How to Stop Your Culture from Crushing New Ideas
Protect and support your disrupters!
I had a wonderful conversation with a fellow leadership coach recently, and we landed on a topic that frustrates us both. We have seen it happen countless times. A brilliant person joins an organisation, full of energy and fresh ideas. They look at established processes with a kind of “justifiable shock” and ask, “Why on earth do you do it that way?”
The same goes for a team member who returns from a brilliant training programme, fired up and ready to make a change.
But then, the culture kicks in. That energy is met with cynicism. They are slowly, or sometimes quickly, battered into submission by the “we’ve always done it this way” brigade. Their energy fades, their priceless ‘outsider’ perspective is lost, and they learn to conform.
This is a massive failure of leadership, and it’s a failure that snuffs out innovation at its source.
Today, I want to share a framework for how you, as a leader, can stop this. Your job is to protect these “positive disruptors” and turn their energy into real, tangible progress.
The Core Concepts: Disruptors, Immunity, and Shields
Before we get to the “how”, let’s be clear on the key ideas we are dealing with.
The Positive Disruptors: These are the two types of people I mentioned. First, the new hire who brings “fresh eyes” and is not constrained by your team’s history or bad habits. Second, the newly-inspired employee who has just returned from training and has seen a better way. Both are like getting a free consultancy report on your team’s blind spots.
The Organisational Immune System: This is the antagonist. In any established team, a prevailing culture exists. When a new idea (a ‘virus’) is introduced, the cultural ‘antibodies’ come out in force to attack it.
The Leader as Shield and Sponsor: This is your role. You cannot be a passive observer. You must actively protect your people and their ideas, providing the political cover and psychological safety they need to innovate.
The Problem: When “How We Do Things” Kills Progress
When your Positive Disruptor speaks up, the organisational immune system responds with a volley of killer phrases. You have heard them all before:
“Oh, we tried that back in 2018. It did not work.”
“You just do not understand the history of this.”
“That is just not how we do things here.”
“I am just following the process.”
This is the sound of mindless conformity, and it is the enemy of all progress. This is where the new starter learns that to survive, they must stop challenging and start conforming. The organisation congratulates itself on a successful ‘onboarding’, but it has actually just smothered a source of innovation.
As leaders, we must remember one of my core beliefs: the standard you walk past is the standard you set.
If you, as the leader, walk past your team’s cynicism towards a new idea, you have just set the standard that innovation is not welcome.
Your Practical Toolkit: How to Be the Shield
So, what is your role? Your job is to be the shield and the sponsor. When that new person comes to you with an idea, you must protect it. Here is the four-step toolkit to do it.
1. Build a Foundation of Psychological Safety
You cannot just expect people to speak up; you must create the conditions for it. Groundbreaking studies from Google and the work of academics like Amy Edmondson prove that the single most important trait of high-performing teams is psychological safety. This is the shared belief that you will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes.
As a leader, you must explicitly invite the challenge. Use the words:
“Your fresh perspective is exactly why we hired you. I want you to challenge our assumptions.”
“I want to hear what you learned on that course, especially if it contradicts what we do now.”
When they do speak up, you must assume positive intent. Their goal is not to make you look bad; their goal is to make the team and the service better.
2. Make Space for Reflective Coaching
This step is critical, especially for the team member returning from training. Do not just ask, “How was the course?” in the corridor. That is a complete waste of the organisation’s investment.
You must intentionally create a reflective space. Book 30 minutes in their diary. Your role here is not to be the expert; it is to be the coach. Your goal is to help them process their learning and, most importantly, connect it to their day-to-day work.
Use powerful, coaching-style questions:
“What was your single biggest takeaway from the training?”
“What did you learn that challenged your own assumptions about how we work?”
“What did you see that made you think, ‘We could do that better’?”
“If we could implement one idea from that course, what do you believe would have the biggest impact, and what would that look like?”
This conversation consolidates the learning. It helps them articulate the value and identify a single, tangible, actionable idea. That idea is what you will protect in the next step.
3. Create a ‘Sandbox’, Not a Firing Squad
Now that your coaching has helped refine their inspiration into a specific proposal, you must protect it.
Do not throw that fledgling idea into a full team meeting to be picked apart by the cynics. That is a death sentence for innovation. The “immune system” will kill it before it has a chance to breathe.
Instead, create a ‘sandbox’ for it. Say to them, “That is a brilliant idea. Why do not you take a small, self-contained part of that and run a pilot for two weeks? Let us test it, gather some data, and see what happens.”
This action demonstrates that you value decisiveness and learning, and it protects the person and their idea from the defeatist attitudes of the wider group.
4. Act as the Political ‘Shield’
While your team member is running their pilot, your job is to manage upwards and outwards. This is where you truly earn your leadership title.
When other managers or senior stakeholders ask, “What is this new thing?” or “Why are they not following the standard process?”, you must take the heat.
You are the one who says, “This is a small test I have sanctioned. We are exploring a new way of working based on recent training, to see if we can improve our performance. I will report back on the findings.”
You provide the political cover that allows them to innovate without fear. This is how you truly empower your people. You give them the autonomy and resources, and you take the responsibility. This is how you build a culture of excellence, not one of perfection.
💡 Takeaways for Leaders and Coaches
This is not just a theory; it is a call to action.
For Leaders: Develop Your Abilities
Self-Reflect: Think about the last time someone brought you a new idea. Did you shield it, or did you let the immune system crush it?
Be Intentional: Schedule that 30-minute reflective coaching session. Actively create ‘sandboxes’ for small tests.
Be Brave: Your team’s willingness to innovate is a direct reflection of your willingness to act as their shield. This is how you build a culture of excellence that welcomes, rather than fears, new ideas.
For Coaches: Apply These Concepts
Equip Leaders: Teach the leaders you coach this four-step framework. Give them the powerful coaching questions to use with their teams.
Identify the ‘Immune System’: Help your clients listen for the “killer phrases” in their teams. Make them aware of the cultural blockers they may be walking past.
Role-Play: Practise having those “shield” conversations with them, so they are prepared to manage upwards and defend their team’s innovations.
Your Next Step
Protecting innovation is an active, demanding, and essential part of modern leadership. By shifting your mindset from ‘gatekeeper’ to ‘shield’, you can unlock the brilliant ideas already inside your team.
So, I will leave you with this question:
Think about the last time a new or newly-inspired team member brought you an idea that challenged the status quo. Did you shield it and give it space to grow, or did you let the organisational immune system win?
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