Chapter 4: Creativity and innovation 65A good team will exhibit all of the above ‘roles’, not necessarily with
nine different people, but with fewer team members adopting different
roles to complete the task.
Encouraging creativity in teams (besides helping individuals to
‘perform’ the Belbin roles within a team) depends on a manager’s
skills at:- using the different skills within the team (having first identified
the attributes of each individual) - ensuring conflicts of ideas are allowed to happen and are
tolerated by all - recognising particularly good contributions
- helping the team generate ideas (eg by brainstorming)
- creating an open environment where individuals can speak up
honestly.
3 Team training
Self-evidently important (to improve team performance) is the
development of team creativity by improving an individual’s skills
in effective thinking, communication and in his/her own particular
area of expertise/specialism.4 Communicating about innovation
Feedback can maintain interest levels and information about
progress made can stimulate further activity and more progress.
Good communication can help improve creativity and innovation
and should:- stress importance of new ideas and show how business has
improved because of their implementation - indicate why ideas have been rejected/accepted
- give progress reports of ideas originated by individuals/teams
- recognise and reward appropriately for successful innovation.