Innovative Leadership Style

Every organization or company always needs continuous innovation. To achieve this, it is necessary to have a leader with an innovative personality as well. The reason is, it will later affect how he leads an organization or company. This is known as an innovative leadership style or innovative leadership style.

What is an innovative leader?

Innovative leadership is a leadership character that allows innovation to be born and thrive in the organization or company he leads. There we must build values, standards, and innovation orientation as a whole in all processes, performance, and business flows that we build which ultimately produce innovative products or services.

Innovative leadership style is more directed at companies that produce products, services, and services. This type of leader will direct every employee to have fresh ideas for the betterment of the company.

On the other hand, he will apply the principle of trial and error and dare to take any risks in every decision.

What are the characteristics?

 

1. Has passion. He focuses on the things he wants to change, the challenges that exist, and the strategies to deal with those challenges. Passion will keep a leader energized and able to encourage his team, even in the worst conditions. Passion will encourage leaders to achieve their dreams.
2. Have a vision Innovation has a purpose. Leaders can't expect their teams to innovate if they don't understand where the organization is headed. Great leaders spend a lot of time describing the organization's vision and goals and the challenges that confront them. They are able to inspire many people to become successful by relying on innovation.
3. View change as a challenge Innovative leaders are ambitious and are never satisfied with “comfort” conditions. They often call for change. For them, staying silent or complacent with current conditions is more risky than trying something new. They will continue to look for opportunities to grow their organization.
4. Dare to act outside the rules To innovate, it is not uncommon for a leader to challenge existing rules. Business is like art. Companies are required to be creative in finding new ways to satisfy customers.
5. Not afraid of failure Innovative leaders consider failure as part of the lesson to achieve success. He tends to see the value and potential of his organization—not just the operational costs.
6. Willing to collaborate Collaboration is the key for many leaders to succeed with innovation. When they find that their resources are inadequate to achieve organizational goals, they do not rule out partnering with other parties.[1]

In a study, entitled 10 Traits of Innovative Leaders by Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman concluded 10 traits of innovative leadership, including:

1. Displaying a strategic vision
   The most effective innovative leadership is able to clearly describe their vision of the end result of their innovation. They are able to paint it very well, thus inspiring the people they lead to work hard to make that picture a reality. He started everything with begin with the end in mind.
2. Have a strong focus on the customer (customer oriented)
   What customers find attractive becomes very attractive to innovative leaders. They will strive to be able to see from the customer's point of view, connect with customers, and constantly ask questions about their needs and wants. Thus, an innovative leader will involve the customer in innovating and make the customer the orientation.
3. Creating a climate of mutual trust, (mutual trust)
   Innovation often faces various risks at various levels, ranging from unsupported regulations, limited availability of resources, dealing with competitors, and various other challenges. These highly innovative leaders are able to build solid teams, warm relationships between teams, and build collaborations with the innovators who work for them. This character makes innovative leaders generally very open and able to communicate very well. In the end they will be able to transform innovative leadership into an innovative team.
4. Show loyalty to do what is right for the organization and the customer (true)
   This innovative leader will continue to work to check things in the company and make continuous improvement (continuous improvement). They will always be behind to evaluate all lines of the organization so that they are able to move all elements in achieving their innovation vision. His leadership is firm in ensuring that all levels in the organization must move to achieve the vision he pursues.
5. They hear innovation from the lower level (listen).
   These leaders no longer think that they are innovative and innovation must be born from them. They believe that the best and most innovative ideas can be born and grow from anywhere, including from the bottom up. Therefore they always create a culture to continually hear ideas, accept ideas, and respect good thoughts from all parties in the organizational structure. In terms of ideas they establish equality at all levels of the organization.
6. Persuasive (persuasive)
   Innovative leaders have a very effective ability to get others to accept innovative ideas. They are able to make others think “wow” when they hear them share their innovations. They don't force their innovative ideas on the team, but they will share ideas with great enthusiasm, determination, and convincing, so that team members will believe and be influenced to follow the idea voluntarily.
7. Manage the reach of goals very well (acheivable)
   Innovative leaders will be able to formulate final goals, goals at each stage of development, and translate them at each level of work,. They are able to translate goals into measurable targets from the availability of existing resources, then set the right metrics or indicators or parameters at each stage of development. They are very ambitious, but also realistic. They take measured risks.
8. Emphasizing speed (Speed)
   Value is the essence of an innovation, but generating a value from innovation is a difficult, long and arduous job. Therefore, innovators are always in a race against time in realizing their innovations, they are faced with the availability of limited resources and also agile competitors. Therefore, they will work hard to push the organization or company to move faster. They create an effective and efficient system in their work, determine measurable metrics as organizational or company targets, then allocate shared resources to achieve them in the shortest possible time.
9. Open in communication (open)
   Innovative leaders will provide honest, frank, and candid feedback, although sometimes it is very sharp and critical. This leadership character will cause the people they lead to understand the mindset of their leader and feel confident in him, thus helping them to play a role in their respective duties and functions in following the logic, beliefs, and thoughts of their leader. This character will also build trust in the team, so that they all understand the problems and challenges they are facing and will face.
10. Inspire and motivate through action (inspiring)
    Innovative leaders will be able to be inspired and moved by the imagination of the realization of the innovation. He imagines his innovation and involves his heart emotionally to be able to move himself and the people he leads to work harder so that they can immediately realize these innovative ideas. It is not an easy job to make the people they lead pursue their ambitions or aspirations for the innovations they dream of, that's where the ability to inspire and motivate becomes something that is absolute to give birth to enthusiasm, energy, an attraction that continues to attract the team to work hard to realize the innovation. .[2]

Well, this is a little explanation about innovative leaders.

 

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Reference

[1] http://malikinnass.blogspot.com/2015/08/6-characteristics-leaders-yang-inovatif-di-era_24.html

[2] https://rumahmillennials.com/2018/03/12/10-natures-of-inovative-kepemimpanan-the-millennials-must-know/#.YB1LS-oxXiw