Great leaders understand that the best ideas are other people’s ideas. And, while the tendency may be to try and hold on to the credit and the control, they recognize that giving those things away will do more for the success of their organization than holding on tight.
I first started to really understand this concept about ten years ago. I was leading a small discipleship group in my home for four or five college students. Our first few meetings didn’t go very well. I was concerned that they weren’t engaging with the material that I had spent so long preparing. I felt like I was the only one talking. For the most part, I was.
Then, one week as we were fixing our snacks and preparing to get started, one of them began to talk about something she had been learning that week. It was something she had “never thought about before” which came to her after “lots of time studying on her own.” The only thing was, it was exactly what we had talked about in the previous week’s lesson.
At first, I desperately wanted to draw attention to the fact that what she had been learning on her own was exactly what I had been teaching! But I didn’t. And what ensued was a semester-long study with several students who ended up learning far more from each other than I could have taught them.
So here are some principles that I learned from leading that small group:
- Don’t tell them anything that they can tell you. This was the key think I learned from that small group. They really didn’t care what I had to say, but they were consistently inspired by one another. My job, as a leader and facilitator, was to plant seeds of thought in their minds and then draw out from their experience and knowledge base what I wanted them to learn.
- Ideas inspire ownership. People are far less excited about implementing my great idea than they are about implementing their own. They will stay later, work harder and take more risks to see something through that they thought of. You can use prompting questions to lead people down a path where they will stumble over great ideas. And, occasionally, they will just come up with one on their own. When they do, let them own it. Don’t try to abscond with them or improve upon them.
- Hearing “Great idea!” is highly motivating. In fact, it’s far more motivating than a pat on the back for a job well done implementing someone else’s idea. That’s because, in most organizational cultures, the idea person gets the most credit. Right or wrong, it is reason enough to go out of your way to help others come up with ideas, and honor them verbally and publicly for the great ones—even the ones you had already thought of.
How are you helping your kids, coworkers and students come up with great ideas?