3 Ways to Boost Your Innovation

I had the most fun time doing a webshow on Connectional Intelligence with the wondrous Shama.tv! In this episode, we talk about what it means to have Connectional Intelligence in business, key ways to boost innovation and what Bollywood dancing has to do with it all. Be sure to watch until the end for a little surprise–some dancing! yes, I'm serious.

Here are 3 ways you can increase your Connectional Intelligence –

1) Spend 15 minutes every day connecting to new sources of perspective outside your normal perspective  (different news source, forum, conference etc).

2) Schedule 2 conversations with millennials or people you think differently from you on a regular basis.

3) Take the Connectional Intelligence Test at ericadhawan.com/cxq

 

5 Innovation Lessons I Learned on the Dance Floor

The greatest leadership lessons I’ve learned have occurred on the dance floor. Dancing is an experiential form of being, learning, and doing. Moving your muscles helps you understand things in totally new ways.

I’ve danced my whole life. I’m a Bollywood dancer, but I'm also a globally recognized leadership expert, and I use movement in all my work. Through movement, I believe we can inspire creativity, deep listening, and cross-generational learning.

Why movement? Our minds and bodies are intrinsically linked; movement acts as a messenger between the two. When we can understand our own and others’ movements, our capacity to collaborate and harness our intuition skyrockets. And growing research in many disciplines–from neuroscience to sports medicine, from psychology to anthropology–supports these ideas.

Here’s what I’ve learned from all those years of hip shaking and shimmying:

1. Partnership

Dance teaches us about the push and pull of partnership, intellectually, viscerally, and kinetically. Dance partners learn how to work together, move together, listen to each other, and to move past missteps. Dance teaches trust. As innovators, we do the same. Our collaboration in teams and groups allows us to open up new ways of working with others, sometimes taking the lead and sometimes following. Regardless of who’s leading, we’re always in partnership with a larger movement or organization.

2. Adaptability

Harvard leadership expert Ron Heifetz uses the metaphor of dance throughout his renowned book on The Practice of Adaptive Leadership. When we adapt as innovators or move as dancers, we test new variations of working. This adaptability brings together the physical, emotional, and intellectual that all feeds our work as innovators. Learning new steps and combination in a dance is a challenge in a controlled setting and freedom within safety. Just learning a new dance move helps develop neuro-pathways and makes us more adept at solving problems in any area of our life. By giving yourself challenges in movement, you rewire your brain and have greater capability in your work.

3. Variation

In dance and in innovation, we often focus on a "final event." Learning variation allows innovators to practice the process of discovery in their work lives. Twyla Tharp, choreographer and author of The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It For Life, asked her dancers to reverse their moves as if they were a mirror of themselves. This small variation created a whole new dance form called inverse variation. Similarly, an innovative leader can quickly test new variations of working and then decide which works best rather than talking on and on ad nauseum.

4. Inquiry

The questions we ask ourselves as dancers are questions we should ask ourselves as innovators. Think of your work as a piece of art you create. What is the rehearsal process? What does hardship look like? How is it structured? What’s holding the piece together? What judgments are you coming up with? How do you sustain yourself?

5. Audience

Building an audience as an innovator or dancer is about who you can connect with. Most people attend a performance because they’ve been encouraged to or they see that it relates to their interests. Ask yourself: What conditions do I want to build for success? Much of it is about sharing your ideas early on with others and embracing them, like you would in a first dance performance. Additionally, as in dance, the most important part of business innovation is the process of surfacing the knowledge in the room to use it in a different way. Innovators are given permission to see, comment, or fix. However, so much of innovating is observing and noticing and getting more voices in the room.

This post first appeared at Fast Company.

5 Greatest Missed Opportunities of Leadership

Aktav | Dreamstime Stock Photos | Stock Free Images

Aktav | Dreamstime Stock Photos | Stock Free Images

How do you create the mindset and space to not miss out on the most important opportunities of your life? Here are 5 missed opportunities (if you don't watch for them): 

1) Not understanding what "expertise" really means": One of the greatest chellenges is that people think they need to be considered an 'expert' before they speak or write about a topic. The reality is: having a engagement with a "question" is itself an expertise. Being able to show why something matters to you is its own sense of developing an expertise. Start now.

2) Getting stuck in groupthink: Too much "agreement" can stifle an group by destroying its responsiveness and capacity for change. Be willing to be controversial and take a stand.

3) Expecting the oldest, most senior person to have the best ideas: Oftentimes, the "oldest" person in the room is the "most stuck" in the past. What can the wisdom and generativity of fresh eyes bring to a problem?  Don't miss any opportunities to use this to your benefit!

4) Rechecking your assumptions: Why is it that our assumptions are actually the core tools holding us back? Sometimes simply reversing our assumptions could lead us to better solutions [ex. encyclopedia can’t be open source, instead meet: Wikipedia]

5) Never scheduling time for play and exploration: One of the best creative leaders once told me to schedule 1 hour a month by myself for "white space" to play and explore on new ideas. I've found this to be one of the most important times to explore and generate new ideas.

What are other missed opportunities of leadership in your life? Share with us (so we don't miss them too!) and how you are overcoming them in the comments below.

12 Things Great Leaders Always Do

Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

We all know them. That one person who is not just a great leader, but who also makes a lasting impact. We remember them, follow them, and reference their thinking long after our connection with them is over. 

What is it that makes such a great leader? What do they have that others don't? I've been lucky to meet many great leaders and discovered they all share these twelve characteristics. 

So, here are 12 things YOU can do to become a great leader:

1. Pick your fights. Don’t waste your resources. Its important to stand up for your ideals, but don’t keep fighting when its draining you and it doesn't really matter. 

2. Work with exceptional people. Everything is about benchmarking. If you bring a great group of people together, they will even become better by the benchmark they have within the group.

3. Don't let the world beat you down. The best characteristics of a leader are being optimistic and naive.

4. Decide quickly. A bad decision is better than no decision. We learn by doing, instead of inaction. 

5. When asked for advice, sometimes the best advice is to not to give any advice. Usually when others ask for your advice, they already know the solution, but they just need a bit of confidence or some coaching to get there.

6. Focus on the things you can control. Those who focus on the things they cannot control become cynical. Choose what you focus on by what you can control. 

7. Be vulnerable. In a recent TED Talk, shame researcher Brene Brown shares that vulnerability is our ability to tell our true story and not to fear rejection. Moreover, it’s the understanding of ourselves as imperfect that makes us brave. Vulnerability enables connection more than anything else. 

8. Choose curiosity over confidence anyday. Live with a questioning mind and you'll never believe where you go. 

9. Accept that you can do everything perfect and fail and you can everything wrong and succeed. Life isn't fair, it's the plain truth, some get lucky and some don't. It's up to us to let the journey guide us..and learn from it.

10. When looking for great people, choose hunger and excitement over experience. Never choose people who think they are 'doing you a favor.' Find people who are excited to work with you. 

11. Don't wait to ask, to test and incubate new ideas. Read Why Asking is your #1 Strategy for Success for more. 

12. Don’t Ask for a No. When you think something is the right thing to do, just do it. You don't need approval from anybody, just you.

Which of these traits are most important to you? 

Monday Inspiration: Dance First

 

"Dance first.

Think later. 

It's the natural order" 

~Samuel Beckett

 

How would you feel if you decided to dance first? 

No regrets. Let’s write and dance.

© Neiromobile | Dreamstime Stock Photos & Stock Free Images

© Neiromobile | Dreamstime Stock Photos & Stock Free Images

Do you know the #1 regret women have when I speak to them? Not WRITING or DANCING enough. Boo. I'm going to help here.

In life, there are some things you can do without: the blind date, the cool outfit, the A on a school assignment.

But other things if never attempted may leave you unhappy. These are those real things, that make you shine and come alive.

I know. I used to ignore them. For much of my 20s, I was trying to "do it all” and lived someone else's idea of success, not my own.

It was when I took time off to dance and to write that my dots started to connect. I began to write about what I cared about rather than what I thought I should say. Within just a few months, I began submitting my work and getting published more often, in places like Levo League, The Huffington Post and Forbes. While I’ve always been a longtime dancer, I began daily Bollywood and African dance rituals to get my day started, becoming even sharper in my work on Gen Y leadership, all leading me to speak at Davos this year. In short, I began to own my life rather than letting it own me. And I have never had this much fun or felt nearly as creative and productive as I feel now.

If you want to own your writing and creative process, join Lex Schroeder and I for Ideas that Move: Ground Your Voice and Energize Your Work. This 3 day weekend retreat merges writing and movement practices in Hartland, Vermont (2.5 hours from Boston) on April 19-22.

During this Friday-Sunday extravaganza, you will tap into your own energy to write, claim your writing voice, and step into a new creative flow. Beyond serving as a chance to make real headway on your work, this retreat is an opportunity to move, laugh, and let loose among new friends –that means Bollywood Zumba, results-oriented writing exercises, meditation, and yummy organic food! Read full description here and register by March 25.

Art to Change the World

Check out this inspiring TEDtalk by activist and performer Mallika Sarabhai on how the arts can bring change and awareness in the world. I truly believe that artistic practice, beautiful in its own right for making art, also provides a means for being active in the world.

[ted id=688]