Here's a proposition:
Because innovation usually requires the efforts of many people to accomplish, people skills are a variable of the innovation equation that must be explored. And when we say "people skills" we're talking in code about maturity. Key skills that we define as symptoms of maturity are:
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Communicating such that you can hear and share thinking with others as a catalyst to creative thinking, the well from which all innovation arises.
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Understanding that in the end, it is you who must take responsibility to make relationships as productive as possible, even in situations where"the other" makes that more challenging than it should need to be.
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Managing your own self talk, so that you find patterns of thinking that drive the motivational feelings and behaviors that move things forward rather than keeping things stuck.
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Having the wisdom to realize that there is no such thing as a grown-up... Just growing people and stuck folks and you are sometimes one of those stuck folks and need others to challenge you to be on your best game. We call that humility.
These are just a few examples, we've written about this a lot in our newsletters, but in every case, the connection to innovation should be fairly clear:
Innovation requires creativity, and creativity requires previously unconnected thoughts to be connected. Getting new thoughts in requires that you listen for them, and the best place to listen is to thinking that is different than your own.
Innovation requires that we find passion in ourselves to make things better. That we overcome the defeatism and amotivation that comes up in us all from time to time. Assuming you have normal brain function, these innovation sapping dynamics come from the mental stories that you tell yourself. Get control of the mental stories, and you have control of your innovative brain.
Innovation requires that we are humble enough to see the need for change, and that we are humble enoughto listen to the advice of others --much of which will be off target -- so that we can get the one chunk of wisdom that unsticks us from the challenge we are working on.
Pretty cool, eh? Innovation skills as a pathway to wisdom! Who woulda thunk?
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