Braver Leadership: Mental Fitness for Age of AI

Ideation is part of but not the start of the creative process. Your job as leader is to observe, wonder and question why and what if.  Organisational surveys repeatedly show most workers believe their bosses tap into less than 50% of their available skills. In this episode we look at how you as a leader can demonstrate and help others to ask the right questions in the right way, to notice difference in the world around and bring instant creativity to your organisation

Many organisations strive to be more innovative but they miss the point that innovation stems from creativity.  Without creativity in an organisation's culture set up and DNA, innovation will not only struggle to emerge but you'll miss the bigger benefits on offer.   Not everything that can benefit your organisation stems from bringing the world something it has never seen before.  The starting point is curiosity to notice the world around you - that's the seedcorn of creativity and from there innovation emerges.

If you're a parent you'll probably remember being advised to let your children grow in their way but be careful of comparing them with others. Yet it was so tempting to do look over the fence and then feel regretful for doing so.

If you're leading a company it's equally easy to peer over the fence and be beguiled by innovation theatre or to find comparisons with companies that are not like you and you'll never be like them.   Both send our creativity and ideas to an early grave, both stifle the air from creativity.

In this podcast episode we look at at how great ideas are all around us for the taking but we either miss them, ignore them or worse we stifle them and kill the spirit of those tentatively practicing their creative spark.   The good news is every leader can turn this around and your people can be an even more valuable source of creativity energy for your company.   You can catch the whole transcript on my linkedin page or at ianbrowne.coach

Creativity is sometimes tricky and the environment around us matters.  Sometimes we're in a white room of silence unable to even find the will to make a mark and sometimes things are so crazy it's hard to hear our selves think above the noise.

When we're trying to be creative often we feel like we're waiting for the thunderbolt to strike but in this episode I'm introducing you the incremental creativity through a process called scratching.  It's about adding progressive stimuli and components and as you gradually and slowly add each one so the range of possibilities and potential ahead of you increases.   A story of two men exploring a mountain has a narrow range of possibilities until, that is, they're joined bya bear.

It's said the Beatles Eight Days a Week song has its roots this technique, so have faith in the process of developing your creative chops.

You can find the full text over on my website www.theenergyleader.com and if you like what you hear and want to work with me to advance your leadership skills, you can reach out and we can work together

Many of us grow to believe that some are born creative and others are not.  As far back as the ancient Greeks came the notion that some people are selected for creativity and others exist solely to admire the great works.  In today's episode we're up for a bit of myth busting and look at the ideal conditions that as leaders you need to create and foster if you want to see creativity at work which ultimately will lead to the innovation you desire.

Creativity lies in every one of us, and the conditions can be learned, cultivated and fostered and you don't need to sit for days under an apple tree waiting for inspiration to arrive.

You can catch the full text over on my website www.theenergyleader.com and if you want to advance your personal journey of leadership you can click a simple button there to get in touch and work with me

Welcome to season 2 of Energy Leader where week on week I'll help you to build skills and tools within our leadership style to be more productive and have more energy to devote to your work and wider life.

It's season 2 and we're shifting gear into looking at Creative energy.  Creativity has been cited by many sources as the number 1 skill required of modern day leaders and yet 5 in 10 of us say we're not creative.  I happen to think that's not really true, we have learned to believe we are not creative and given the right conditions, the creative spark can be reawakened.

In episode 1 I'm exploring what do we mean by creativity and learn it's not all about boxes of crayons and art supplies but the key to solving some of our biggest business challenges.

You can find the podcast in written form over on the website www.theenergyleader.com and if you want to work specifically and faster on your leadership style, you can reach out to work with me there.

In this episode we follow on from exploring limiting beliefs to look at the power of assumptions and interpretations.   We live in a world with imperfect data, so when we're faced with a scenario and we don't know all the facts, enter onto the stage assumptions and interpretations to come to the rescue and fill in the blanks.  Sometimes we're right but often of course we take unconnected events from the past and use those as examples to fill in the blanks.  Sometimes this creates paralysis where we're unable to move forward and in teams it can fracture the relationship between team and leader where the leader interprets team behaviour incorrectly or the team make assumptions of the leader that aren't true.   These are powerful forces that constrain creativity and progress yet like limiting beliefs they can be checked and challenged.

In the last two episodes of season 1 of the energy leader podcast we'll look at some quick energy fixes for you the person and if you're a leader of people for your team as well.   Our brains are cognitive misers.  They are very good at learning patterns and then repeating behaviour when the same event occurs without asking your permission.  Most of the time this is helpful because it frees us to think of other things, but sometimes, the routines and scripts the brain learns from early experiences create an unhelpful reaction yet these beliefs become semi-permanently wired within us and can be somewhat unhelpful.   In this episode we explore limiting beliefs for ourselves and as leaders for our teams, how we can spot them and how challenging them can create new opportunities and more energy.

In a previous episode we looked at the concept of the 50 minute meeting.  Neuroscience shows that brains are not geared to concentrating for long periods of time and the 50 minute meeting is often enough for optimal focus.  Assuming you've mastered the 50 minute meeting, that gives you ten minutes every hour.  This episode explores choices for you in using your ten minutes between those that create the illusion of productivity and those that ultimately give our brains the boost they need to power us on and be at our most effective and productive selves in the next hour to come.

In experiment after experiment scientists have proven that being productive, creative, accurate and producing consistently good results comes from harnessing good energy.  Yet our workplaces and working lives are filled with energy sources that whilst giving us a quick jolt to keep us going, ultimately are not sustainable and create unwelcome side effects.  In this episode I look at the work of Tony Schwartz and the concept of good energy sources and bad energy sources, why we feel drawn towards bad energy sources and the impact that has on productivity.  For leaders there's a cautionary tale about over over reliance on unsustainable bad energy sources.

To view the model described in this podcast pop over to www.theenergyleader.com to see it illustrated.