Ensure Your Team Keeps Good Ideas Alive

As a manager, you likely know the importance of collecting ideas from a diverse set of employees. But how do you create an environment where people on your team, regardless of their role or status, feel empowered to speak up and push new ideas forward or revive older ones that have been discarded? Here are a few tactics to try.

• Amplifying. Publicly repeat someone else’s good idea. By vouching for ideas that you believe have merit, you can ensure they don’t get lost in the shuffle.
• Developing. Sometimes ideas get rejected because people don’t fully understand them. Rather than dismissing these ideas, ask clarifying questions to ensure everyone’s on the same page.
• Exemplifying. Demonstrating how an idea could work in practice, or collecting data to support it, can help keep an idea alive, even if some on the team are inclined to reject it.