How to get your staff to think outside the box

While many entrepreneurs find themselves in the traps of ‘doing things themselves’, everyone knows that this is not the ideal option. In fact, it might just be what is holding the business back.

If you have ever done a course on entrepreneurship, you would know that working ‘on’ the business, not ‘in’ the business is what creates sustainable growth. When a manager is doing things themselves instead of nurturing the growth in their employees, they are in fact, losing an opportunity to share skills and develop their teams.

Thinking outside the box isn’t easy – even for the seasoned professionals with creative minds. The whole idea of ‘thought’ and ‘processing thought’ is different for every person. There are psychological profiling that helps business owners identify which individuals on their team are more likely to ‘think outside the box’ but that’s not the only way to get people ‘thinking’ on your team.

Try:

• Creative outlets: It’s proven that by putting people in creative spaces and exposing them to creativity, they are more likely to absorb the process of how an artist or environment got to where they are.
• Workshops: Expanding your teams ability to ‘think outside the box’, many leaders choose to conduct creativity workshops that allow for people to be challenged, express their ideas and bounce of other people’s creativity.
• Set up a process: When business leaders are nurturing their team to think creatively and expand their input into the organisation, a process is often a great framework to give your employees a way in which to start the process and come up with new ideas.
• Outside: Going for a walk or just being outside often causes a healthy distraction so that employees can come back inside with a new perspective.
• Embrace failure: Depending on what terminology you use in-house, failure or making mistakes can be seen as a no-no. But if you really want your team to think outside the box, you need to embrace failure, and celebrate getting it wrong! Instead, show your team that through failure, you become closer to achieving greater success.

In the current virtual world, it’s hard to get it right all the time, and entrepreneurs are experiencing more stress than ever before. Not only are they wearing more hats, they are also required to adapt to a new environment and understand the psychology behind every single team member in their companies.

It’s tough – but doable. Entrepreneurs are inherently resilient and the more processes and systems you put in place that enable brilliance amongst your team, the less work you need to do.

Photo by Diana Parkhouse on Unsplash