Developing Leadership Abilities

Helping Team Members Respect and See Beyond the Box

A team member in a corporate marketing department reported this situation: “Last month one of our team members brought along a self-described ‘creative facilitator’ to guide us (he said) in ‘thinking outside the box.’ After a long day pretending we were survivors on a desert island, architects of Tinker Toy bridges, first visitors to Mars, etc., we went back to work the next day pretty much unchanged and certainly unenlightened. Did we miss something?”

A large, well-heeled sector of leadership development consultants now line up behind the banner “Think Outside the Box.” The phrase has gained the same kind of knee-jerk currency as the phrases “create competitive advantage” and “leverage human ...