Removing Barriers to Innovation at Work

Creating a Culture of Innovation and Creativity

I am choosing option 1, imagining I am creating a new and innovative company in the travel industry. It would be a destination hotel and the products and services it would offer would be: entertainment, dining, and spa services along with transportation to and from tourist attractions using an in-house app. This new company would require a lot of team work and collaboration in order to make sure guests are treated like kings and queens and that everyone has a fantastic experience. Most of all it would require an innovative leader willing and able to think outside the box and lead others in creative new endeavors.

Ideal Qualities of a Leader for Inspiring a Culture of Creativity

The ideal qualities of a leader who inspires a culture of creativity and innovation include being a trusting and trustworthy person, possessing social and emotional intelligence, and being supportive of people taking risks. If risk taking is not permitted, employees will be reluctant to test out new ideas. That is why it is important that a leader be able to empower followers by showing trust in them and accepting that those followers might fail (Wang et al., 2021). But so long as everyone learns from the failure, it should be viewed as a success. For a leader to inspire a culture of creativity and innovation, he must be positive and promote positive in the workplace, never threatening punitive action against someone whose idea did not work out. Innovation comes by trial and error, so it is up to the leader to be sensitive of what others are going through, to support them as they work out kinks in their designs, and to trust them as much as he wants them to trust him.

Steps to Contribute to a Culture of Creativity

The steps a leader may take to be a contributor to a culture of creativity and innovation include creating a sense of urgency to take risks and try out new ideas, establishing a vision for change, communicating with personnel, and removing obstacles to innovation (Hornstein, 2015). Rather than implemented a rigid system in which results are expected, the leader should be flexible. Another positive step is to turn a group of workers into a team, wherein everyone knows what everyone else is doing and can be supportive and helpful in different ways. People should feel that they are assisting one another than competing with one another. Fear of punishment should be removed from the workplace, and instead the leader should emphasize that mistakes are okay so long as something is learned from them.

Two Important Leadership Qualities

Two important leadership qualities of an individual aspiring to be a leader are transparency and ethics. Transparency is important because a leader has to develop trust among followers, and he cannot do this if employees sense that he is hiding something, being manipulative or acting in a duplicitous manner. Employees will question his motives and his messaging. Transparency helps everyone to be on the same page, to unite behind a single vision, and to work together toward one goal.

Ethics are important because they establish a set of principles to which the leader and his followers will adhere. By embodying ethical principles, the leader shows that he is committed to doing what is right and that he will never act in a way so as to undermine his own integrity, the integrity of the company, or the integrity of others. This is an especially important quality in a leader because without it, one can deviate into negligence, corruption, and collapse. Enron’s leaders, for instance, lacked ethics, and their lack of principles led directly to the company’s downfall.

Together, transparency and ethics help to make a leader authentic. Authentic leadership is essential for building trust in a workplace, developing positive relationships, and facilitating team work. Because authentic leaders are grounded in virtue, they can lead by example and keep others grounded in virtue as well (Gigol, 2020). Their example as a leader helps followers to do what is right in turn. This creates an environment in which open and honest sharing of information is welcome, appreciated, and never viewed negatively.

Barriers to Fostering a Culture of Creativity

One of the biggest barriers to fostering a culture of creativity from a leadership and employee perspective is the use of punitive measures to address failures. Creativity and innovative necessitate risk-taking. It is not always known if a new idea is going to work or fail. Employees might be told by leadership to try new approaches, but if they new ideas do not work and the employees are punished for them or for making mistakes, fewer people are going to be willing to try out new ideas in the future. Thus, it is important for leaders to be accepting of mistakes and of failure, because this is the only way to learn in a creative environment. If leaders are too judgmental or quick to punish employees who do not succeed, it sets the wrong tone and diminishes the likelihood of anyone wanting to take the risk of trying out something innovative.

Another barrier to fostering a culture of creativity and innovation is a lack of communication. Communication is essential for refining and honing skills and new ideas. One member of a group might have a great idea but might also lack the skills to bring it off. Another person might have great skills but few ideas. Communication can help to bridge these gaps. A leader, therefore, must help followers to communicate without fear. This is especially the case in organizations where there are multiple departments; in such situations, silos can develop where each group has a unique culture, which prevents those in one group from communicating effectively with people in other groups. It is thus important to remove silos and bring everyone together into one culture, and communication is key to making this happen.