Curiosity and innovation are key to an organization’s continued growth and success. Baking these values into the company culture can empower employees to bring new ideas to the table, creating the potential for breakthrough results.
While many leaders understand the importance of fostering these ideals, they may not be sure how to best encourage them in their teams. Here, the members of Forbes Coaches Council share 14 ways leaders can help foster a more curious and innovative culture.
Forbes Coaches Council members share ways for leaders to foster a culture of curiosity and innovation.
Photos courtesy of the individual members.1. Train Managers To Use A Coaching Leadership Style
One way to create a more curious and innovative culture is to train managers on adopting a coaching leadership style. I hear many leaders refer to performance correction as a “coachable moment.” But a coaching leadership style, at its core, is about curiosity and fostering creative solutions, not correcting poor performance. Developing this skill set will have a significant impact on innovation. - Cheryl Czach, Cheryl Czach Coaching and Consulting, LLC
2. Let Your Team Determine The ‘How’
Be explicit about curiosity and innovation as cultural goals. Ask for input from the team as to how they can approach increasing these ideas. When a leader demonstrates curiosity by asking others about fostering innovation, involvement is guaranteed. The one thing a leader can do is state the goal and then allow the team to determine the “how.” - Cindy Stack, CLS Squared
3. Provide A Safe Space For Ideas
Listen and let go! Brené Brown stated, “There is no innovation or creativity without failure.” As a company, you must provide a safe space for sharing ideas, then supply the resources and support required for employees to see it through to the end. Allow them to sink or sail. Either way, they will embrace future opportunities to share their ideas and remain excited to help reach future organizational goals. - Jateya Jones, Jateya Jones Consulting
4. Listen More Than You Talk
We were gifted with two ears and one mouth. To better create a more curious and innovative work environment where team members feel psychologically safe enough to speak up, use those tools in the ratio given to you. Listen more than you talk. Lead with questions and not answers. Allow others to always speak more than you. This encourages others to know they have a voice and that their ideas will be heard. - Alex Draper, DX Learning Solutions
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5. Bridge Silos Between Groups
High-trust cultures that promote self-determination at work enable innovation to flourish. With the freedom to problem-solve and the active support from organizations to bridge silos, employees can do so more easily. One way forward is to bring together groups who don’t work closely together to work on one another’s business problems in a way that is both productive and highly enjoyable. - Sheila Goldgrab, Goldgrab Leadership Coaching
6. Incentivize Innovation
Innovation is often faster and easier when a company changes how they do something, and more complex when they try to innovate in what they do. Companies need to add KPIs and bonuses for employees who review and change their strategies to foster constant innovation. Also, there should be “permission to fail,” given that innovation implies risk-taking and a culture of learning from failures. - Mariana Ferrari, Dooit
7. Embrace ‘Failing Fast’
Change how you handle failure. Innovation never happens when a culture punishes creative failures. The concept of “fail fast” is a helpful mental model for companies to embrace. Not everything can and should work in the innovation realm. Doing experiments is a much more appreciative way of nurturing curiosity and innovation. Try implementing appreciative inquiry as well. - Evan Roth, Roth Consultancy International, LLC.
8. Demonstrate New Technologies And Models
Demonstrate what is possible—for example, by using new technologies and models which actually deliver inspiration to be more curious and innovative. Don’t just say it—do it and show it. For example, AI can now align teams on what needs to be put in place to deliver the targeted ROI of a more curious and innovative culture. Once embedded, the firm moves up a level. - Richard Chiumento, The Rialto Consultancy
9. Offer Different Contribution Modalities
A number of different approaches should be implemented, given that employees have different preferences on how they contribute. This could include an anonymous form, innovation discussion in team meetings, innovative idea generation in employee goals or even a competition to see who could generate the best idea. - Luke Feldmeier, Online Leadership Training - Career and Leadership Accelerator for Engineers
10. Create A Psychologically Safe Environment
Creating a psychologically safe environment in the workplace is the key to a culture where people feel free to speak up, voice their ideas and ask questions, prompting an innovative culture that fosters curious minds. Leaders can create a psychologically safe environment by showing empathy, avoiding a blame culture and building an inclusive decision-making process. - Remi Adebonojo, RESILIGENT
11. Put Innovative Ideas Into Action
Creating a system for people to contribute ideas, having transparent metrics to evaluate those ideas and developing a mechanism to reward the good ones will go a long way in building an innovative culture. Finally, the innovative culture is sustained and strengthened when those ideas are tested and put into action, preferably with the person who contributed the idea being on the implementation team. - Sandeep Jain, Value-Unlocked Private Limited
12. Create Space For Courageous Conversations
The most important initiative any leader can do is to create a space for people to share ideas and have courageous conversations. The space should create a feeling of psychological safety so that people feel comfortable sharing and know how to discuss opposing or controversial points of view! Asking participants to set the intention to listen for what they find interesting helps people remain curious. - Sarah Needham, Unique-U Coaching
13. Host A ‘Question Hall’
Leaders can host what I call “question hall” versus the normal “town hall” meeting. Question hall meetings are where leadership comes with questions to ask their team that naturally uncover solutions. Innovation is about challenging the norm and asking ourselves, “What if we did it this way instead of how we do it now?” as well as having healthy conversations around different perspectives. - Kelly Conley Jefferson, The Spoiled Coach
14. Get Your Team Involved In Decision Making
Ask more questions of your team and get them involved in decision making by soliciting their feedback and ideas. Whatever you do, don’t think that, as a leader, you need to have all of the answers. - Shawn Casemore, Casemore and Co. Inc.
