Creative leadership involves imagining a new world,
or ways to make the current one better.”
When properly managed and encouraged, creativity can be found in any employee, regardless of their job description. On the whole, creative people typically fall into a variety of categories, ranging from those who are quick and dramatic to people who are careful and quiet. But one thing remains true of all: most creative ideas are not flashes of inspiration in an individual’s head but rather come from how people identify, create, store, share and use the knowledge they’re exposed to in their surrounding environment.
And fostering that environment (not the act of creativity itself) is the task of creative leadership.
Managing Creative People
Managing for creativity and innovation differs slightly from other methods of management due to the level of freedom employees need to be given in order to have space, time and the right environment to think creatively.
But like any other process, managing creative functions must strike a balance between employees, clients, audiences and partners, achieving satisfaction between all involved for it to be effective and fundamental to this process to have a leader who is open to new ideas and fresh thinking, in order to fully explore new ways of doing things.
“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.” ~John Quincy Adams
“Creative leadership involves a unique vision or brilliant strategy, and sometimes both” “One of the tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency.” ~Arnold Glasow
According to management guru and author, Peter Drucker:
How a leader can generate creativity in their team
What might an ideal creative environment look like?
Leaders responded by listing the following six attributes they perceive a creative environment to exhibit:
These six factors are interdependent and form the ideal creative environment, and have developed called Breakthrough Leadership.
The successful leaders of the future need to think of their role more as builders and facilitators of a creative environment rather than adopting the traditional command and control mindset.
1. Open and receptive to ideas
For many leaders, an open and receptive culture was the very essence of creativity and innovation. This insight has certainly informed my work for the past few years. It is not enough to generate big, new ideas if no one is open or receptive to them. Idea receptivity is equally as important as idea generation.
2. Continually experimenting
According to leaders a creative culture is continually testing and experimenting. The tests do not have to be big – in fact smaller, quicker, cheaper tests are the order of the day.
3. Taking risks
Having an experimental mindset also makes it easier to take risks, which is one of the other key features of a creative culture. Innovation by definition means testing new ideas and approaches, which involves risk-taking, learning and failure. This partly explains why high-achieving managers find even the idea of innovation difficult, as the outcome is not predictable.
4. Fun and enjoyable
Even the most practical and rational leaders also recognise that creating new ideas can only occur when people can relax and enjoy themselves and their work. The outcome may be serious but the process is not.
5. Retaining a focus on results
I found this a surprising result, but truly creative environments place a premium on results. It is not all beer and skittles. Creative people want to have their ideas tested in the marketplace. They need to know what works and what does not.
6. Operating at the ‘edge of chaos’
One of the distinguishing features of a creative culture is a concept which I have borrowed from complexity theory called operating at the ‘edge of chaos’. Although leaders did not use this language they instantly recognized its properties. The edge of chaos means that a living system operates in the dynamic zone between order and randomness.
Leaders would talk about giving people freedom but within constraints. And further, they adopted a leadership style of agreeing ‘what’ has to be delivered, leaving the ‘how’ to their team members.
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