The link between teamwork and innovation: A good leader

By Rae Steinbach

As new technologies become more and more important to integrate into businesses, the ability to change has become the key difference between those who succeed and those who fail. From a mobile app agency to a financial institution, a good leader plays a key role in helping build success.

This is why it’s more important than ever for small business owners and managers to take a hands-on role with their team. Success happens from the top-down, and if standards aren’t withheld throughout the business, it can be nearly impossible to build a culture of innovation.

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Success through innovation starts by setting goals and spurring on team members. If a leader doesn’t understand their team’s dynamic, they could potentially assign a task to the wrong person.

However, if a leader is well involved with their team, they’re able to use that to set goals for each individual based on skill set. This helps to keep motivation and happiness levels high. If everyone feels as though they’re performing an important part, they will put in more effort and pay closer attention to tasks.

Properly assigning responsibilities to individuals can also help optimize your outcome. Leaders agree that the first step towards creating an innovative work culture is choosing the right employee for each project. This leads to the company being able to better commercialize these outcomes, and having more driven team members produces more successful results.

Having a hard-working team provides the team leader with plenty of opportunities to praise their workers. Individual impact is felt when a manager shows and emphasizes the achievements of each team member. When a team member feels as though they’ve directly impacted results, they’re more inclined to produce high-performance results in order to gain more praise.

Take risks

Strong leadership comes from a willingness to take risks and use advancements in different industries to achieve goals. Flexibility and adaptability is key, but at the same time, the responsibility shouldn’t rest completely on the shoulders of one person. By setting strong examples and practicing what they preach, a leader can affect the entire work environment.

The team as a whole should feel as though their forward growth is a collective movement, even as they work towards individual goals. Oftentimes, big risks can lead to big failures, but a leader should be able to provide their team members with both the motivation for risk taking as well as a safe space for recovering from failure.

One interesting risk a leader can take is combining different teams together. Due to their mobility and all-encompassing viewpoint of the company, it’s up to team leaders to help different groups get involved with one another. The new combination can lead to a higher level of innovation and creativity within both teams, and inject new energy into a project.

Implementing a culture of innovation within your company means that leaders and team members will be constantly searching for ways grow and advance together. Once the initial goal is passed, a new, more difficult one to achieve can be set. It is in this way that your company will continue to progress.

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Rae Steinbach is a graduate of Tufts University with a combined International Relations and Chinese degree. After spending time living and working abroad in China, she returned to NYC to pursue her career and continue curating quality content. Rae is passionate about travel, food, and writing, of course.

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