How To Be A Catalyst For Great Ideas

Leaders create ideas. The leader doesn’t come up with all the ideas, but the leader is a catalyst for great ideas.

Every leader should have an idea room or place where they just sit, think, and incubate ideas. Some ideas will quickly materialize while other ideas will require a slow cooking or crock-potting.

The first thing you need to understand is that incubating ideas is a team sport. This means a group of idea people will sit in on your pitch. Honestly, most of us generate very few good ideas. However, experienced and secure leaders know how great those ideas become when they are shared. This risk allows for a good idea to be compounded and to become a great idea.

It’s natural to feel panicky about what you imagine as a steady flow of ideas parading before hard-boiled idea “opinion-ators” who call the shots. And yes, if you let them, they will be. But while they need to learn about what you have to offer, you need to learn about them.

The trouble is, each idea person at the table sees it and expresses it differently. But it’s not as tough as you think to discover it. You just have to get them talking. You need to figure out their switch. I’m talking about the universal must-have that flips on the green light (watch for next blog).

Below are 7 tips on how to be a catalyst for great ideas. Take note of these. I have lived by these seven tips for many years and they definitely boost your ideas. But I must warn you. You must be secure and unselfish and be willing to hear someone say you had a bad idea. They will not damage your brand. Only you can do that.

1. Always be thinking about the business.
2. Always be asking questions about the business.
3. Focus your thinking on potential and problems.
4. Know who the idea people are on the team.
5. Whenever an idea comes to your mind, include them.
6. Ask and expect them to make your idea better.
7. When they do—give them the credit.
How do you know if the people you have called to the idea meeting are the right ones? Ask yourself this. When you walk out of a meeting do you walk out “charged up” or “drained”?

If you walk out of the meeting drained, then you need to quarantine the people who are “anchors” on the boat and not “the wind that fills your sails.” I’m serious. Those idea people who are “wind” to you will be a smaller group.

My next blog called “Switching on the Green Light” will offer three tips that will greatly improve your next idea meeting. Stay connected.