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Creative leadership is more than the sum of both characteristics: be creative + hold a leadership role. That focuses on an individual’s capacity. Effective creative leaders encourage and inspire others to be more creative. Not only is this important, according to Tom and David Kelley from the design firm IDEO, it is greatly needed. They cited an IBM study that found only 25 percent of individuals feel that they’re living up to their creative potential. The authors’ response? “That’s a lot of wasted talent.”
Tom and David claim everyone has creative potential, but they lack confidence in their creative abilities. They found this troubling since, “our creative energy is one of our most precious resources.” Their book, Creative Confidence show how we can regain that potential and leverage our individual and collective talent.
What we’ve found is that we don’t have to generate creativity from scratch. We just need to help people rediscover what they already have: the capacity to imagine or build upon new-to-the world ideas. But the real value of creativity doesn’t emerge until you are brave enough to act on those ideas. That combination of thought and action defines creative confidence: the ability to come up with new ideas and the courage to try them out.
– David Kelley and Tom Kelley, Creative Confidence
Building our creative confidence as individuals is a great first step.
But imagine the impact if leaders everywhere were able to cultivate that same creative confidence in our people.
That is transformational leadership.
Researcher Kathrin Rosing describes transformational leadership as “leadership behavior that is able to motivate followers to transcend beyond their own self-interests.”
Moreover, transformational leaders boost their followers’ confidence that they are able to successfully engage in creative behaviors by showing individual support and encouragement… transformational leaders inspire followers to feel more creative and to feel more confident to be creative… followers see more meaning and value in their work and feel more confident… psychological empowerment in turn fosters creativity as it provides the necessary autonomy for engaging in creativity.
– Kathrin Rosing, Transformational leadership and follower creativity: A review of underlying mechanisms and boundary conditions
I can see how this has played out in my own experiences.
I wish I could say that I have always been this kind of transformational leader, but I haven’t. I remember when I was a partner in an ad agency. I was more concerned with my own creativity than I was with the untapped potential of those who reported to me. My mentality was backwards. I saw them as a means to support my creative output and accomplishments. Instead, I needed to focus on SERVING THEM to give them the confidence they needed to engage more in their projects and bring their full creative capacity.
I have also been in environments where leadership did not inspire creative confidence. Some leaders were micromanagers, not empowering workers or giving us any sense of autonomy to make decisions, let alone bring creative ideas. Other leaders were less hands-on, but their decision-making process created instability. They would state a desired goal that would set people into motion. I would go to work generating ideas and sometimes prototypes, only to find out they had changed their minds on direction and my work was now meaningless.
This is the workplace equivalent of “the football gag” from Peanuts. Lucy pulls the football just before Charlie Brown kicks it and he fails miserably. It leaves Charlie wondering why he trusted Lucy, while she asks why Charlie didn’t kick the ball–even though that part is obvious.
Source: http://peanuts.wikia.com/wiki/Football_gag
This is the conundrum. We don’t feel like we can trust our leaders. Nobody wants to be Charlie Brown in this scenario. So, leaders spend all their energy trying to give their people enough confidence–possibly false confidence–to try and kick the football again. They wonder why their people are so hard to motivate, but it is obvious to everyone else.
So, what are healthy ways we can instill confidence in others? Dan Rockwell has some ideas in his Leadership Freak blog.
4 ways to fill others with confidence:
- Extend trust. Power flows to those you trust. Walk around asking yourself, “How might I trust people in new ways today?”
- Train people to declare intention, rather than ask permission. Confident people say, “I intend to ….” Powerless people ask, “What should I do?”
- Provide minimum instruction to competent people. Detailed instructions disempower. Explain results, but don’t explain every step to achieve results. (Exemptions to this guidance include issues of safety, harm, and capability.)
- Seek suggestions:
- What options do you see? (Generate three options by asking, “And what else?”)
- What option would you choose?
- What’s the next step?
To me, this looks a lot like empowering others. Which is a good start becoming a leader who transforms others… and yourself.