PGD - Innovation: Conditions to Sharpen your Edge

In today’s rapidly changing business climate, it is imperative that leaders create the conditions amongst team members for open dialogue on tough issues for innovation to occur. Teams often have a hard time discussing, coming to decisions, and following through when dealing with competing perspectives.  What is needed is a forum for team members to directly express their sentiments while working to maintain a respectful dialogue in the group.  This allows for robust intellectual disagreement to occur. Common obstacles to teams achieving this are individuals on the team having insufficient trust, unclear expectations, a fear of looking less than competent, and a lack of self-insight.  To surpass these roadblocks, team members need to understand the cognitive diversity within their team, learn to value that diversity and then begin to leverage those diverse perspectives which are critical to maximizing the team’s potential for innovation and effective problem solving.