Leadership Is The Function That Produces Creativity
If you don’t need creativity, you don’t need leadership
If you are charged with getting something done, and you know exactly what needs to be done, you need to manage the work. Management is the function that produces predictability and efficiency. It is an essential and important part of building a scalable business. However, wherever creativity is required, leadership is the skill that is needed. It is the function that creates the space for creativity to occur.
A VUCA World
The more volatile, uncertain, complex, or ambiguous (VUCA) your situation or environment is, the more important the function of leadership is. If you know everything there is to know, you need management. If it is only predictability and efficiency with a current process, again, you require management capabilities. This is becoming increasingly rare in business. The landscape is changing so rapidly that adaptability is the competitive advantage of the future. Adaptability in business requires creativity.
Creativity is an unlimited resource.
The Company you Keep
Your personal creativity is unlimited and by extension, the creativity of the teams and the people that you lead is exponentially unlimited. I assert that leadership is the function that maximizes this potential for creativity. Leaders must make sure they are surrounded by the right people. The right people are those who make them more creative in the pursuit of their shared goals, and vice-versa, they are people whose creativity they can improve as a result of their working together.
Surround yourself with people who become more creative in your presence and who improve your creativity when you work together.
Note that this does not mean that they agree with you. It means that you share a collective passion for the stated goals and you share a sense of psychological safety that allows you to challenge each other’s ideas with vigor so that the results are greater than what each of you could have accomplished alone.
If the work you are doing requires creativity, the people you choose to engage and spend time with is a critical decision that you make multiple times a day. The company you keep in your close spheres of influence, either amplifies or restricts your creativity. Thus, if you want to create an environment that enables possibility, pay close attention to the behaviors of the people you are surrounding yourself with.
Great leaders surround themselves with people who:
1. Share an authentic passion for the people they are serving. The environment is one of unrelenting positivity about the possibilities that have yet to be discovered and to celebrate powerfully when they find them together.
2. Extract creativity from the leader every day. They have the potential and passion to stretch the leader’s capabilities and keep them humble.
3. Are authentically inspired by the environment they are creating with the leader. They become more creative as a result of the work and it shows up in their creative output.
Measure the leadership capability of others by their ability to spark creativity in those they lead.
Measure your leadership capability by your ability to make the people important to you more creative.
Open Up Space for Creativity
Great leaders make the space for creativity by being present for the four levers of The Momentum Framework in their culture:
- Vision Casting: They create clarity about who they are there to serve and what problems they are there to solve together so that they maximize the number of people who are advocating for their cause.
- Intrinsic Motivation Optimization: They steward alignment, build confidence, and derive commitment by producing psychological safety, cycles of celebration, and environments of profound optimism and gratitude.
- Capability Growth: They ensure the people they lead are growing and learning while expanding the capabilities of the organization to prepare it for the future.
- Executing at Scale: They ensure that they remained focused on the experience of their customers and their employees and optimize their execution to maximize flow.
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REFERENCES:
An Advocacy Strategy, by Sean Flaherty (2021)
The Momentum Framework, by Sean Flaherty (2021)
Visioning is Hard, by Sean Flaherty (2021)
The Handbook of Self Determination Theory, by Ed Deci and Richard Ryan (2004)
Competence is More Valuable With a Healthy Dose of Confidence,by Sean Flaherty (2021)
Teams that Grow Together, Flow Together, by Sean Flaherty (2021)
