Feeling Unheard? Is Your Brilliance Hidden

Powerful ideas, innovations, radical change or even small changes often fall flat for no reason you can perceive and can have you feel frustrated. Often you are unaware of who or what might be “sabotaging” your efforts to offer your most profound ideas or great wisdom. There is a lot of noise out there and somehow you have to penetrate it. The scenario reminds me of a cartoon I kept in my office years ago as a reminder of possibility and resistance to innovation. The scene in the cartoon was about a war going on with bows and arrows and the salesperson at the top of the hill was trying to get their attention because he had invented the first cannon and the caption was something to the effect, can’t you see we are in the middle of a war? Does it feel like that for you? So how do you get people to see and support your brilliance? Perhaps one or all of the ideas below may offer a new opportunity. They are not new, just often forgotten pieces that can mean the difference between a yes and a no.

1. “Stakeholder” Interviews- Invest some time doing a form of stakeholder interview with the people you will directly affect with the implementation of your ideas. It is good to get feedback from them to find support, to receive clarity, to re-vamp anything that might negatively change or alter your target. By including everyone who “handles the paper”, you may receive new insights. You may have a sense for how they will receive the change. Not everyone is going to be behind you and that is OK, especially if you have projected the potential impact ahead of time on the organization, your team and your customers or client base. The most important piece of “stakeholder” interviewing – remove the lens with which you normally see and hear things. This means suspending judgment or filtering the information; be open to receive, open to hear, and receive the information with an open mind and an open heart and a bit of playfulness. This is similar to the idea of an empathy walk, which is simply seeing through their eyes. Make it fun as you invite their feedback. BE curious. Listen deeply and see the change/product/idea through their eyes.

2. Innovation – What do you know about other companies in your space? Are they doing something similar? On the other hand, if not yet, and you know it will help your company gain additional business, create greater efficiencies, be more future forward, or build a stronger team etc., how great is that if you get to do this! This is about you and your contribution, how it feels inside, how it honors who you are being in the world. As you calculate and factor all the above into your presentation, it will be one more compelling reason and a further demonstration of your incredible capacities. (And if you are in a very large organization, look to other departments, or countries where you operate that have launched similar ideas, products or programs and notice if you can innovate beyond that – could you “out create” what has been done because it has additional value and offers something more futuristic.)

3. Test – If you can, do a test run with a small group of people, your executive team or others to see how what you intend works. Record the plus and minus of what happens. Answer the following questions. What works well with it? What needs refinement? What else is possible? What really wants to emerge? What is this intended to replace or complement? What is currently working and what is not? What is the risk here?

4. Resources – What resources are required for instituting your idea? What are the costs, the potential savings (or not), the possible revenue projections, who is involved? What will it take? How much time, money, people? Can you do it with things already in place, only restructured? Do you need to be creative with resources? Resources can include people within or outside of your organization depending on the social context of what your idea/project/change impacts. Be open to possibilities here as well.

5. Removing Barriers – Permission or Forgiveness? Suppose you have already been to other executives in the company and invited collaboration and creativity and they think you are tracking in a direction that they do not want their fingerprint on, do you pull the trigger anyway? How willing are you to stand behind what you sense is a creating from the future idea? Go ahead and create how you will handle the people who may stand in judgment of your idea or new product. Prepare ahead of time for any possible response that is not in alignment, not with a defense, more with acknowledgement, acceptance of their point of view and standing in your space. In addition, get curious and ask questions that help increase your and their awareness. Stand in your potency.

So go ahead and work with this, you might be surprised! Perhaps one possible point alleviates your frustration and allows you to gain some traction. Wouldn’t that be awesome?

What I know for sure is that this works. Collective creativity and collaboration, gaining support from the “home team” and having the information to advance toward your target by applying the steps opens doors and creates possibilities. Your brilliance is waiting for you to express it!

What I also know from experience is far too often great ideas and things that could “save the day” or launch a company or team from good to great, from low performance to high performance depends on you, the person. Often you do not see how you may be in the way of your own visibility.  If that is one of your unseen or hidden concerns, my work helps you with your authentic power and leadership capacities. Sometimes it only takes receiving acknowledgement, being witnessed and heard to power forward. A non-judgmental point of view can help increase your awareness and presence.

Meanwhile I hope you enjoyed the top five ways! Thank you for taking the time to read it. May you launch a thousand ideas!

For more information on how my work may advance you to a new level of personal and professional standing, contact me at Kathy@mindoftheheartcoaching.com or 619.602.3670. Thank you!