Effective collaboration is fueled by empathy—an awareness of others and an ability to detect their emotions and understand their perspective. To come up with truly innovative solutions requires new ideas. And to bring new ideas to light requires seeking a diversity of perspectives and creating a welcoming space for people to share their ideas without fear of judgment. 

Being a good leader is as much about connecting with your people as it is about bringing knowledge and skills to the table. Feedback moments can build a deeper kinship with the people on your team and grow your capabilities as a creative, human-centered leader.

In this episode of our Creative Confidence Series, New York Times bestselling author Daniel Coyle chats with IDEO Managing Director Coe Leta Stafford about his newest book, The Culture Code, three skills that the most successful teams have in common, and how high performing teams react to tension differently. He shares why these skills are important and tactical ways to implement them today, whether you’re leading a team or want to make a change from wherever you sit.

In this Office Hours episode of our Creative Confidence Series, Jane Fulton Suri, IDEO Partner Emeritus and Executive Design Director, chats with IDEO U Dean Suzanne Gibbs Howard and answers questions from our community on design research, empathy, and observation. The interview has been edited for length and clarity. Listen to this episode on our podcast, and check out their full conversation to hear more about Jane’s experience over her 30-year career at IDEO and in design research.

Chris Nyffeler is an Executive Design Director at IDEO, leading IDEO's community of interaction, visual, and user experience designers. He is also the instructor of our new class, Prototyping for Digital Experiences. As a design practitioner himself, Chris has led and worked alongside Fortune 100 executives, entrepreneurs, and IDEO teams. He's led programs to design experiences for everything from ATMs to smartphones to connected home devices. We caught up with Chris leading up to the launch of Prototyping for Digital Experiences to chat about his experience at IDEO, his journey to interaction design, and advice for others in the field.

Jake Knapp has spent years figuring out how to prioritize the things that matter in an increasingly distracting world. In this episode of our Creative Confidence Podcast, Jake, the author of Make Time and the New York Times bestseller Sprint, shares the methods he has developed to find focus in daily life, opening up the opportunity to have more impact at work and at home. He shares how he started his journey toward productivity and mindfulness, lessons from his experience designing products at Google, and how by focusing on fewer things, you can actually do more as an individual and a team.

Innovation expert and author Warren Berger has spent years studying how questions can transform our business and personal lives and tap into our creative potential. In this episode of our Creative Confidence Series, he shares insights from his new book, The Book of Beautiful Questions, featuring hundreds of big and small questions that harness the magic of inquiry to tackle challenges we all face—at work, in our relationships, and beyond.

There’s a reason why the saying “curiosity killed the cat” has stuck around. Not all cultures or workplaces welcome curiosity as a path toward innovation. Some see it as questioning orthodoxy or stirring up trouble. But asking questions to uncover new problems and drive your thinking is a critical step toward achieving innovation. So how do we bridge the gap between those two competing perspectives?

In this episode of our Creative Confidence Series, Chris Flink, executive director of the Exploratorium, former IDEO partner, and a founding faculty member of Stanford University’s d.school talks to IDEO U Dean Suzanne Gibbs Howard about the evolution of the museum over 50 years, how they’ve expanded their reach globally, and how they cultivate creativity with their visitors, the broader community, and within their own organization.

In this episode of our Creative Confidence Series, Jane Fulton Suri, IDEO Partner Emeritus and Executive Design Director, and Dean of IDEO U Suzanne Gibbs Howard reflect on the evolution of empathy in design during Jane’s 30-year career at IDEO and why bringing curiosity into your work takes courage.

In our most recent Creative Confidence Series chat, David Kelley, founder of IDEO and the Stanford d.school, and IDEO U Dean Suzanne Gibbs Howard sat down to discuss the core abilities of the most successful design thinking practitioners and personal stories and learnings from David’s friendships with several of today’s most innovative CEOs and leaders. Hear from more innovative leaders on the IDEO U podcast.

Tips from IDEO Founder David Kelley on getting design thinking methods and mindsets to take root at your workplace.