Nine Greatest Ideas for Your Role as Creative Leader

Idea 65: Your basic role as team leader

Grace does not destroy nature but perfects it.

Thomas Aquinas, Italian philosopher, theologian and Dominican friar

Creative leadership is not a different form of leadership to, say, effective leadership. There is a natural or generic role of leader, and you need to master that. Being or becoming a creative leader is a grace that completes or perfects your leadership contribution. Good natural leaders are taking the first steps in that direction when they share decisions with their team members.

A key issue in leadership is always how far the team leader (appointed or elected) should share decisions with others, team members or colleagues, and, beyond that, involve them fully in creative and innovative thinking. Of course, it is also an issue for all of us how far we should make our decisions aer solitary and silent thought, or how far we should consult others. Should we try to generate ideas on our own or engage our team in the process?

Before looking together at the more creative aspects of leadership, the realm of great leadership, let me put it in context by reminding you of what the world knows already about the generic role of leader – the role true for all fields of work and all levels of leadership. Discovering that role in the 1960s was the greatest breakthrough in this field in my lifetime.

If you look closely at matters involving leadership, there are always three elements or variables:

1. The leader – qualities of personality and character.
2. The situation – partly constant, partly varying.
3. The group – the followers, their needs and values.

In fact, work groups are always different, just as individuals are. After coming together they soon develop a group personality. So that which works in one group may not work in another. All groups and organizations are unique.

But that is only half the truth. The other half is that work groups, like individuals, have certain needs in common. There are three areas of overlapping need which are centrally important, as illustrated in the diagram.

The model is a simple one. It is no longer a hypothesis or even a theory: we now know that it is true. It is simple but not simplistic or superficial. It has the quality mathematicians call deep. You can go on thinking about the model for the rest of your life and you will never exhaust its possibilities.

Idea 66: Task, team and individual

When people are of one mind and heart they can move Mount Tai.

Chinese proverb (Mount Tai is a famous mountain in Shandong Province, the highest known to Confucius)

Task need

Work groups and organizations come into being because there is a task to be done that is too big for one person. You can climb a hill or a small mountain by yourself, but you cannot climb Mount Everest on your own – you need a team for that.

Why call it a need? Because pressure builds up a head of steam to accomplish the common task. People can feel very frustrated if they are prevented from doing so.

Team maintenance need

This is not as easy to perceive as the task need; as with an iceberg, much of the life of any group lies below the surface. The distinction that the task need concerns things and the team maintenance need involves people does not help much.

Again, it is best to think of groups as threatened from without by forces aimed at their disintegration or from within by disruptive people or ideas. We can then see how they give priority to maintaining themselves against these external or internal pressures, sometimes showing great ingenuity in the process.

Many of the written or unwritten rules of the group are designed to promote this unity and to maintain cohesiveness at all costs. Those who rock the boat, or infringe group standards and corporate balance, may expect reactions varying from friendly indulgence to downright anger. Instinctively a common feeling exists that ‘united we stand, divided we fall’ that good relationships, desirable in themselves, are also essential means towards the shared end. This need to create and promote group cohesiveness I have called the team maintenance need.

Individual needs

Third, individuals bring into the group their own needs – not just the physical ones for food and shelter (which are largely catered for by the payment of wages these days) but also the psychological needs: recognition; a sense of doing something worthwhile; status; and the deeper needs to give to and receive from other people in a working situation. These individual needs are perhaps more profound than we sometimes realize.

They spring from the depths of our common life as human beings. They may attract us to, or repel us from, any given group. Underlying them all is the fact that people need one another not only to survive but to achieve and develop personality.

Idea 67: The three circles interact

We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibres connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibres, as sympathetic threads, our actions come as causes, and they come back to us as effects.

Herman Melville, American novelist

The three areas of need present in all working groups – task, team and individual – overlap and influence one another for good or ill.

If the common task is achieved, for example, then that tends to build the team and to satisfy personal human needs in individuals. If there is a lack of cohesiveness in the team circle, a failure of team maintenance, then clearly performance in the task area will be impaired and the satisfaction of individual members reduced. Thus, as shown in Idea 65, we can visualize the needs present in work groups as three overlapping and interactive circles.

Nowadays when I show the model on a screen I usually colour the circles red, blue and green, for light (not pigment) refracts into these three primary colours. It is a way of suggesting that the three circles form a universal model. In whatever field you are, at whatever level of leadership – team leader, operational leader or strategic leader – there are three things that you should always be thinking about: task, team and individual.

Keeping in mind those three primary colours, we can make an analogy with what is happening when we watch a television programme: the full-colour moving pictures are made up of dots of those three primary and (in the overlapping areas) three secondary colours. It is only when you stand well back from the complex moving and talking picture of life at work that you begin to see the underlying pattern of the three circles. Of course, they are not always so balanced and clear as the model suggests, but they are nonetheless always there.

Idea 68: Eight functions of leadership

At whatever level of leadership, task, team and individual needs must be continually thought about. To achieve the common task, maintain teamwork and satisfy individuals, certain functions have to be performed. A function is what leaders do as opposed to a quality, which is an aspect of what they are.

These functions (the functional approach to leadership, also called action-centred leadership) are:

1. Defining the task
2. Planning
3. Briefing
4. Controlling and coordinating
5. Evaluating
6. Supporting
7. Motivating
8. Setting an example

Leadership functions in relation to task, team and individual can be represented by this diagram.

These leadership functions need to be handled with excellence and this is achieved by performing the functions with increasing skills.

Where the task is essentially a creative one, the more freedom you can give to the group and each individual, the better. Freedom within the bounds or limits you outline is a necessary condition for creativity.

In particular, the functions of planning, controlling and coordinating and evaluating need to be done with a sensitive touch. Your real job is to create a climate that is conducive to creative thinking, so don't be heavy - handed or over-controlling.

Setting an example is always relevant. If you are creative and innovative yourself in your approach to the common task, your team will be infected by the same spirit. Trust in that law. ‘It is certain,’ wrote Shakespeare in King Henry IV, ‘that either wise bearing or ignorant carriage is caught, as men take diseases, therefore let men take heed of their company.’

Idea 69: The decision-making continuum

If people are of one heart, even the yellow earth can become gold.

Chinese proverb

From the leadership perspective, a key issue is how far you should make all of the decisions, or all of a given decision, yourself or how far you should share this essential work with your team. Let's look at the options.

There is a lot to be said for moving as far to the right end of the continuum as you can. The key principle is that the more people share in decisions that affect their working life, the more they are motivated to carry them out.

That consideration, however, has to be balanced against the fact that the wider you open the door of the Inn of Decision, the less control you have of the outcome. The team may make a plan that, although meeting the boundary conditions or requirements you have specified, is not the way you would have done it yourself. Can you live with that?

Just where you should decide to make a decision on the connuum depends on several key factors, notably the me available and the competence level of the team members. There is no one right answer or ‘style’, as the academics used to call it.

The best leaders are consistent – you know where you stand with them and they are in many respects predictable. But when it comes to decision making they are infinitely flexible. So a good leader, working with individuals or teams, will operate at different points on the scale during a given day.

As a creative leader, what you are essentially doing is connecting up a potenal or actual opportunity or problem with the fertile mind of your team as a whole – the so-called ‘wisdom of crowds’ – and of the individuals who comprise it.

Think of yourself as a catalyst. If you mix oxygen and hydrogen together you get gas. If you want water, the mother of life on earth, you need an electric spark. Your job is to be the vital spark, the catalyst that triggers off a train of truly adventurous and creative thinking.

Idea 70: Seven qualities of leadership

A leader does not only have leadership qualities, they have the appropriate knowledge and skill to lead a group to achieve its ends willingly.

Personality and character cannot be left out of leadership, however. There are certain generic leadership traits. The following is an indicative list, no more than that:

1. Enthusiasm – try naming a leader without it!
2. Integrity – meaning both personal wholeness and sticking to values outside yourself, primarily goodness and truth. Integrity makes people trust a leader.
3. Toughness – demanding, with high standards, resilient, tenacious and with the aim of being respected (not necessarily popular).
4. Fairness – impartial, rewarding/penalizing performance without ‘favourites’, treating individuals differently but equally. Firm but fair.
5. Warmth – the heart as well as the mind being engaged, loving what is being done and caring for people. ‘Cold fish’ do not make good leaders.
6. Humility – the opposite of arrogance, being a listener and without an overpowering ego.
7. Confidence – not over-confident (which leads to arrogance), but with a calm self-confidence. People know whether you have or have not got it.

If you put these qualities to work, you will create a climate that draws out the best in your team and its individual members, including their creativeness of mind. But remember that no one can lead others on a journey if they are not prepared to make the journey themselves. In the adventure of ideas, lead from the front!

In our complex and interdependent world, vulnerable to disruption, few things are more important than the quality and credibility of leaders.

Unaributed

Idea 71: Leadership qualities test

In testing whether or not you have the basic qualities of leadership, you should ask yourself these questions:

• Do I possess the seven qualies outlined in Idea 70 ?
• Have I demonstrated that I am a responsible person?
• Do I like the responsibility and the rewards of leadership?
• Am I well known for my enthusiasm at work?
• Have I ever been described as having integrity?
• Do I have the toughness and firmness of a good leader? Can I expect and demand the best from people – beginning with myself?
• Am I firm but fair in my dealings with both the team as a whole and each individual member?
• Can I show that people think of me as a warm and kind person?
• Am I an active and socially participative person?
• Do I have the self-confidence to take criticism, indifference and/or unpopularity from others?
• Do I have practical imagination and do I encourage it in those who work with me?
• Can I control my emotions and moods or do I let them control me?
• Have I been dishonest or less than straight with people who work for me over the past six months?
• Do I lead by example when it comes to being willing to consider and explore new ideas?

Creative leadership, like all forms of leadership, depends on the situation. So you need to ask yourself if you are right for the kind of situation where new ideas and new ways of doing things really matter:

• Are my interests, aptitudes and temperament suited to my current field of work?
• If not, can I identify one that would better suit where I would emerge as a leader?
• Do I have the ‘authority of knowledge’ in my current field (and have I acquired all the necessary professional and specialist skills through training that I could have done at this point in my career)?
• Am I experienced in more than one field/industry/function?
• Am I interested in fields adjacent and relevant to my own?
• Do I read situations well and am I flexible in my approach to changes within my field?
• Do I have a ‘tolerance for ambiguity’ – an ability to put up with the uncertaines and risks involved in all creative and innovative thinking?

Remember that your position does not give you the right to command. It only lays upon you the duty of so living your life that others may receive your orders without being humiliated.

Dag Hammarskjöld, second Secretary-General of the United Na ons (wring to himself)

Idea 72: Humility in action

Excellence and humility go hand in hand. The best leaders are not self-centred egotists. They put their role and responsibilies as leaders first – the dignity of their office, not of themselves. They serve people through that role. Their eyes are on truth, not on self.

A leader is best
When people barely know that he exists,
Not so good when people obey and acclaim him,
Worst when they despise him.
‘Fail to honour people,
They fail to honour you’;
But of a good leader, who talks little,
When his work is done, his aim fulfilled,
They will all say, ‘We did this ourselves.’

Lao Tzu, sixth century BCE

Idea 73: Five qualities of creative leadership

Don't try to get your wild geese to fly in formation.

Thomas J Watson, founder of IBM

Apart from fulfilling the generic role of leader in the shape or form required in your field (see Ideas 66 to 69 ), you need to develop some extra characteristics if you wish to be successful at leading creative teams. Now is your opportunity to adopt them if they are not already part of your philosophy. Here is an indicative list:

A willingness to bend rules

‘Mr Edison, please tell me what laboratory rules you want me to observe,’ asked a newly appointed colleague on his first day at work.

‘There ain't no rules around here,’ replied Edison emphatically. ‘We are trying to accomplish something.’

Rules and systems have their place, but they can really obstruct the process of innovation. A leader, as a member of the management team, should respect rules and procedures, but he or she should not think like a bureaucrat. Sometimes instructional dyslexia, the inability to read rules, is a strength rather than a weakness.

Rules can sometimes be stretched where they cannot be broken. Without this you end up being bogged down in organizational treacle – or, as Charles Dickens said, ‘Skewered through and through with office-pens and bound hand and foot with red tape.’

Remember how Admiral Lord Nelson once famously put his telescope to his blind eye to avoid carrying out an unproductive order? Having a blind eye can be a strength on occasion, not a weakness. Don't be afraid to use your initiative when occasion demands it.

An ability to work with half-baked ideas

Ideas seldom leap into the world fully formed and ready to go. They are more like newborn babies, struggling and gasping for life.

Leaders who facilitate team creativity demonstrate by example the value of listening to half-developed ideas and building on them if they have merit. They hesitate before dismissing an ill-formed idea or an imperfect proposal, for it may contain the germ of something really useful.

It follows that team creativity in groups and organizations calls for listening leaders.

An ability to respond quickly

To continue the newborn baby analogy, some new ideas or projects need sustenance quickly if they are going to survive. Leaders who mean business about creativity and innovation should have a flair for spoting potenal winners. But that is not enough.

The innovative organization must have leaders who are able to commit resources and not always have to defer everything to committees or upwards to a higher authority. Remember the saying: ‘Nothing is impossible unless it is sent to a committee.’ Committees have a habit of quietly smothering newborn ideas.

Being able to allocate or obtain small resources now may be far beer than being able to summon mighty resources in a year's time when it's too late. That is why some organizations appoint ‘project sponsors’, senior managers who are able to secure resources at a high level quickly for promising ideas.

Personal enthusiasm

Only leaders who are highly motivated themselves will mottvate others. Enthusiasm is contagious. Moreover, enthusiastic leaders and colleagues tend to be intellectually stimulating ones.

‘Man never rises to great truths without enthusiasm,’ wrote French essayist Vauvenargues. Innovation usually deals in small truths or incremental improvements, but the same principle holds good.

A tolerance for failure

As Nobel Prize winner Sydney Brenner, then Director of the Laboratory of Molecular Biology at Cambridge, once said to me: ‘If you want to innovate, give a person a chance. Innovation is gambling. Once you play safe you are lost.’ In other words, you have to be willing to accept an element of risk, for without risk there would be no mistakes, no errors and no failures.

Eliminang freedom is the biggest mistake of all: freedom alone breeds innovation and entrepreneurial success. Mistakes are a by-product of progress. Learn from them, but do not dwell on them.

Creative leadership means the mind of leadership that encourages, stimulates and guides the process of innovation from beginning to end. The challenge of innovation is largely the challenge of leading creative people. Have you faced, understood and accepted that challenge?

Not geniuses but ordinary men and women require profound stimulation, incentive towards creative effort, and the nurture of great hopes.

John Collier, English poet