Stop Blocking Your Team’s Ideas and Start Leading to Encourage Diversity of Thinking and Greater Innovation as a Humanitarian and International Development Leader

Do you want your team to share more ideas and drive greater innovation effortlessly?

As a humanitarian and international development leader, you unknowingly block your team's ideas and preventing diversity of thinking and innovation.  Or maybe you struggle with empowering your teams to think independently and contribute meaningfully. Whatever your reason,this episode delves into a leadership style that not only promotes inclusivity but also encourages a diversity of thought, leading to more innovative solutions and greater team engagement.

Here's what you will learn in 12 minutes:

• How to overcome the biggest obstacle to creating an inclusive environment and diversity of thinking.
• A proven leadership method that empowers your team to share their ideas and take proactive steps.
• Find out a practical step you can implement today to lead more inclusively and achieve your desired impact.

Listen to this episode now and transform your leadership approach to foster a more innovative and inclusive team environment!

Resources mentioned:

Operationalizing Locally Led Development: Cultivating a Healthy Global Development Ecosystem Report by Humentum

What Is Your Leadership Style?  Free Quiz:

Want to know how to lead better?  It starts by understanding your leadership style.   To find out yours, take my free quiz “What Is Your Leadership Style” - you’ll immediately find out your default style, how it may be impacting your team and a few practical ways to become an even better leader.  Just click on the link fill out your quiz and click submit.

This podcast empowers international development and humanitarian leaders to achieve high performance teams, fostering diversity, inclusion, and wellbeing, overcoming burnout and overwhelm, while maximizing impact and productivity.

FULL Transcript:

Stop Blocking Your Team’s Ideas and Start Leading to Encourage Diversity of Thinking and Greater Innovation as a Humanitarian and International Development Leader

In today's episode, find out one proven way of leading that will help your team share more ideas and create greater innovation.

Welcome to The Modern Humanitarian and Development Leader podcast, the podcast helping humanitarian and development supervisors make a greater impact by taking control of your time, leading more inclusively and empowering your team all the while avoiding stress, burnout, and overwhelm. I'm your host, leadership coach and former aid worker, Torrey Peace.

Are you ready? Let's get started.

Hello, my aspiring modern and humanitarian development leader. So in this episode, you're going to discover one of the biggest obstacles to leaders creating a more inclusive environment and diversity of thinking. Number two, a proven way of leading, which will result in your team feeling empowered to speak their ideas and become more proactive. And number three a step

you can take starting today to lead more inclusively and create diversity of thinking so you can achieve the impact you're seeking. All right. Let's get started. Shall we?

So as many of, you know, the humanitarian and development sectors are evolving. And that is one of the reasons I even started this podcast because I see that as the sectors evolve, as we move to localization, greater inclusion and becoming a more bottom up and less top down way of managing and needing to shift power to communities to local organizations, to our teams,

it becomes all the more important to know how to lead an order to create that type of vision or future that we are headed towards.

So as in Humentum's, 2024 report "cultivating a healthy global development ecosystem" this report says that leaders will need to balance power and align with their values, all of course, while avoiding burnout. So what's interesting is the way that you lead is really the key to whether you create an inclusive environment and shift power or not. So we, as individuals can take responsibility for creating this healthy global development ecosystem.

We are part of this. And so that means that in order to shift power, like we want to see in our sector, we need to give our teams more responsibility. We need to empower them to build their confidence, to get them more involved in problem solving and find their own way.

This is the way of the modern humanitarian and development leader. And in fact, one of the best uses of your time as a leader is building your team. But what I see was so many leaders that I work with is they get stuck in the mud. They get stuck in the weeds. They get stuck in the day to day tasks that don't focus on building their team or on the impact that they want,

but instead are just going through the motions of headed towards some kind of project deadline, or some other deadline. That means going to meetings, spending a lot of time on email, et cetera, et cetera. You know, the drill. So they just want to get things done and they want to move forward. But what is the easiest way to quickly get things done? It's telling our teams what to do. Managing and giving your team the answers is easy and fast. The problem is this is the opposite of the way that you should be leading. If you want to create a more inclusive environment that encourages diversity of thinking and empowers your team. If you want your team to feel empowered, to speak their ideas and become more productive, then you want to use a coaching leadership style. What I call a coach approach. This means you are able to ask them questions to find their own solutions.

So you're not telling your team what to do.

You're asking them what they should do. And this is the way to encourage diversity of thinking and create a more inclusive environment. So I see so many leaders who think that they don't have time to involve their team or to develop their team or to ask their team questions. How many development plans go the whole year until the end of the fiscal year, and then suddenly they're pulled out, dusted off and we realize, oh, wow. We haven't been developing our team or our team hasn't been developing themselves in order to meet their professional goals. So when we believe we don't have time to develop our team and get them to think for themselves so we can get their ideas and their input, we are actually just creating our own reality.

We're actually making that true. Because if we believe we don't have time, then we're not going to even make the effort to make time we won't prioritize making the time to develop them. So things will not change. Your team will stay dependent on you and they won't grow like they could, if you were leading in a way that helped them take more responsibility and contribute more ideas on a daily basis.

This is why in my course "becoming the modern, humanitarian and development leader." I have you first think about your why behind you being a leader and behind the impact you want to make. When you have a clear understanding of what you want to create and where you want to go. For example, a more inclusive environment, then you will start noticing how you are, or are not using your time to be able to do that. And you will start changing your behavior.

And part of that means making time. If you want to be a more inclusive leader, if you want to be a leader who empowers and develops their team, That means you will make time to develop your team. You will prioritize it. You will ask them more questions using a coach approach leadership style to empower them.

So one step that you can take starting today to start leading more inclusively and shifting power is to get in the habit of asking your team for ideas

before you say anything. Ask them what they think or what is a challenge that they are currently facing? And then let them tell you about their challenges rather than you pointing them out yourself.

Remember though that your ideas or what you have to say has a lot of weight. So if they share something with you and then you solve it, you give them advice or maybe your team comes up with a lot of ideas, and then you tell them what you think should be done, they're going to probably go toward what you say because you have more power in that dynamic and you're going to undermine the effort to empower them and get them to contribute.

So just be aware of that.

Looking back on the last few weeks, how many ideas that you've adopted have been from yourself versus your team? This can be really revealing sometimes for leaders. And the more you can get so that you adopt more of the team's ideas over your own, the more they will feel like they can contribute and they'll be free to contribute, which will lead to a greater diversity of thinking and innovation. So, this is the way to meet the needs of the evolving humanitarian and development sectors and become a modern humanitarian and development leader. And that is by using more of a coach approach leadership style and asking our teams how they would solve something or their ideas, rather than just giving our own or providing advice.

As a recap, here's what we covered on today's episode. The biggest obstacle to leaders, creating greater diversity of thought and inclusive environment is when the leader is in the habit of telling others what to do. Number two, the leadership style, which results in your team feeling empowered and becoming more proactive is a coach approach way of leading. And remember you can take the "what is your leadership style quiz?"

If you want to find out how you are leading your team right now. And then finally one step that you can start taking today to create greater diversity of thought, is to get in the habit of asking your team for ideas before you contribute your own. And maybe even contributing your own only if absolutely necessary.

And on Wednesdays quick quote, episode, find out how to ensure that you are creating an inclusive environment and a higher performance team without adding to your busy schedule. Until then keep evolving. Bye for now.

Are you the type of leader that tells others what to do? Or do you let them figure it out for themselves? Understanding your leadership style is the first step to deciding what's working for you and what's not. To find out your leadership style, take my free quiz "what is your leadership style"? You'll immediately find out your default style, how it may be impacting your team, and a few practical ways to become an even better leader.

Just click on the link in the show notes, www.aidforaidworkers.com/quiz. Fill out your quiz and click submit. So what are you waiting for? Go to www.aidforaidworkers.com/quiz and discover your leadership style now. Your team will thank you for it.