Small Practices, Big Impact: Float the Balloon

You’re reading another installment of Small Practices, Big Impact: Ripple Leadership in Action — a series exploring the simple, intentional actions that create powerful ripples in leadership and culture.

INSPIRE

Many leaders wait until something is fully formed before they share it.

The slide deck is polished. The decision is made. The rollout is ready. And then they wonder why people aren’t more… invested.

Here’s the question worth sitting with: What if the secret to commitment wasn’t a better presentation… but a question you asked before the plan was finished?

Research on the IKEA Effect tells us that people place significantly higher value on things they helped create. Not because those things are objectively better, but because their effort went into them. Labor leads to love.

Which means the moment you hand someone a finished product, you’ve already closed the door on ownership.

ASK

Think about what happens when someone actually floats a balloon. It’s tossed out, rising gently, unthreatening, drifting into open air. No one ducks. No one braces. And sometimes, unexpectedly, it catches a current or meets someone ready to give it a bump and travels somewhere surprising and beautiful. That’s exactly what this practice does. It creates a safe space for ideas to move freely, without the weight of finality pressing down on them.

Float the Balloon is a small (and so easy!) leadership practice with an outsized return. It’s the art of sharing something before it’s complete… not to seek approval, but to invite genuine input that shapes what it becomes. Low risk. High benefit.

It sounds like this:

• “I’ve been thinking about something… can I run it by you?”
• “This isn’t fully formed yet, but I’d love your take.”
• “What am I missing here?”
• “If you were me, how would you approach this?”

Notice what these phrases have in common. They’re low-cost. They signal openness. They lower the fear of being wrong. And they communicate something powerful to the person you’re asking: your perspective matters here, before the cement dries.

Here’s why this simple practice packs such a punch:

1. It’s low risk. There’s no pressure to defend or critique a finished plan. The informal tone makes it safe to think early and out loud.
2. Early voice increases later commitment. When people contribute to something early, they feel a sense of ownership over the outcome… even if their input was small.
3. It’s an act of respect. Floating the balloon says: I value your thinking enough to include it before we move forward.
4. It surfaces what you might be missing. The people closest to the work often see what leaders can’t. Asking early gives you the chance to course-correct before it costs you and your team.
5. It opens the door for others to do the same. When you model early and often feedback, it starts happening organically throughout your organization. This strategy works for every role and every direction.
6. It is easy. Have I mentioned yet how oh-so-easy this is? No calendar invite needed. No email to send. No agenda required. Just an idea, a problem, or a seed of a plan already stirring in your mind… tossed out to a team member you come across naturally. A moment of sending up the balloon creates a momentum of connection and investment.

One important note: floating the balloon only works if you’re genuinely open to what comes back. If you ask and then ignore, the damage is worse than not asking at all. This doesn’t mean you have to take and implement every piece of input you receive… that’s neither realistic nor the point. You just have to be willing to listen, and then name the contribution your team members make to what ends up being built. A genuine “thank you for your input and here’s how it shaped our thinking” goes a very long way.

Real co-creation means letting the conversation change something… because a great team is always in pursuit of the best next step, together.

AMPLIFY

This week, before your next decision is fully formed, bring one person in early. Not to approve it… to shape it. Try one of these phrases and notice what shifts.

Notice how the conversation opens. Notice how people lean in. Notice what you learn that you wouldn’t have otherwise. Notice how possibility is created.

Because when people help build something, they believe in it. And the niftiest part is that you’re building will be better because it was created together.

And that belief? It creates a ripple that carries into everything that comes next.

Every small practice creates a ripple. 🌀

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Float the Balloon is part of The 5-Minute Mentor’s Small Practices, Big Impact series. It was first introduced in Edition 034, exploring the IKEA Effect and the art of co-creation. Read the full edition here.

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