Tag Archives: Business

Can Conflict Cause Creativity?

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Conflict is often viewed as one of the biggest roadblocks to achieving a shared goal. There are many instances in which it can bog down or completely derail a project from reaching completion. However, consultant Lina M. Echeverria, author of Idea Agent: Leadership that Liberates Creativity and Accelerates Innovation, argues that there is a hidden benefit to conflict: it can help your team achieve creative breakthroughs.

In a recent Soundview Author Insight interview, Echeverria addressed the concerns leaders have about conflict:

Conflict is one of the things that scares most leaders because it doesn’t feel good.  We have always been conditioned from early childhood not to fight.  Be good.  Be nice.  And it is not about encouraging fighting; it is about encouraging dialogue.  It is about encouraging the ability to disagree, to give other viewpoints and engage in a dialogue.  But as I say, it really feels in the pit of your stomach like, “Ugh, I don’t want to be here.”  So, what it takes first is a lot of courage once you have come to the realization that that conflict is an essential part of the creative process.

It is an essential part because people that are creative, that have a really good idea that others have not seen, are driven by this vision.  And this vision can be very, very powerful and they’re not going to stop because of any barriers until they achieve the mission.

So, when those viewpoints come from a different angle, you could have a lot of passion, each [person] pulling in a different direction or let’s say, pushing towards the center and trying to make [his or her idea] happen.  So, what is needed is to bring them to the team.  Have them understand that theirs is not the only way and that they need to learn to respect others while at the same time, helping them understand how their behavior can impact the dynamics of the team and can push others down.

Soundview subscribers can login to their online library to hear the complete interview with Echeverria. The Soundview Executive Book Summary of Idea Agent is available for download now.

Book Review: Idea Agent

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by Lina M. Echeverria

by Lina M. Echeverria

The cover of innovation leadership consultant and author Lina M. Echeverría’s book Idea Agent: Leadership That Liberates Creativity and Accelerates Innovation perfectly captures the problematic way many organizations view creativity: lightning in a jar. Fortunately for executives, Echeverría removes much of the mystery and offers a better alternative to allow creativity to bloom. Idea Agent is now available in multiple digital formats as a Soundview Executive Book Summary.

Echeverría provides readers with a framework to create a culture of creativity and innovation. She calls the elements the “Seven Passions of Innovation.” The seven passions include everything from gathering diverse teams of intelligent employees to shaping a culture that provides the necessary amount of time for creativity to occur. As Echeverría writes, the seven passions, “come together to make up a living system whose energy radiates from a leader at the core, to its heart center.”

The advice Echeverría provides leaders does a good deal to harness the more difficult parts of innovation. There is an obvious connection between talented individuals, a supportive workplace and successful innovation. Idea Agent delineates the gaps between these pieces and creates a more complete picture. It also provides the business ramifications of creativity in a way that other volumes struggle to attempt. A core tenet of Echeverría’s philosophy is the deep connection between company success and a leader’s commitment to the careers of his or her employees. When a leader pushes to set equally high goals for employees and him- or herself, the results can be game-changing.

Idea Agent is an intriguing journey into the soul of innovation and leaders will find it a worthwhile guide for building better teams.

New Summaries on Deception, Innovation and Explanation

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Some of the most difficult parts of an executive’s job can result from ordinary situations. A simple conversation with an employee can reveal a problem that will affect the entire organization. A mishandled pitch in a meeting dooms an idea for a game-changing product to fail. Soundview has three new summaries that provide executives with the skills to turn those pivotal moments into extraordinary opportunities.

by Janine Driver

by Janine Driver

You Can’t Lie to Me by Janine Driver. What if you could increase your salary by 15 percent and kick problems and worries to the curb simply by learning how to detect a lie the moment it starts? What if you had an easy-to-use test that tipped you off the instant someone held something back from you? No machine built to date has proven more effective than a well-trained human lie detector, says world-renowned body language expert Janine Driver, a former federal law enforcement investigator who has trained agents at the ATF, CIA, and FBI. In You Can’t Lie To Me, Driver teaches you how to protect yourself from liars and manipulators.

by Lina M. Echeverria

by Lina M. Echeverria

Idea Agent by Lina M. Echeverria. There is perhaps no leadership challenge more daunting than managing creativity — and more urgent than delivering breakthrough innovation. How do you harness some of the most passionate, intelligent people in your organization without stifling them? How do you simultaneously unleash their energy and channel it into something tangible? In Idea Agent, Lina M. Echeverría offers seven proven principles through which new ideas come to fruition.

 

by Lee LeFever

by Lee LeFever

The Art of Explanation by Lee LeFever. You’ve done the hard work. Your product or service works beautifully — but something is missing. People just don’t see the big idea — and it’s keeping you from being successful. Your idea has an explanation problem. The Art of Explanation is for business people, educators and influencers who want to improve their explanation skills and start solving explanation problems. In this summary, author Lee LeFever provides a guide to helping audiences fall in love with your ideas, products or services through better explanations in any medium.

 

All of the above summaries are now available in multiple digital formats.

Book Review: Predictably Irrational

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by Dan Ariely

by Dan Ariely

During the course of a day, executives spend a portion of time thinking about the “what” involved in various actions: What does the executive need to do? What did employees do? What are customers doing? Rarely does anyone take the time to analyze the “why” of what we do. Fortunately, Duke University professor and author Dan Ariely provides readers with one of the most thought-provoking examinations of the “why” behind decision making in his book Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions. The Soundview Executive Book Summary of this book is now available for download.

While Ariely’s book is not specifically written for a business audience, the benefits to an executive reader are tremendous. It is easy to read through the various social science experiments and see the applications to marketing, sales and customer service. What becomes clear to executives who read Predictably Irrational is that Ariely’s book offers additional suggestions for areas such as performance and workplace culture.

For example, Ariely suggests that a better method to prevent procrastination is to allow people to voice their preferred path of action to accomplish a goal. This prevents the individual from feeling crushed by a mandate from above while creating the self-imposed restrictions that can help give structure to finishing a task. Ariely admits that this approach may lack the effectiveness of more dictatorial ways of enforcing responsibility, but a more cooperative approach to goals can, as Ariely writes, “help push us in the right direction.” In a bonus bit of business wisdom, he suggests that people can be more successful at meeting deadlines if given training and experience in setting their own timetable.

Predictably Irrational is an entertaining read with insights that can be interpreted and applied to an executive’s own company. Choosing to read Ariely’s book is a decision that can be firmly labeled “rational.”

To learn more about the positive and negative effects of irrational behavior, check out the Soundview Executive Book Summary of Ariely’s follow-up book The Upside of Irrationality.

Book Review: Real Influence

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by Mark Goulston and John Ullmen

by Mark Goulston and John Ullmen

Influence in the world of business has often been wielded like a club. It is a tool that is roughly crafted and swiftly swung. The end result is achieving one’s goal in a manner that can result in a measure of damage to another individual. Drs. Mark Goulston and John Ullmen emphasize to executives that we now exist in the “post-pushing, post-selling” world of influence. In their book Real Influence: Persuade Without Pushing and Gain Without Giving In, Goulston and Ullmen revise the outdated rules of persuasion and give readers a new, more collaborative way to accomplish what needs to be done. You can now download the Soundview Executive Book Summary of Real Influence in multiple digital formats.

According to the authors, an executive’s ability to influence may be hampered by one of four possible traps. These traps, such as “The Habit Handicap” or “Error Blindness” cause a person to become disconnected while trying to influence others. This disconnect creates a one-way path toward compliance, and it is a path that, even if traveled successfully, can both create resentment and end the potential for future influence.

Real Influence turns the tables on the club-wielding negotiator with a four-step process to turn the one-way path into an open road freely traversed by both parties. Executives will learn to stop the self-centered behaviors that are at the heart of most influencing efforts. Some of the ideas to aid this effort are extensions of findings in Goulston’s previous best-seller Just Listen. The new information in Real Influence enhances the previous book’s teachings and adds a dimension of unique takeaways, such as listening past your personal blind spots. [Editor's note: For a full explanation of listening past your blind spot, check out the Soundview Live webinar featuring Goulston and Ullmen.]

Goulston and Ullmen have crafted one of the few books on influence that removes the skill from the “win/loss” dynamic with which it is commonly associated. Real Influence is a new, improved book on a must-have communication skill. Put down your club and pick up the Soundview Executive Book Summary today.