How To Obtain Ideas From Your Team

It will always take intentional, thoughtful leadership to birth a creative idea. John Maxwell says Leadership is influence: nothing more, nothing less. Here are a few ways is making your team into an idea generating machine 

• Keep an open door policy 

An open door policy means that every manager's door is open to every employee of the organization. The purpose of an open door policy is to encourage open communication, feedback, and discussion about any matter of importance to an employee. This helps to establish a trust based relationship where an employee feels their ideas will be heard and validated.

• Individual Motivation

It is imperative to motivate each team member individually because each person is different and has unique needs. What might motivate one team member might not necessarily appeal to another. Build a rapport and exclusive relationship with member.

• Go out of the office

When you need your team to come up with a new idea, take them out. It is always easy to get distracted and want to get back to your desk. Making it informal allows bending the conventional rules and helps to open the mind. Visit places that may be relevant to the problem you are solving. Consequently take them to a place irrelevant to the place our product would be used. 

• Create a space for self expression and collaboration

Creating a collaborative office spaces where art is incorporated into the designing of the workspace. For instance, in 2012 Facebook's opened two cafes, a burrito bar, a pizza window, a sit-down restaurant and several different kitchens. It even has its very own coffee shop at the office at Menlo Park. It also has an artist in residency program that gives an outlet for new artists to contribute pieces. This helps to cultivate an atmosphere of collaboration and comfort that extends well beyond the desk.

• Play 

In English another word for play is "recreation" which literally means to create again. The connection between natural creativity and play is important. John Cleese’s lecture on creativity sheds light on this aspect with humour: https://genius.com/John-cleese-lecture-on-creativity-annotated

• Toys

Lego Kits are a good tool for team activities and require participation of every team member.  A regular an ideation session would have the entire team seated in a room and the team is expected to listen.  Incorporating toys helps to build nonverbal communication within the team and is also useful when you have a multinational team, where language could be a barrier in communication.

• Role plays

Role playing is when a group of people act out roles for a particular scenario. For instance, you might train sales people by having two people act out a sale-scenario. One acts as the sales person. The other acts as the customer. This allows trainee sales people to practice their sales techniques.

• Brainstorming and Think maps

Brainstorming session are great avenues for idea generation. Concept maps are a good tool to show the correlation between different ideas.
  

• Respect for Personal Time

Most of the techniques require informal activities to be conducted while being away from the work space. Most management would prefer doing these activities outside of working, don’t give into this temptation. Everyone needs down time, when they are not solving problems and need to tend to personal and family needs. Requiring them to give up on that time creates negative feelings and would in turn hamper the creative process. Take genuine interest in your teams work- life balance.
 

• Implement the idea

Finally, it is not just about keeping an open door policy and having your employees share ideas but the best way to encourage more creative ideas is to actually implement the ones that have already been shared.