The major hypothesis of my 8 Step Guide to a Social Workplace was that you need the systems in your workplace to align themselves behind a behaviour for that behaviour to become commonplace. If you want creativity, but your pay, decision making, measurements and so on all act as though you want conservatism, then it’s pretty clear which one will win out.
It’s perhaps not surprising therefore that a new study reveals the excellent job many managers do of squashing creativity. The researchers explored eight managerial behaviours that are widely believed to promote innovation in the workplace. They then measured whether the relative competence in each of these areas corresponded with the innovation efforts of employees in their teams. The study pulled in over 1,300 people from 19 countries, with participants covering a range of experience, education and demographic areas.
The eight areas they were looking for in managers were:
1. Challenge their subordinates by giving them difficult or impossible problems to solve, ambitious goals to attain, and the support needed to manage stress.
2. Encourage broadening, which means providing employees with training in subjects or topics well outside their comfort zones.
3. Encourage capturing, that is, urging people to preserve their breakthrough ideas and giving them the tools (whether sophisticated computer programs or pocket-sized recorders) to do so.
4. Manage teams appropriately by assembling diverse groups that use brainstorming and other techniques to maximize their creative output.
5. Model the core competencies of creative expression by walking the walk; for example, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Mark Hurd had his assistants accompany him from meeting to meeting so they could record each new idea on a large chart.
6. Provide adequate and appropriate resources to enable creative functioning.
7. Provide a diverse and changing physical and social work environment that keeps employees on their toes.
8. Provide positive feedback and recognition to people who contribute new and important ideas.
The research sadly showed that many managers lacked skills in six of the eight key areas. The highest of the eight, almost across the board, were for giving feedback and encouraging broadening. Interestingly however, these were two areas where the managers themselves believed had little impact on the innovative capabilities of their staff.
The areas believed to be most effective however, that of providing resources and managing the environment to ensure a diverse and ever changing workplace, were both areas where managers scored particularly badly. All of which paints a not particularly positive picture.
What was equally interesting however is that female managers out performed their male counterparts in every single one of the eight areas. The researchers suggest this might be due to certain characteristics that appear more common in women than men, such as being supportive. They also suggest that women might be better at looking at innovation in a holistic sense and realising that it is an output of a wide range of organizational factors.
The report concluded by highlighting the importance of training for managers in supporting innovation. The researchers revealed that when training was offered, it resulted in substantially higher scores, even if the training didn’t focus specifically on any of the eight areas. What’s more, the more training that was received, the better the results were.
Haha, very contentious. Not sure you can make such assumptions based purely on gender though can you?
I think both sexes are generally ok at innovation, but if one tends to do better than the other then you have to ask yourself why that is? I mean we surely want both genders
And yet most inventions seem to have been made by men?
I agree with the post and am familiar with and studied the differences in genders. Women are or seem easier to talk to and more comfortable to open up to as managers for both men and women. Not saying it's correct for every single case as there are gender roles that are not being pushed so much now a days. However the overall change in society is too fast for laws, government, certain social clubs, etc. to catch up. Here in CA. There are so many people the way everything has been set up is based on men leading and owning everything and women and children were considered property controlled by men. There for its going to take time for gender bias to hopefully fizzle out. Reality of training is most employers don't have the money or time to or haven't made it priority so it appears that most would rather hope to hire someone familiar with the job responsibilities. Managers are considered teachers really so in past who or which gender were generally teachers….women. Most of the time I think personally women not all but most have more patience and can handle more pressure than a lot of men. I believe it's because society has put men on pedestal for so long in families etc. Most are "spoiled" with their treatment by mothers via daughters. For what ever reason women seem to be harder on girls in families than boys or was so the case in past generations. There for men didn't learn how to deal with all the stresses that women did growing up. Plus women were at young ages more mentally mature and given responsibility of taking care of younger siblings, housework etc. Usually father's worked out of the home so weren't around and too tired to help with children so the boys were Man of the house when dad was gone carrying responsibility of protecting but also a sense of power and with lower maturity and not much life experience to handle such a role can give one sense of entitlement with out having to go through emotional life experience to get there.
Maybe, having never worked for a woman manager, it has taken their male counterparts an incredibly long time to accept and support innovation – surely they must be better.
This piece, and the referenced study, are very thought provoking in terms of how to encourage and create innovation, as well as gender influences in the workplace. Encouraging innovation seems to be elusive, and something that prevailing culture can really defeat if it's not aligned!
From my personal experience in lot of innovation activities, women and men are equal in creating innovations. But, it is completely true that Women are better in supporting the ideas. I think more female managers should be there for supporting innovation activities.