Creative leadership… why?

The 7 Key Principles Of Creative Leadership

Whether you’re the CEO of a huge business organization, a team leader or a division manager of such a company, or owner of a small business outfit, creative leadership is important. It’s what leads to innovation. Furthermore, from concept to idea execution, a great deal of creativity is required. Here are 7 of its key principles:

• “It ain’t your creativity, baby! It’s about your group’s creativity.” : It’s true. Creative leadership has little to do with your own personal creativity and a whole lot to do with your team’s creativity. It’s a case of simple math. If it was only about your creativity, why should you need a whole team? You’ve got to tap the cumulative creativity of your group. This could be 6 to 60 and the numbers will surely give you better results.

• You don’t need to be a creative genius, but, you’ve got to have an understanding of creativity : If you’re exceptionally creative, great! It’ll set a terrific example to your team members. But to be a good creative leader, it’s not necessary to be a creative person. Don’t feel the need to pretend that you are. What is critical though is that you understand the creative process so you can facilitate it for your people. If you want to, you can talk loudly about your skills as a facilitator of creativity. This is, in the end, a lot more important in a creative leader.

• Get to know the strengths and weaknesses of your team: You’ll need to do this to maximize your effectiveness. Some of your guys may be incredible with ideas but lousy on execution. Others may exactly be the opposite. Some may do wonders solving problems on their own. Others have got to have teammates to add 2+2!

• Diversity: If teams have not been thrust upon you by circumstance and you are still in the stage of forming one, go for diversity. Choose diversity of experience, educational background, sex, culture, age, knowledge. If there are people you don’t like but are reputed to bring in results, get them too. Think that creativity is built on diversity. A more extensive range of backgrounds, culture and knowledge leads to a wider array of thinking and therefore greater creativity.

• It’s ok to make mistakes: If people don’t fail, they’ll never achieve great success. In the creativity and innovation fields it’s ok to make mistakes. As a creative leader, you know better. Encourage your guys to try, fail early in the game and try again. Share the failures with the rest of the team so everybody learns from them.

• You’ve got to trust your guys: Set clear goals. Give them a budget and tools and let go. Let them work out their own approaches towards achieving their goals. They’ll never learn by doing what they’re told. They learn by researching, trying, making mistakes and trying once more.

• You’ve got to be the champion of your team’s ideas. Surely, your creative team will come up with many ideas. As the leader of the band, you need to champion those ideas. especially, when they offer values to your company or your customers. When you do this, you make it more likely that the ideas could be realized and it’ll demonstrate to your team that you believe in their ideas and that you’re a creativity champion.

A creative leader has an open mind. Start off by giving these principles some thought and apply them as quickly as you can.