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Creativity Tip 17 - Top 10 Behaviours of Creative Leaders
1. Connect & Receive
Inspiration for creativity can come from anywhere and anyone. Really good creative people recognise this. Therefore, they maintain an open mind when they encounter new ideas and experiences. They read, listen, observe and experience as openly and receptively as possible. Further still, they actively seek out new information, ideas and experiences. There is a constant desire to expand the library of knowledge they can call upon for inspiration. Active networkers, they seek out contact with a variety of people from diverse backgrounds in order to enrich their knowledge pool.
2. Explore
Creative people explore the boundaries of a situation and rephrase the issues. They have active curiosity, question assumptions and restlessly seek to improve. "Could this be done better?", "What if this was done differently?", "Why do we do things this way?" are the types of questions they ask. They are willing to challenge the status quo and work across boundaries to get things done.
In a strong creative process nothing is taken for granted and there are no "sacred cows". The effective creative person makes full use of techniques that allow participants to fully explore and understand the issues they are addressing.
A willingness to explore your own boundaries is also important. Creative thinking is enhanced greatly by a willingness to take some 'risks' with your thinking and your behaviours - to try out new things and see where they take you.
3. Play
Great creative managers and their teams understand the value of playfulness - they have buzz, energy and a willingness to play with ideas and try new things. This in turn leads to spontaneity and flexibility. Creative games, that are fun and engaging, also exercise the creative 'muscles'. There is a willingness to have fun and derive enjoyment from the work environment. This is not to say that they do not take issues seriously or ascribe any less importance to their work - quite the contrary. Our experience shows a strong correlation between enjoyment and creative productivity.
4. Construct
A major inhibitor to creativity is the filtering that people impose on ideas - both their own and other people's. Barriers are lowered by adopting the mind-set that all ideas are valuable, regardless of whether or not they are ultimately used. The more good ideas you generate, the greater the chances that you will generate a truly great one.
The creative leaders use approaches that encourage ideas and build upon them.
They adopt and encourage the mindset that there are no "bad" ideas. Ideas are not torn down; they are nurtured and built upon. Each idea acts as a springboard for the creation of others.
The creative person is positive and upbeat. They look for the opportunities in a situation and encourage others to do the same. They aim high in their planning and goal setting - realising that barriers and obstacles are often not as large as they appear.
5. Use both intuition & logic
Effective creative thinking involves a powerful fusion of both logical and more 'intuitive' thinking. Creative people are adept at using both "left" and "right" brain approaches (as they are sometimes characterised). They learn to value tacit knowledge, hunches and intuition both in themselves and others. They use logic to probe and explore situations, to derive probable cause and effect and to test sanity and robustness of ideas.
They understand that resistance to ideas and initiatives can often be at an emotional rather than a rational level. In those circumstances, use of logic is unlikely to sway opinion. Therefore they seek to empathise with and understand emotive reactions.
6. Make time & space
Original, insightful thinking and creative plans require breathing room. They need time and space to evolve. Of course, in modern business, there are very real constraints on valuable time. However, there is also a tendency to artificially force the pace in order to appear productive and busy.
Great creative leaders do not create artificial pressures. They are prepared to cycle through the thinking and planning process several times if necessary. They accept that they may explore avenues that do not bear fruit. They are patient and allow some latitude for experimentation. They do not block avenues simply because they do not appear fully viable at first glance. Risk taking is accepted, even encouraged. They allow mistakes and encourage learning from them.
7. Adopt & Value Different Perspectives
It pays to explore issues from a number of different angles. Adopting alternative points-of-view, using different frameworks and metaphors, stimulates valuable insights. This enables participants in the creative process to look at issues through a different lens.
An effective creative person realises that not everyone approaches issues with the same mindset. They will intentionally adopt different modes of thinking to engage others in the process and maximize their contribution. These modes can be visual and aural, as well as textual or numerical. They employ stories, imagery, music, metaphor and fantasy as appropriate.
They will challenge their own thinking, deliberately adopting different perspectives and modes to break their usual mould. They extend this to others, encouraging others to challenge them and each others.
8. Motivate & Energise
Given the right stimuli and support, everybody is capable of producing useful new ideas and contributing to their development. The creative leader works hard to ensure that people enjoy the process, want to be involved and participate to the full.
A creative leader will seek to provide the right kind of motivation to promote team working and idea sharing and discourage knowledge hoarding and plagiarism.
This means harmonisation of objectives and shared goals. They look to create an environment that is fun to work in. Where satisfaction is gained from an enjoyable work environment and achieving the respect of others. To encourage initiative, they minimise any form filling and bureaucracy around processes to the truly necessary. They make it easy to kick-off initiatives and to share ideas.
Clearly there need to be controls to ensure resources are being used wisely and that risks are being managed. However, these should not be brought in so early that they stifle initiatives. The creative leader is willing to take and sanction risks - to make and allow mistakes. They encourage new ideas and initiative. They set challenges for themselves and their team and encourage a desire to challenge and improve.
9. Provide Focus
The creative leader believes in "creativity with a purpose". They strive to ensure that the team remain focused on their ultimate goals and that the creative process is managed towards meeting these. That does not mean there is no scope for exploring alternative approaches. However, the effective creative leader is adept at pulling attention back to the primary focus.
They set the context and the goals for the team but allow freedom as to how those goals are achieved. In group working, they adopt the mindset that, "The approach that works is the right approach." There is no one set way of getting individuals and teams to be effectively creative. No one creative group process is quite the same as another. They mould and adapt the approach to meet the needs of the situation. They aim to imbue the group with that same spirit of flexibility.
10. Reflect & Learn
The wise creative leader continually reviews and evolves their practice. This means they actively encourage and are open to feedback. They seek out the latest thinking on managing creativity (from business, science, the arts and elsewhere) and consider how it might be applied in their context. They are unafraid to try out new approaches if they believe they would be beneficial.
Taken from: www.alterativus.com
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