The desire for organisations to innovate has become deeply embedded in the organisational psyche; whether that be private, public or not for profit type organisations. The word innovation appears in vision and mission statements, in lists of value statements and in key performance indicators. Innovation is the new ‘change’.
Level Seven has always been interested in helping organisations and individuals to be the best that they can be especially within the backdrop of improving innovation, leadership development and personal performance https://www.level7live.com/leading-the-human-interface-of-innovation/ As professionals working in the area of talent development, we use coaching and conflict resolution skills on a regular basis. https://www.level7live.com/conflict-resolution/
As a result, we have become increasingly fascinated by the systems within which people operate, in particular the impact of individuals on teams, and of teams on innovation performance. What has emerged for us is a strong interest in how positive conflict resolution can be applied in the context of innovation performance and team coaching.
Studies on innovation in the workplace have been conducted from many perspectives, including, business performance, leadership performance, team performance, individual creativity to name but a few. We are specifically interested in two areas that we believe impact on successful innovation performance. The first is how conflict in teams can be seen as a positive concept and second whether using a process of conflict mediation within a team can have a positive impact on innovation performance.
We are undertaking our own research project that focuses on the human factors of innovation in a team environment concerning relationship issues between different stakeholders. We will investigate what issues arise that put people into conflict with one another; how they have attempted to embrace these issues in positive ways whilst still working with the usual constraints such as budgets, timescales and evolving needs of users and customers. What are the stumbling blocks to successful innovation and what have teams done to overcome them? Drawing on models of team coaching, we will explore how these models can be synthesised into a process of conflict resolution such that the team’s innovation performance can be enhanced.
If you are located in or around Northamptonshire or Cambridgeshire and think that your teams would benefit from the insights that taking part in our team conflict resolution research can provide, please get in touch at info@level7live.com.
