At its most basic level, innovation requires accepting that what you’re trying to achieve may not work out. If you’re not willing to risk failure, you’ll only do things which are guaranteed success– i.e. what’s already proven successful rather than what’s new, which might not be.

For this willingness to risk, you need either a culture that encourages risk-taking; or the internal confidence to take risks even when the culture doesn’t promote it.  Ideally, you’d have both the culture and the mindset.

One of the most important things to promote risk-taking is to destigmatize failure; or rather disassociate “innovations that didn’t work out” from loss of status (see an excellent article on  status in business relationships.) For practical ways leaders can do this, look for my next Forbes column sharing best practices from some of the country’s top CEOs.

Now, what about the mindset? It essentially parallels culture: just as the right culture helps people feel that “Even if this fails, they’ll still love me” the right mindset requires that the feeling that “Even if this fails, I’ll still love me.”

Simply put, the better people handle unsuccessful outcomes; and the higher their self-confidence and self-esteem; the more creativity and innovation can flourish. This is one of the many reasons it pays to raise both self-confidence and self-esteem; the rewards are well worth the effort.

First, let’s distinguish between these two concepts: Self-confidence is our belief in our ability to do things or in our capacity to learn how to do them. Self-esteem is how much we like and value ourselves.  Both of these benefit from dismantling the impostor syndrome and silencing the inner critic; but after that, the techniques for raising each of these differ.

To be continued…