You're facing conflicting opinions in your team. How can you turn them into innovative breakthroughs?

🌍 "Strength lies in differences, not in similarities." – Stephen R. Covey 💡 When Pixar was developing "Toy Story," the team had diverse opinions on the storyline. By embracing these varied perspectives, they refined the script into a groundbreaking success that revolutionized animation.

By offering strategies for effective communication, conflict resolution, and collaboration, aligning diverse perspectives, and ensuring cohesive teamwork towards shared goals.

Fellow student leaders, from my experience, most situations that require teams, the majority of people have the same background. But it’s contradictory, in a way, because in the end the people that have had the diverse experiences are the ones who bring up the most innovative ideas. So, lean into the diversity of your team INTENTIONALLY and value the backgrounds of others if you want to be successful and innovate.

👂 "Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply." – Stephen R. Covey 🗣️ Business Case: At Google, active listening sessions during team conflicts have led to breakthroughs in product development, such as the creation of Google Maps, by valuing and integrating diverse team insights.

🗨️ "Innovation is born from the interaction of different perspectives and disciplines." – Robert L. Peters 🛠️ Amazon encourages debate through its "disagree and commit" philosophy, which helped drive innovations like Amazon Prime. Structured debates ensure all voices are heard and ideas are rigorously tested.

Entrepreneurs, debate and conflict are what have always led me to the biggest breakthroughs and advancements. Sometimes it’s hard to get out of the head of the specific vision that you see because it feels like your business is your baby, but when you let that grip go a bit, you’ll see that the insights from conflicting perspectives can actually be bred into beauty. Of course, that doesn’t mean to get disrespectful in arguments or discount the value of other’s experiences or thoughts (nor your own), but you have to be willing to hear people out in conversation. When you listen to hear and learn as opposed to argue, beautiful things will happen.

I once had a client with no understanding of dialogue. Everyone spoke over each other, and the meeting’s purpose was lost. We had to schedule another session on the same topic. As they were the client, maintaining order was tough, but speaking Arabic helped. I believe in structured dialogue, where it’s well facilitated, and everyone agrees on the purpose and goals. Documenting outcomes and planning a follow-up while ideas are fresh is crucial. Sometimes, we get caught up in our own desires without grasping the overall objectives. Respecting cultural norms is essential, and though full agreement isn’t always possible, finding common ground is.

For all of my creatives out there, you need to first execute on an idea -> listen to the people. It doesn’t matter what you THINK people want. It doesn’t matter how you THINK people will feel. Be purposeful. They will tell you what they want and show you how they feel once you give them a taste of what value you have to offer. So, constantly execute and iterate is the advice I would give. Make sure you continually work on your ideas as if they were experiments. Learn strategically, don’t just do for the sake of doing.