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Innovation Emotions

In my work with global executives responsible for innovation, I am constantly inspired by their drive. There is an intrinsic motivation that compels some leaders to pursue innovation rather than easier alternatives. However, it can also be distressing to hear the pain, frustration and jeopardy they frequently report experiencing when leading or supporting innovation.

What makes innovation so challenging is that in any organization, there is no single truth of what is enough innovation and what is too much or too little. The innovation leader’s formal role can be generalized as to push the boundaries. In practice, an innovation leader has the hidden task offinding the organization’s Boundary of Innovation Tolerance. As in how much change caused by innovation can the organization bear, right now.

As one leader revealed, “it can feel like everything we do causes distress for someone”. Distress, or anxiety, is the emotional exhaust of change. Even in the early exploratory phases of innovation, the threat of change is enough to trigger strong emotions that paradoxically can fertilize or imperil progress.

“One person’s innovation can cause another person to feel incompetent, betrayed, or irrelevant.

~ Heifetz et al.

Innovation Leadership

The feelings, thoughts and behaviours of leaders are recognized as strongly influencing leadership performance and success. Emotions are the raw "affects" we experience in response to our environment. They become feelings if we notice and name them. Whether consciously acknowledged or not, they directly influence our thoughts, actions and behaviours. How they operate in specific leadership situations is an emerging body of knowledge.

I am interested in what these emotional drivers look like tangibly and how they operate practically for innovation leaders. In my research and leadership development work, I’ve found that many serial innovators develop sophisticated coping mechanisms that allow them to function in environments of high complexity, uncertainty, unpredictability and ambiguity. Though often without awareness of this capability, nor appreciation for how to sense and support the needs of other colleagues less seasoned or equipped to deal with emotional material.

In many organizations, the human responses to the situational realities of innovation are not recognized or avoided as a taboo. Leaders protect themselves behind technocratic processes or in general airs of impatience and disappointment. Tragically, the beauty of innovation gets lost in the painful and regressive aspects of driving change.

Operating on the Boundary

The difficulty of emotions at work is that it can be hard to discern when they are helpful and when they are harmful. They are necessary to fuel our activities but can also overwhelm us causing little to be realized—a dynamic process that plays out over time. To understand the line between progress and stagnation or success and failure, I compare multiple experiences of an individual leader. This uncommon yet simple comparative approach helps illuminate and name the emotional and behavioural drivers behind our outcomes as leaders.

Operating on the Boundary of Innovation Tolerance unsurprisingly proves to be an emotional experience. To lead innovation means to drive change with others, meaning it is a multi-layered and multi-party emotional landscape. It can be an overwhelming task to navigate in parallel one’s own emotions and those of others. Yet surprising is how surprised innovation leaders often are to realize this truth. Often, it’s a relief to learn they aren’t alone.

Innovation’s Emotional Drivers

Every leader experiences their work differently and even if one tackles that same challenge at different times they will be experienced differently. However, what emerges from my research and its leadership development applications is that the experience of leading innovation can be distilled into a set of six drivers.

The drivers synthesize common feelings, thoughts and behaviours reflecting emotional states specific to situations of innovation. For example, one driver is your emotional reaction to dealing with risk. Another is your outlook. Each driver presents a continuum of three energy states—low, centred and high—with descriptive positions. The goal is to illuminate, identify and name hidden emotional influences common to professionals involved with innovation.

The Innovation Leadership Map

These findings have been translated into a tool called the Innovation Leadership Map. It is used as a mirror for a leader to evaluate their own experiences, to teach rising talent how to lead innovation or for teams to evaluate current resilience and performance. As a clinical tool, the best way to learn about the drivers and their energy states is to apply it to your own innovation experiences.

Leaders almost universallyfind that the centred position is strongly associated with successful professional and personal outcomes. We also see that, at times, innovation leaders may need to adopt extreme energy states. In these states, energy is dramatically injected into or withdrawn from a team or organization. These situations can help unfreeze stagnation or cool overheated delusion.

Most leaders knowfirsthand that innovation can surface strong emotions and in many situations, these responses are essential to enable change. However, in excess, high or low-energy states can be unproductive and even harmful. Like climbing 8,000+ meter mountains, at times one needs to venture into extreme situations to accomplish great things. However, you don’t want to stay in this extreme “Danger Zone” for too long as it eventually turns fatal. Summit fever can overwhelm even the most seasoned leader.

Practitioner’s Application

Many leaders report that adopting this practice of emotional fluidity enables them to help drive progress and resilience. Since developing the Innovation Leadership Map, its uses in leadership development work have proven to help individuals, teams and organizations achieve elevated professional and personal outcomes.

Firstly, it helps leaders learn from their own unique lived experiences how they experience extreme and centred leadership positions. Secondly, for some, it helps explain confusing or confounding patterns like why successful initiatives can lead to burnout. In each of these scenarios, the tool can be a window into the deeper imprints from early life and career that influence reactions in the present.

Additionally, the drivers free leaders to intentionally and surgically use high-energy states with the ability to return to a centred leadership position:

The Innovation Leadership Map can also work as a guide to sense and hypothesize the emotional states of others. It’s not an assessment tool but can help sense, name and hypothesize potential sources of regressive anxiety. A helpful tool when managing teams or managing up to executives, boards or owners. Identifying, classifying and naming the emotions behind anxiety regularly provides relief and identifies practical interventions or adjustments.

Whatever your goals, I hope we can demystify the emotional dynamics of leading innovation through the framework and the insight it generates. I’m pleased to report that the framework helps leaders of innovation achieve higher impact, healthier teams and happier careers. Let me know if you want to learn more. Or, on your own reflect on the six drivers to identify which may help you achieve your leadership goals next year.

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Learn more about Brett’s leadership development practice for global executives with innovation responsibilities.

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