Warming up isn’t just for athletes
Warming up isn’t just for athletes (Pic by Jeffrey F. Lin for Unsplash)
Do your team members trust each other?
More broadly, are you seeing down-in-the-dump faces? Do you feel as if some people are just going through the motions rather than being intentional about their work? Are you sensing polarized attitudes?
Trust is important in teams. Without it, folks won’t be able to respond effectively to risks and challenges by coming up with creative solutions.
Providing moments where people can share their humanity will help them do the work at hand with a common understanding, goal, and mutual support. In other words, you will build trust.
There are three ways to provide the environment for this.
First… calibrate
To improve your team’s ability to solve problems creatively and elegantly, re-calibrate: review your organization’s mission, vision, and values. Check that everyone understands them, and knows the part they play in achieving them.
Next… encourage curiosity
In Light Bulb Thinking™, Phase 2 is about ideating. This isn’t just about coming up with a plethora of ideas. It’s also about being curious. What are the underlying causes of the problem you’re trying to solve? How can being open to other people’s ideas and opinions help us find a superb solution?
But even before that… warm up
Warming up happens even before calibrating and ideating. Sports teams warm up their muscles, and practice drills and plays. It also contributes to being a stronger team.
Warming up is equally important for developing trust in work-based teams. It’s a chance to:
Practice being curious and ideating together
Discover new things about each other
Wake up the empathy muscle (also important for designing a positive customer experience)
Laugh together (which stimulates the feel-good, brain enzyme dopamine)
Give everyone a voice
Getting these elements of creative thinking firing up front greases the wheels for effective, team-based creative problem-solving.
Build a warm-up into the beginning of brainstorming meetings on a regular basis – it doesn’t take long. Eventually people may want warm-ups at the beginning of every meeting, brainstorming or not!
Tip!
Here’s a warm-up to get you started
Desert Island: Name one person that you would want on a desert island with you, and tell us why.
If you’d like to know more about how I help leaders and teams solve problems more creatively and use warm-ups to open the door to kickass innovation, schedule a free exploratory call.