The Difference Between Idea and Insight
A few years ago I worked with a client who wanted to learn the latest leadership trends and ideas. He was an individual who had curated his own list of ideas and was looking to add new ones to his repertories. To put it bluntly, our coaching didn’t last beyond a few sessions.
There’s much to say about the power of ideas. TED talks are built on this premise - “ideas worth spreading.” Much has been written about how ideas are pointless unless you can executive on those ideas. This wasn’t the case for my client. He was actually a great executer. What was lacking was the difference between idea and insight.
Ideas are initially exciting. You get a new idea and a burst of creativity springs forth. New ideas can become powerful vision that move companies forward. The problem with new ideas for leaders is that not every idea is a good idea, but even more poignantly, not every good idea is the right idea for you and your company. We do this all the time. “Did you see what Apple did?” “Oh did you read about Tesla?” There are so many variables as to what made something work for one company that it’s not simply the idea alone. It takes a certain skill for someone to distill an idea or practice down to powerful principles that then can be applied elsewhere. But you need to do the hard work of deconstruction and reconstruction.
Insight however is personal. As the word connotes, insight has to do with seeing something deeper inside and getting perspective about yourself you didn’t have before. It is doing the deeper work of personal development and transformation.
We all know someone in our lives who churns love interest after love interest. There’s a dynamic or hindering mindset we can see that they can’t. A new idea such as a dating app or speed dating can be helpful, but the personal perspective shift that is vital to their true vision goes unaddressed. Insight based coaching provides the latter before we move to strategy and tactics. When insight comes first, and ideas second, powerful upleveling occurs not just for that moment but from now on for that person and those around them. This is why the coaching of leaders is a personal passion of mine.
This is deep coaching that goes beyond ideation and tactics. Often leaders can’t see faulty thinking or other areas that hold them back. The insight is not something out there to grab hold of, but something internal that needs to shift. When insight occurs, leaders grow deeper, slow down, and go back into their world with a richness beyond simply running around with a new idea. They’ve had an aha moment that changes everything.
Leaders owe it to themselves and the people they serve to have space to get more insight. It’s tempting to go after new ideas because it’s outside themselves and easy to latch onto. But leaders need to do the deeper internal work where true breakthrough can happen. That requires letting people in and willingness to take a look at your thinking, your own systems, your own product(s), and being open handed about what you might learn. When we do this, we model to our team what true leadership is. And when insight arrives, it becomes a spark everyone can rally around. Then new ideas may arise across the team from a single insight alone.
Summary
Ideas are powerful but not every idea is the right idea for you and your company.
Understand the difference between idea and insight.
Ideas are easy to grab onto because they’re external, but insight does the deeper work that is internal.
Insight changes the way we see ourselves or our situation which can catalyze new ideas.
We model learning when we can show our team we’re not just looking for new ideas but new insight.
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