Great minds think alike...or do they?

That's great English saying has got stuck in my head recently. There's a lot of truth in it… we often feel like kindred spirits when we meet people who share our way of thinking! It is uplifting to come across a person who can follow our thought of journeys. And it is hugely confirming and validating to share ideas and thoughts with somebody who thinks like us!

This can be especially true, for those of us who live in a different cultural context, who come with a different thinking culture in their head, or who may just have a rare personality type.

I once worked with a senior team of an organisation that was largely made up of very similar-thinking people. They were all visionaries with a great appetite for moving the organisation ahead. There was often great vibe of excitement in the room when we discussed the major change programme I was leading at the time.

BUT….

But what has become so apparent to me over the last few years, is that this can be a danger zone! Real great minds know that they need to find those who do not think alike them, who challenged them to widen their horizon, who help them to see a wider picture than the one they can create themselves. This dips deeply into appreciating real thought-diversity!

In the case of the leadership team I was working with, it turned out that there ‘great-minds think alike’-vibe meant that they had very little thought on how to actually pull-off major changes, the impact but also the commitments needed to really implement the changes we had worked out properly and successfully…

Excellent leaders need to be prepared to reach out to have respectful conversations that are awkward, where the person on the other side isn't automatically in a ‘great minds think alike’-agreement, where their thinking gets challenged, those challenges need to be listened to and digested and all opinions are robustly questioned.

Because what happens when we reach outside of our ‘great minds think alike’- space, is that we can find solutions bigger than those our own brain can produce, we develop ‘yes, and…’-thinking, and innovation and problem solving reaches another much higher level.

So, HERE IS MY CHALLENGE TO YOU: next time you look at your team reach out specifically to those who think very differently and know that you and your team will benefit. There are many studies to prove this: productivity goes up, innovation becomes more successful, and teams are functioning at a higher level when their diversity is utilised!

If you find it difficult to do this, which, to be fair, many of us do, reach out for a some coaching with me, that might help you another step along the road of becoming a phenomenal leader who can harvest and monetise the diversity in their team!