the means to facilitate this difference with your team. The core challenge is this: how do you consciously enable the uniqueness of each of your team members to shine through and bring the best of their collective creativity forward?
You unleash the unity, energy, and camaraderie of your team, your way.
Unity in the shared potential together
Innovative teams are founded in a cause, an intention they have together to make a big difference in the lives of others. A cause that is meaningful to each and where they are collectively inspired, clearly seeing the personal benefit and the possibility within it that calls for their creative contribution. When a team is clear on why they are together, the result is the confidence and commitment to move forward in community.
Energy for the creative possibility
When the team’s purpose becomes unified, they are free to envision the creative possibility as an integrated concept that will advance the cause now. Each member of the team has a unique perspective, based on their expertise, experience, personal cause, and values. By welcoming and bringing together each member’s perspective, a more robust creative possibility emerges. A creative possibility each member feels part of and has tremendous energy for. The outcome of this effort is a much stronger integrated concept as future issues are acknowledged and averted.
When people connect to their inspiring ideas, it’s natural that their doubts and fears will emerge, typically around what they are seeing that doesn’t make sense, and whether their ideas will be welcome. The power of embracing these fears and doubts is that it points to something that is missing or not right.
The team’s energy is managed and cultivated by supporting team members in embracing their fear as a key source of their creativity. When they are supported to convert their fear into the seeds of ideas others can build on, breakthroughs are created that propel the work of the team forward. Through this approach, the team is able to transform the many challenges that are holding them and their work back into ‘creative challenges’ they can resolve together. As belief is built, people become energized and confident, and see the part they can play in progressing the creative possibility.
Camaraderie through the mutual respect
Camaraderie results from people experiencing the synergy of and respect for one another’s creative contributions that creates a sense of progress. As the team explores together, creates together, and resolves issues together, they truly value what they can count on each other for, and camaraderie grows.
There are certain values each person needs to identify within relationship, in order to feel respected and be open to the contributions of others. There are also values that help them connect to the possibilities that inspire them. Together their values inform their unique perspective on progressing the mutual cause. When these values are heard and honoured, a space of mutual respect is created where people feel free to bring their unique perspective and ideas to the group, their way.
Camaraderie is enabled through the principles and structures that support the teams’ actions and interactions to generate forward movement.
- Shared Principles. Based on the values each member needs to have honoured on the team, a common set of principles are created that support mutual respect and guide the team’s way of being and relating with one another. When these values are integrated and shared as principles, they foster the depth of relationship born out of respect for one another.
- Key Structure 1: The types of meetings the team will have. The different types of meetings support team members to proactively and consciously explore their creative contribution. One of our clients stipulated between ‘Get Stuff Done’ meetings that included specific objectives and detailed agendas, and ‘White Couch’ meetings that gave their team an open forum to explore the ideas they had and the challenges they were facing.
- Key Structure 2: The orchestrated path. When the diverse creative contributions of members are organized based on a time line, each person is able to prepare for and bring forth the fullness of their efforts. By creating the series of planned connections as a team, major milestones are advanced that progress the team toward realizing their creative possibility. For each connection, the team clarifies what it is about, who will be leading what, and creates the freedom for members to contribute their way. When all these connections are mapped, it becomes an orchestrated path that creates the basis for self-leadership.
Invigorating the team’s life force
The prerequisites for team innovation are unity, energy and camaraderie, while their efficacy is dependent on the strength of the team’s life force. This force is the underlying spirit that brings the team to life, giving it inspiration, encouragement, strength, and a continued sense of vibrancy.
Human beings have a fundamental desire to be appreciated and respected for their contribution toward creating a better future. They want to know others have their back. When supported this way in community, they are able to tap into their unlimited creativity.
The team’s life force flourishes through a tension of holding benevolence for one another, while actively encouraging individual potential. This force is invigorated through a state of mutual gratitude and appreciation for the unique contributions, a state that is propagated through team rituals and practices. The more ubiquitous the practices, the stronger the team’s life force. This could be as simple as the team leader sending out a regular communication of their gratitude for the specific contributions of each team member and how it supported their collective progress.
AS A TEAM LEADER HOW DO YOU UNLEASH UNITY, ENERGY, AND CAMARADERIE?
In my years of observation and experience, there are core conversations that a team leader delivers to advance the prerequisites of unity, energy, and camaraderie. As well, the team leader’s ability to seed supporting practices invigorates the life force and unleashes the creativity of their team.
The Core Conversations
Unity Conversation: Generating Unity in the Shared Potential
Unity is generated through the team leader resolving the fundamental question: ‘Why are we together?’.
As a team leader, when you can hold the potential of the impact you see for the team and have everyone else contribute to it, you create a unified cause that will guide the collective work and be the source of everyone’s creativity.
Energy Conversation: Galvanizing the creative possibiity to energize the team
The energy is sourced through the team leader resolving the fundamental questions: ‘What is the creative possibility?’; ‘What is the creative challenge(s) the team needs to resolve to breakthrough?’; and ‘What part is each member energized to take on?’.
As a team leader, when you can facilitate the integrated concept that embraces the core creative challenge(s) the team needs to take on, people are naturally inspired by the possibility and energized to take on and progress their part.
Camaraderie Conversation: Constructing ways of co-creating to generate camaraderie
Camaraderie is sourced from the team leader resolving the fundamental questions: ‘What are our principles that support our mutual respect?’; ‘What are the types of meetings that best encourage creative contribution?’; and ‘What is the path that orchestrates our contributions to progress our collective work?’.
As a team leader, when you hold principles based on the values that are critical for you to have in relationship, and invite in the principles of others, you create a culture of mutual respect. When you can hold the types of meetings that support your creativity, you invite others to do the same. When you support the team in mapping an orchestrated path, you create a plan the group manages.
Seed Practices
Seed Practices: Unleashing the Team’s Life Force
The team’s life force is propagated through the rituals and practices that encourage members’ to realize their individual contributions.
As a team leader, when you are aware of what you are truly grateful for, because you know the impact of it, you are able to express from your heart your gratitude and appreciation for the impact each member has. This expression establishes deep human connection that is positively pandemic. By role modelling gratitude for your team members and your deep appreciation for the care they take, you encourage them to do the same, fostering deep caring for one another.
WHAT IS A CORE CHALLENGE TO LEADING TRULY INNOVATIVE CO-CREATIVE TEAMS?
If you aren’t conscious of your authentic leadership, it is really challenging to connect to the possibility that is deeply meaningful to you. It also becomes difficult to possess the depth of relationship necessary for others to join you in unleashing their creativity to realize it.
Without this awareness, a team leader can too easily fall into their default patterns that inadvertently thwart and undermine their relationships, cause disconnections, and limit the potential they want to create. By being resourced with one’s authentic leadership, team leaders are empowered to proactively guide the unique way they foster their teams to make a really big and meaningful difference.
If you want to explore how my guiding can support you in unleashing truly innovative co-creative teams, connect with me.