Think Outside the Box | Business Team Building | Sandy Gluckman Corporate Speaker

The ability to create a broader view of the opportunities available to us is 1+1=3 thinking. And to think more broadly we will need the ability to think outside the box.  We all would like to think outside the box, but our ego holds so many of us back whenever we have a decision to make or challenge to resolve.

When our egos get in the way we will find it very hard to think outside the box to come up with an innovative solution. This is because our ego only hears what it wants to hear. The ego is arrogant and self-righteous and is not interested in points of view that do not support its own. When our ego is in control we don’t enjoy having our assumptions challenged and we spend huge amounts of energy attempting to justify our position. We don’t believe we need to change or that there is anything else we need to know. This gives us a lopsided and limited view.

Leaders of spirited high performing teams encourage their team memebers to think outside the box.  To accomplish 1+1=3 thinking outside the box, leaders typically use the following process:

1. Study other companies, in any industry, that have successfully taken thought beyond that where it has been before and applied 1+1=3 thinking outside the box, such as Southwest Airlines, Apple iTunes, Starbucks and Virgin.

2. When discussing an issue, brainstorm and list the following: What traditional assumptions are we currently using in our thinking about this issue? I

3. Next, brainstorm the following question: If we rejected each of these assumptions, what would we do differently?

4. Encourage dialogue and debate amongst the team and create a list of all the suggestions, ideas and insights that emerge.

5. Suspend judgment - ask many questions so that you understand each person’s point of view clearly, but don’t ask questions to prove why it cannot be done.

6. Integrate as many of the ideas as possible that emerged in the brainstorm, creating a integrative solution or plan that would be described as ‘fundamentally different.’

7. Have the courage to communicate and execute this with passion.

Corporate speaker and leadership consultant, Dr. Sandy Gluckman has a long history of business team building across the world.  Dr. Gluckman's  education in Whole Brain Training and Communication along with her extensive business experience, have earned her credibility and respect as an organizational and leadership consultant who leads beyond yesterday's thinking towards a workable vision of the future. Her book Who's in the Driver's Seat? reveals that we all have two selves- the ego self and the spirited self.  In this groundbreaking book Dr. Gluckman creates a compelling business case for Spirited Economics where leaders and their team members learn to recognize the ego self, put the ego in the passenger seat and lead with the extraordinary capabilities of the spirited self.  Contact Sandy Gluckman if you are looking for a corporate speaker or leadership consultant for your organization to facilitate Business Team Building exercises.