I heard this the other day and was blown away:
Leadership is not about what you say, or even what you do. Leadership is how you make people feel.
I'm definitely no leadership savant (just ask my colleagues), but I know that this is a leadership maxim that definitely applies to the task of leading innovation.
Why? First, innovation is about action - doing stuff, taking risks and learning from it. Second, as Donald Calne said "Reason leads to conclusions, emotion leads to action."
You put those two ideas together and you can see why how you make your team and teammates feel is paramount. That's been something I've been learning, albeit messily, over the last decade of project work and four years of business design. I imagine I'll be learning it for as long as I do this work.
If you want to understand this better than I could ever convey, check out chapter sixteen ("The Power of Paradox") of Orbiting the Giant Hairball.
If you want to scan a range of emotions (many of which you should avoid creating), check out the image to the right (via Kevin Kelly's Blog) from Scott McCloud's awesome book Making Comics.
If you want to safely play with how to get emotions from people, check out: http://www.grimace-project.net/
If you want to lead innovation, go try to make people feel passionate, safe, driven, supported and directed.
