Jeannine Sandstrom and Lee Smith
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. The Legacy Leader® becomes an active “opportunity seeker” and possibility thinker. This is an attitude of leadership, not just a leadership action.
Critical Success Skills: Core Competencies
The ten critical success skills that build legacy around Best Practice 2 involve certain behaviors that advance the mere concepts of collaboration and innovation to the place where the leader is responsible for actively and intentionally creating these opportunities. To create collaboration within an organization, the Legacy Leader ensures high levels of trust, develops processes for building and capturing the 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.
The BE-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, among many others we could list here. 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. We have listed attitudes, or qualities, that we consider the Top Five BE-attitudes for your consideration in this Legacy Practice. These are not listed in any order of importance. Brief descriptions follow.
A Legacy Leader, a Creator of Collaboration and Innovation, is:
- 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.
- Possibility-Minded
This person has developed an automatic reflex which allows them to see possibilities and opportunities, even when others may not.
He or she is open-minded and is able do mental feasibility exercises in almost any situation. This person is approachable, open to innovative thinking, and can thoroughly consider potential favorable possibilities in almost any situation.
- Charge-Neutral
This is a term used in training coaches to be unbiased, non-judgmental and non-positional with clients. A person who is charge-neutral has a neutral starting point for all ideas, people and things. This person does not pre-judge anything or anyone and is open to receive all information (uncensored) before making decisions or judgments.
- Mentally Agile
This characteristic is not necessarily a function of intelligence, but the ability to think quickly, remain flexible, shift gears as necessary and allow the ebb and flow of ideas to chart courses. This person has the ability to weigh ideas and actions quickly, yet is still able to discern wisely. He or she is also able to track details, and to see both the forest and the trees.