In today’s complex business environment, the leaders who thrive are not those with all the answers—but those who create the conditions for new answers to emerge.
It is absurdly easy for leaders to kill early or new thinking. It’s too easy to answer emergent thinking with “we’ve tried this before” or “how does that tie to our strategy?”. Sometimes even a sideways glance is enough to stop a team member sharing a thought.
But we know that these early half thoughts are where innovation grows from. Leaders need to resist the urge to shortcut, and embrace the need to explore together to get to the riches.
Ideas are just like seedlings - they need the right conditions to grow.
The SUN model of leadership—Suspend judgement, Understand, and Nurture thinking—offers a practical framework for cultivating a culture of ideation and experimentation where innovation becomes everyone’s business.
The Business Case: Ideation as a Strategic Asset
Leaders that embed SUN behaviours see measurable results. McKinsey research shows that companies fostering psychological safety and experimentation outperform peers by up to 30% in long-term value creation. When leaders model curiosity and collaborative idea-building, engagement and retention rise—especially among next-generation talent who seek workplaces where their thinking is valued.
Step 1. Suspend Judgement
We train people to come to us ‘with solutions not problems’. But the solution is not the ‘gold’ in innovation. It’s the insight that matters.
Innovation dies in the presence of premature judgement. Leaders must suspend judgement of the idea, and instead invest time teasing out the insight that drove the idea in the first place.
By suspending judgement, leaders quiet that threat response and signal psychological safety, allowing the prefrontal cortex, responsible for higher-order thinking and insight, to engage.
Amy Edmondson’s research at Harvard has shown that psychological safety is the single greatest predictor of team innovation.
In the early stages of ideation, leaders must act less like critics and more like gardeners, protecting fragile new shoots from the harsh weather of analysis..
Innovation dies in the presence of premature judgement. .
Practically, this means stopping our instinct to sharpen thinking - to tell people where they are wrong - and replacing it with a practice of positive inquiry. Ask: “Tell me why you love this idea? What excited you about it? How could it help us?”
Step 2: Understand what’s beneath
Understanding goes beyond listening—it’s about seeking clarity on the insight behind the idea.
Leaders who ask, “Tell me more—what excites you about this?” activate the brain’s dopaminergic system, which fuels motivation and creative flow.
Research from neuroscientist Dr. David Rock shows that curiosity and exploration increase dopamine levels, fostering a more open and inventive mental state. C-suite leaders can model this by engaging diverse perspectives and reframing problems—techniques long used by design thinkers and innovation pioneers such as IDEO and Pixar.
By reframing challenges through another lens—“How would a start-up tackle this?” or “What would our customer design if they could?”— we can unlock fresh and unconventional insights.
Step 3: Nurture Thinking
Nurture Thinking is about growing the - now clear - insight into meaningful ideas. It’s about exploring multiple possibilities before deciding what to invest in.
When leaders recognize, build upon, and develop ideas collaboratively, they trigger the oxytocin response—the brain’s social bonding hormone—creating trust and collective ownership.
In practice, nurturing means pausing to explore “what’s good about the idea” before refining it. It means rewarding experimentation, even when outcomes are uncertain. As Jeff Bezos famously noted, “If you know it’s going to work, it’s not an experiment.”
Leading the Light
SUN leadership isn’t soft—it’s strategic. In volatile markets, the ability to generate and test new ideas faster than competitors is the ultimate advantage.
By suspending judgement, understanding deeply, and nurturing thinking, leaders don’t just spark innovation—they create a culture that outlasts them.
They build organisations that think bravely, act boldly, and keep discovering what’s next.
That’s not just leadership.
That’s legacy.