Shame: The Secret Killer of Innovation, Creativity & Change

culled from:.inc.com

As much as I LOVED Brene Brown's Ted Talk, I'm experiencing a wonderful personal transformation as I dig into her brilliantly insightful book, Daring Greatly. My latest "ah ha" moment, is a deep reflection around the destructive power of shame. In her own words:
Shame keeps us small, resentful and afraid. In shame-prone cultures, where parents, leaders, and administrators consciously or unconsciously encourage people to connect their self-worth to what they produce, I see disengagement, blame, gossip, stagnation, favoritism and a total dearth of creativity and innovation.
And that got me thinking. Does your company encourage an environment that fosters creativity, innovation and change, or does it simply pay lip service to these ideals? To discover the truth, we must better understand how your company handles mistakes and failure.
For most companies, shame is a silent, but incredibly destructive force that is secretly killing your much needed change agents especially when it comes to creativity and innovation. And it all starts at the highest level of the company.
It's easy to support innovation, creativity and change when things are going right. But when honest mistakes are made and/or failure occurs, this is when a company's true nature is revealed. If you have created a culture that embraces "teachable moments" when mistakes are made, then you are working hard to foster an environment of powerful and accountable people who are encouraged to own not just their problems, but also the problems they didn't create; all while working collaboratively to solve them.
If, however, your company defaults to finger pointing and blame, then the end result is a powerless culture built on the destructive force of shame. Peter Sheahan, CEO of ChangeLabs puts it this way:
If you want a culture of creativity and innovation, where sensible risks are embraced on both a market and individual level, start by developing the ability of managers to cultivate an openness to vulnerability in their teams ... Shame becomes fear. Fear leads to risk aversion. Risk aversion kills innovation.
And this is the corporate paradox that many companies face. On the one hand, the executive leadership is actively seeking out innovation that will take their company to the next level. But if mistakes are treated with humiliation, rather than understanding, then shame begins to seep into the culture, and it's all downhill from there. No one wants to feel shame.
Moving from Shame to EmpathyFortunately, Brene Brown doesn't just identify the problems that shame causes. She also provides a solution to the problem in the form of "shame resilience." In her own words, "Shame resilience is about moving from shame to empathy--the real antidote to shame. If we can share our story with someone who responds with empathy and understanding, shame can't survive."
In his book Creativity, Inc., Ed Catmull, president of Pixar Animation and Disney Animation, dedicates an entire chapter on the importance of eradicating the fear and shame associated with failure. "We need to think about failure differently," he says, "I'm not the first to say that failure, when approached properly, can be an opportunity for growth. But the way most people interpret this assertion is that mistakes are a necessary evil. Mistakes aren't a necessary evil. They aren't evil at all. They are an inevitable consequence of doing something new (and, as such, should be seen as valuable; without them we'd have no originality)." This assertion is coming from arguably one of the most creative leaders of our generation.
So the next time you are faced with a costly mistake, take a moment to consider what will serve your company best. You can either blame that person and evoke fear, or hold up the mistake as a valuable, teachable moment that further encourages your team to take risks, continue to be creative and innovate. By taking the powerful and accountable path, you will discover that empowering that person to "own" that mistake and find solutions to it not only strengthens your company, but may open up possibilities that might not have been explored if that mistake wasn't made in the first place.