Best Practice 2 – Creator of Collaboration and Innovation™
This practice concerns the ability to be creative and foster trusting environments, to masterfully listen and facilitate, acknowledge the unknown and think beyond what is, gather perspectives and ask tough questions and discern the need for change and project the innovative impact. Collaboration and Innovation don’t happen by themselves. They must be encouraged, nurtured, with opportunities created by leaders. This is not about being creative. It is about being a creator, one who instinctively creates opportunities where collaboration and innovation can flourish. A creator actually causes something to come into being, in this case, collaboration and innovation, sometimes through inventive means.
Critical Success Strategies: Core Competencies
To create collaboration within an organization, the Legacy Leader ensures high levels of trust, develops processes for building and capturing collaboration, and encourages a team spirit. Creating innovation relies first on the collaborative process, then on a creative environment that challenges new thought, without boundaries.
- Create innovative and sound possibilities for the organization.
- Foster a learning, trusting environment for true collaboration and innovation.
- Masterfully listen for both what is said and not said.
- Be comfortable not knowing “the answers” and learn from individual perspectives.
- Draw out differing perspectives and believe disagreement is a learning opportunity.
- Ask timely, tough questions while keeping in mind the big picture.
- Set the tone for thinking beyond the present in order to innovate for the future.
- Project how ideas will play out in the organization and in the marketplace.
- Discern, and assist others to understand, when change needs to happen and when not.
- Masterfully facilitate conversations so everyone contributes best thinking toward task/goal.
Attitudes of a Creator of Collaboration and Innovation
There are many attitudes and core characteristics necessary for all good leaders. For this Legacy Practice, those might include trustworthy, affirming, sharing, creative, observant, and collaborative. To achieve greatness, however, a Legacy Leader takes core attitudes to a higher level-more focused, purposeful and conscious, until they are integrated into who this leader is, every day in every place.
- A Trust Builder
This person always seeks to build trust in relationships. It is an automatic inclination which is composed of and driven by both trustworthiness and a trusting nature. These people have a mindset of connectiveness and know that trust is built in order to connect firmly with others.
- An Intuitive Listener
Listening is a core quality for this person, but it is also accompanied with an intuitive and discerning ear. This person desires to hear others, and consciously listens both to what is said, and what is not said. This person can gather an amazing amount of information by listening well and often.
