In a recent coaching conversation, my client wanted to work on “how to have more influence in his organization.” He felt that he was being overlooked for opportunities. He wanted to influence others more effectively in order to advance in his leadership role.
Here are some ways to influence others in the workplace to enhance your leadership impact:
When new in a group or with individuals, introduce yourself right away.
Expand your sphere of influence by cultivating strategic relationships.
Know your audience, what is important to them and how will you provide value and benefit?
Increase your level of contribution by making suggestions and sharing your ideas more often.
Be well prepared with facts and data so you are more forceful in stating your opinions. Be sure to also give your perspective on why you believe the facts are valid.
Develop conviction when stating your opinions and ideas – don’t hesitate. Pay attention to your vocal quality so you come across confidently.
Summarize your opinions frequently to build understanding.
Ask others for feedback on how they perceive you and what you could do differently to have a more positive impact.
Show enthusiasm – the more committed you are, the more others will be willing to support you.
Observe leaders in your organization or community who are highly influential. What are they doing that is effective?
Influencing others is a critical skill in today’s work environment. In what ways do you influence others to enhance your leadership impact?
Pam Solberg-Tapper MHSA, PCC – I spark entrepreneurial business leaders to set strategy, take action, and get results. How can I help you? Contact me at CoachPam@cpinternet.com ~ Linkedin ~ 218-340-3330
We talk about change as a process, but it is also the emergence of a new system from within the existing system. This systemic evolution occurs when we are unable to incorporate environmental discontinuities into the current Status Quo. As organizational Adaptive Strain increases, a cycle of change is induced.
“How are we going to achieve our Operating Plan goals given these new budget cuts?” Sound familiar? Our typical response to challenges like this is to create a workaround – a short-term fix that solves the immediate problem but does not address the root cause. In other words, we must deliver more output with less people, money, and time. This is the new normal in business, education, healthcare, and energy. I believe that until we become masters at using Adaptive Change our workarounds will continue to apply Band-Aids to critically wounded institutions.
When the Onyx1 brand team identified the 2016 Status Quo they desired – their 5 year vision of the future – they were able to imagine2 what they would be doing then and how it would feel. From that future they then imagined their way back to the present – an exercise called Future Back3. Because the critical period for their brand spanned the next five years they walked back to the present in one year intervals, creating a set of milestones for each year. But remember the stream bed and VUCA – we are not trying to predict the future with this exercise. We are trying to Understand the Uncertainty so that we can find Clarity within the Complexity and use Agility when our options seem Ambiguous.
Once you have made your way back to the present you are ready to chart your course to the first milestone – in other words, induce change within the organization.
Change changes change!
Kotter and most other change authors focus on the transactional aspects of change – the things we do during the change process. For example, during the PDCP change process a key transactional element was to create and validate each target opportunity for a specific disease. This was a huge investment of time and effort by over 30 cross-functional teams. The organizational effect it had was to change the business focal point from this year’s operating plan to a horizon 20 years in the future. Given the length of time required to develop new drugs, 10 + years, this proved to be a significant competitive advantage. This shift also produced additional transactional initiatives that introduced new organization capacity, for example: patient flow modeling, a decision-analysis group, deeper integration of manufacturing into clinical development, and a VP of communications. A transactional focus is necessary for change to succeed, but it is not sufficient.
As transactional plans ripple across the organizational web they generate emotional and psychological reactions in the people and teams they affect. All too often these are fear, distrust, caution, resistance, denial, and defense of the Status Quo (the devil I know). The Adaptive Strain within the organization becomes Personal Strain in its employees. Psychologist Virginia Satir extensively studied groups of people moving through change and documented the roller-coaster ride of their emotional experience, capturing it as a jagged red line. Thus, the emotional reaction to transactional change (logical, planned, and predicted) is unsettling, uncomfortable, and scary.
The red line of change pulls the change process away from its sequential, step-by-step, idealized plan and into a cauldron of chaos and VUCA – a cauldron that also contains creativity, imagination, opportunity, innovation, and transformation. While this sounds like (and to control and command leaders feels like) a nightmare and the road to failure, it is actually the path that creates individual and organization acceptance of the reality they face, with all its discontinuities, and the inspiration to achieve the full potential that the future holds. Kevin Kelly’s phase, change changes change, is the mantra of Adaptive Change.
In Summary
Adaptive Strain is induced by internal and external discontinuities
A future Vision generates a response to these that is actionable
In this way, Volatility and Vision initiate an Adaptive Change cycle
As transactional plans for change are made, Personal Strain is experienced by people within the organization
Personal Strain induces a red line of change, emotional responses to transactional initiatives
The red-line impacts the linear change process, making it unpredictable
This produces benefits and opportunities that can be transformational for organizations when their leaders master the Adaptive Change process
1 – A fictitious company
2 – The process of imagination uses the right brain cognitive processes (holism, emotion, and meaning) to picture a situation. NeuroIntegration® (abstraction, quantification, both/and dualism) links these to the left brain cognitive operators (reductionism, cause and effect, and either/or dualism) to make the imagined situation achievable.
3 – This exercise can also be used to understand the customer’s point of view, Customer-back, imagine their future needs, desires, or relationship to your company.
The attitude “I don’t give a rip about my job” happens every single day.
Employees get this way when they are bored with their job, or feel like a faceless cog in a big wheel or don’t know how “what they do” specifically contributes to the goals of their department or business unit. So what causes it? How can you, as a supervisor, prevent “It’s not my job” from happening within your team or department?
Here are three ways to develop employee commitment.
1. Communicate the importance of what they do. Every supervisor should be able to state a meaningful purpose for his department and the work that is being done. Here is a short but powerful statement that was developed by a manager for her five-person benefits group.
“Benefits are about people. It’s not whether you have the forms filled in or whether the checks are written. It’s whether the people are cared for when they’re sick, helped when they’re in trouble.”
It is a statement with the focus on the end result—serving people—rather than on the means or process—completing forms. How well do you communicate the importance of what is being done in your department?
2. Recognize the importance of recognition. The motto of many supervisors is: “Why would I need to thank someone for doing something he’s paid to do?” Workers repeatedly tell, with great feeling, how much they appreciate a compliment. They also report how distressed they are when their supervisor is quick to criticize mistakes but not acknowledge good work.
A pat on the back, simply saying “good going,” a dinner for two, a note about them to senior executives, some schedule flexibility, a paid day off, or even a flower on a desk with a thank-you note are a few of the hundreds of ways supervisors can show their appreciation. Money may get people in the door but it doesn’t keep them motivated to go the extra mile.
3. Tap into the importance of involvement. There may be no single motivational tactic more powerful than asking for people’s input. An accounting manager presented a list of customer complaints at a staff meeting. She then broke the group into teams to find ways to eliminate these service glitches.
Getting every one involved in problem-solving accomplished three goals. It brought the customers to the center of the department’s day-to-day operations; it lead to greater ‘buy-in” when changes had to be made in a process, policy or procedures; and finally it said to everyone that they and their ideas are valued.
As one very proud production line worker in an automotive plant said to me, “They only looked at what we could do from our neck down…now it’s for what we can do from our neck up.”
Management Success Tip:
It is true that most people must work to survive and money is certainly a motivator — but up to a point. For your employees to achieve great things, they need to experience purpose, recognition and involvement. As a supervisor you can provide that. It costs you nothing. And you might gain greater productivity and profitability.
Supervision is a widely misunderstood term. Many people believe it applies only to people who oversee the productivity and development of entry-level workers. That’s not true.
The term “supervisor” typically refers to one’s immediate superior in the workplace, that is, the person whom you report directly to in the organization. For example, a middle manager’s supervisor typically would be a top manager. A first-line manager’s supervisor would be a middle manager. A worker’s supervisor typically would be a first-line manager.
Supervisors typically are responsible for their direct reports’ progress and productivity in the organization. Supervision often includes conducting basic management skills (decision making, problem solving, planning, delegation and meeting management), organizing teams, noticing the need for and designing new job roles in the group, hiring new employees, training new employees, employee performance management (setting goals, observing and giving feedback, addressing performance issues, firing employees, etc.) and ensuring conformance to personnel policies and other internal regulations.
Supervisors typically have strong working knowledge of the activities in their group, e.g., how to develop their product, carry out their service, etc. Many also use the term “supervisor” to designate the managerial position that is responsible for a major function in the organization, for example, Supervisor of Customer Service. For more information, see All About Supervision.
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Carter McNamara, MBA, PhD – Authenticity Consulting, LLC – 800-971-2250
Read my weekly blogs: Boards, Consulting and OD, Nonprofits and Strategic Planning.
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The events of last week remind us that VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity) lives just under our radar screen and can catapult us from the status quo into radical change instantly. Like the 2008 economic crisis, events of this magnitude create unavoidable systemic strain that threaten to tear organizations, even countries, apart. As leaders, we need to embrace a mechanism of change that is adaptive, able to respond to internal and external challenges as they emerge rather than as we predict they will happen. Furthermore, we need to embed this adaptive change process into our organizational culture and planning. In this way businesses can absorb changes in the external environment, resilience, and use their internal responses and actions to influence it, co-creation.
Three years ago Onyx Manufacturing1 was first to market with an innovative product and they quickly established themselves as the market leader. Now five new entrants are expected in the next few years and their budget is shrinking as money is shifted to new products in development. They are being squeezed externally by new competitors and internally by changing priorities. These create Adaptive Strain that pulls them away from their current situation (status quo) and into an unknown future. The game is not over for them, but it will be soon if they can’t adapt their thinking and business mindset to this new “reality”. And, while business literature talks about the benefits of operating “at the edge of chaos”, right now it is stability that feels good, not change. When I met with the team leader morale was low, key people were being transferred to the “exciting new products”, budgets were being cut, and the leadership team struggled to express their “reason for being”. Something had to change.
Creating Persistent Patterns
But, what is stability? How does the status quo arise within dynamic systems? In business we like to think of the status quo as a thermostat – a means of controlling a system to maintain its stability. Yet in the dynamic VUCA-web of business, control is a misnomer and even the status quo is unstable.
What we learn from the new sciences is that the status quo is actually the interplay of order and disorder. Our current situation is a snap shot of a dynamic pattern created by energy (resources, people, and ideas) flowing through a system (a set of functions that create products and services), influenced by the structure of the system (organizational design).Think of a stream, the water is the energy and the stream bed structure, its function is to allow movement or flow. The status quo is the whole dynamic system at any point in time. Imagine, for example, the water level (energy) exposes a large rock (structure) which creates a whirlpool, a “stable” pattern; which in this case we can call the Onyx brand team and its product. We mistakenly believe that this stable pattern exists outside of the system rather than being a product of the system. When we base our thinking and leadership actions on this belief we lose resilience and the ability to evolve and co-create our future.
What the Onyx team is experiencing now is a change in the dynamic system and the creation of a new status quo. Their resources are drying up causing the “stable” whirlpool pattern to become unstable with the real possibility that it could disappear. In addition, this exposes new rocks in the terrain, new competitors that threaten to create stable patterns of their own. The status quo of the system is changing and unless the brand team actively participates in this change (through resilience and co-creation) they run the risk of disappearing from the system altogether. To address the systemic transactional change, the brand team needs to create a Vision of a new status quo that is significantly different from the one they live in today. This Vision of the Future must address the Adaptive Strain within the system in order to adapt to aspects of it they can’t control. In this way they can evolve their distinctive, coherent pattern and conserve a place for themselves within the future status quo.
Leadership Inquiry for the Status Quo
What dynamic patterns do you believe are permanent but in reality aren’t?
What meaning do you derive from these patters?
How does this limit your ability to adapt to both opportunities and threats?
Considering your “whirlpool”: Is there too much stability (control) or instability (change) for long-term sustainability?
Are your team’s Purpose and Vision able to maintain our pattern when VUCA enters the system?
Equilibrium is death. As a biologist, I believe this fundamental truth of life also applies to business. When a living breathing business flat-lines, the end is near. It is the dynamic flow of resources, goods, services, money, information, and workers that keep businesses alive and healthy. The global financial collapse of 2008 came close to an economic flat-line for many businesses worldwide. What does this have to do with leadership? Leaders are accountable for maintaining the change dynamic.
The Dilemma of Change
A dilemma is fundamentally different from a problem as there is no solution to the situation, only an iterative dynamic to follow. Change is a dilemma which is why the PDCP change initiative didn’t follow Kotter’s process. To understand the dynamics of the change dilemma as it exists in your life, team, or company you can map the dynamic using a process similar to the one Barry Johnson developed for mapping polarities1.
A few years ago I worked with a pharmaceutical team that was struggling to move out of the status quo and enter a cycle of change. After interviewing all the team members to understand their perception of the situation, I constructed the following dilemma map. The map clearly defined the trap they were in and what needed to be done to get change started in a positive way (which is where we start next week’s post).
To create your own dynamic map of a dilemma or change, start by identifying the two fundamental components of your situation. In this case we are working with change and the status quo. Begin at the lower left quadrant, the negative aspects of change, and list all the factors that make change uncomfortable, unwelcome, and sometimes painful. Be very specific. If you, or others, resist change capture why – find the deeper, emotional drivers of the quadrant (this holds true for all four quadrants).
Really feel the downside of change, because this is what makes you desire the status quo. From the downside of change we naturally desire and move toward the upside of the status quo. Fill that quadrant in, listing all the reasons why it is mentally, emotionally, physically, and practically the best place to be. These are the reasons your change effort will fail – this quadrant is what entices you to abort your change initiative.
The status quo does have a downside. Hidden within all that is desirable about where you are exist aspects that make it unsustainable, these are the negative side of the status quo. What aspects of your situation are destabilizing the system because they are too rigid, stifling, or out of step with the current reality? What is keeping you and your organization from innovating, growing, creating a better future for yourselves? How do you feel when the status quo loses its positive qualities and becomes a straightjacket? These are the reasons you move toward change, to make your situation better – emotionally and physically. Capture the positive aspects that change can bring to your situation.
The final step2 is to name the scenario that living in the positive creates, naming our greatest hope, and the scenario that living in the negative creates, naming our greatest fear. Each dilemma has a dynamic composed of two creative tensions – one horizontal and one vertical – that create movement within the system.
A Leader’s Lessons from the Dilemma Map
Leaders that understand the dynamic can use the creative tension within the system to manage the dilemma. For the pharmaceutical team leader four steps helped move the team forward:
A team off-site that generated a collective vision, revitalized their purpose, and begin to craft a new team identity
Reduction in overwhelm – this leader used the “stop-start-continue3” exercise
Keeping focus on the positive change quadrant, in this case refining the business model to increase the asset value of the brand
Openly acknowledging that the dynamic is filled with emotional tension that is different for everyone
Balancing VUCA with VUCA Prime would also have helped, more on this in a later post, and the exercise from the last blog can be used as is or modified to meet the needs of the change situation.
1- Change is a polarity, however many dilemmas are not true polarities. Nevertheless, I find the process works well.
2- Here is where my process differs from Johnson’s, he does this first and I do it last as way of gaining insight from the completed four quadrants.
In 1997, Dr. Mase designed and led a corporate-wide restructuring of the product development and commercialization process for Bristol-Myers Squibb, reporting to the heads of Pharmaceutical Marketing and Pharmaceutical R&D. This 18-month change process brought together cross-functional teams (including R&D, Global Marketing, manufacturing, and operations) to generate 20 year future scenarios and: create target product profiles based on those scenarios, value each profile, and validate them with global opinion leaders. As part of this work, she also initiated the use of Early Commercial Valuation (risk adjusted), patient flow modeling, and strategic decision analysis during early commercial development. Over the 18 month initiative, both organizational functions and structures were reconfigured.
Many coaches and clients find that work, family and community commitments take up the majority of their time. There seems to be little time left for themselves and their self care. They end up choosing to go with less sleep in order to manage their demanding schedules or they try to sleep and cannot.
Quality sleep reduces stress, provides growth and repair for the body, and improves your thought process. Sleep deprivation causes changes in mood and impairs decision making. Adequate amounts of sleep may vary from 6 to 10 hours depending upon the individual. More importantly, the quality of your sleep is more imperative than the quantity.
Here are tips to improve the quality of your sleep:
Avoid alcohol, caffeine and meals before bedtime
Allow yourself time to wind down before turning in
Take a hot shower before going to bed
Control your sleep environment (temperature, noise, lighting)
Learn and practice relaxation techniques
Stock up on sleep in preparation for future sleepless periods
Turn your clock so you can’t look at it during sleepless nights
Go to bed on a regular schedule
The result will be improved physical and mental energy that will take you to the next level.
You have heard it all before every time business goes through a rough patch.
“It’s time our leaders got creative.” Actually, it’s time we all got creative.
“Creative people just drive you crazy.” “They have no social skills–well limited ones.” However, you know creative people so you have to watch getting them angry. “They could do creatively bad things to you.” I’m kidding, of course. I doubt if anyone actually says that, but…
It’s almost as if being creative is a bad thing. We like what creative people can do for us. We find it most entertaining, but when it comes to leadership, we want serious business. It seems it’s always been that way.
There are actually people who think “the creative people I work with are nice and can be fun to work with, but they are not detail-oriented and it drives me nuts! Let them tilt at windmills, but don’t ask them to draw a detailed map to the windmill because you’ll never get there – even if you stop and ask for directions…”
It’s almost as if being creative is a bad thing. We like what creative people can do for us. We find it most entertaining, but when it comes to leadership, we want serious business. It seems it’s always been that way.
We expect our leaders to reign with dignity, to relish a vision, and motivate us to do the same–but remain above it all. We don’t expect them to be creative–until we need them to be creative. Someone has to. And we’ve alienated those who–but for fear of getting laughed at or otherwise ostracized–could come to our aid and offer creative suggestions. About that vision we expect leaders to have… Where did that come from? One of the creative members of their staffs? Or, from themselves? I’m guessing the latter.
Okay, this does sound sensible. To a point, but wait for it. I’ve heard it said or read it in a social media comment somewhere:
“For creativity to be appreciated, it needs to be planted, nurtured and cultivated throughout the organization. Relegating it to just the leadership levels creates dreamers who don’t have the resources to execute.”
What no dreamers? If that’s the case, there is no Thomas Edison. No Alexander Graham Bell. No Steve Jobs. I’m a little slow remembering all the creative geniuses who made big changes to our lives, but I’m sure I’m not the only one.
If there ever was a time in the corporate world of business for proactive managers and leaders–and creative energy drives action–that time is now. Haven’t you heard? I read this somewhere recently. All leaders should be creative, passionate, sensitive and self-confident–especially in today’s world market. Most of us would probably agree that creativity is applying an innovative approach to an established view—a view by the way that was probably once thought to be creative itself.
Some would even say for a leader to demonstrate that creativity, he or she loses credibility.
In Part One of this blog, I talked about the study that said the person who demonstrates creativity is not perceived by others (peers, especially) to be leadership material. Just as the leader is not perceived to be very creative. Some would even say for a leader to demonstrate that creativity, he or she loses credibility. I had a leader who used to dress up in a silly costume on Halloween and pass out candy to his employees. I thought the act was silly–humorous even, but I didn’t think it made him someone else. Yup, he was still the boss. And, he is still the-follow-him-anywhere guy.
If we accept the leader should not be creative in practice once he’s laid that creative egg, what’s next? In other words, once a leader has found that creative vision, how can he or she transfer that “creative” vision to the rest of the company without being creative and have it heard. That requires a different skill, or does it?
We train leaders to be creative, but usually only when we need them. What if creativity is inherent, and can’t be trained? Are wasting our time instilling creativity in leaders instead of hiring potential leaders already equipped with that ability?
A little creativity thrown in with normal leadership traits might help. Our perceptions that leaders cannot be leaders and be creative, too, may be just flat wrong. Leaders with vision must be creative and often are in other ways, but that ability to use that creativity in his or her job is restrained by a corporate culture that has determined for years what a leader should look like. Times have changed. The world is more accessible–a mouse click away. Business and market trends change almost instantaneously. Are we seriously in the same position we were years ago?
There have always been signs creativity was necessary in the problem solving arena. Leaders and key staff have retreats designed to bring out those hidden abilities—and in times of trouble we are expected to train them to be even more creative, too. Can you even train someone to be creative? I believe you can to a point. Some leaders show a natural talent for it. Some ability is inherent. If it is, then we should look for potential leaders who already have it rather than try to train those who do not.
I think you can pose scenarios, offer meditation techniques, reflection and observation techniques. Maybe those same techniques can be used to train those who surround the leaders and creative types about tolerance and openness to new ideas.
The training team is hampered by that the norm is to hire “team players.” While this hiring practice sounds reasonable on the surface, in a company built around rigid processes and policies it just breeds conformity. And conformity we know is not a producer of creativity. If you try changing the corporate dynamic, you may find yourself on the list of those who don’t deserve the company’s attention any more.
This is why companies built on a foundation of creativity and ingenuity are making us all take notice. Maybe they’re doing something right.
I’m afraid this is the Computer Age no longer–but the Age of Innovation. We need innovation as well as creative ideas to gain and hold consumer attention.
Obviously, there are companies that are creative by nature—they deal in artistic and graphic art representations, marketing products or services, or problem-solving for others… That’s still most of us!
While we are debating the merits of training creativity to our leaders or training our creatives to be leaders, maybe we should be training tolerance and acceptance of all the roles people play in an organization—each being important in its own way.
Let’s not forget that companies that succeed in the first place began and thrived because of a whole lot of creative spirit, an attitude that stood the company apart from other companies. Creativity began the day; it can save the day. Unique solutions to company problems, unique attention-getting communication to the public about who we are and what we can do for them will save the day.
Even more creativity is going to be needed if we are to continue thriving in the business market. According to IBM’s Institute for Business Value, a survey of 1500 CEOs revealed that “creativity is the single most important attribute to lead a large corporation.”
Training our creative corporate staff how to lead and our leaders how to be creative and innovate to increase productivity must be high on our list. To get there we need the best of creative types–especially in our leaders; however, a recent study by Jennifer Mueller, a professor at the Wharton School of Business, Jack A. Goncalo of Cornell University, and Dishan Kamdar of the Indian School of Business conducted a series of experiments to find out how creative people were viewed by their colleagues. The trio’s results tell a different story that should cause us some concern.
The road to Innovation needs the creative efforts of both leadership and staff. What began as a vibrant new idea is the standard. Where do we innovate from here?
In the study, individuals who expressed creative ideas were viewed as having less leadership potential than individuals whose ideas were less creative. This left me wondering if we were ready mentally to take on the training challenge that goes with changing the way we view people in our organization.
What are your perceptions of creative people? Are they leadership material? Recent studies say, “NO.” Are leaders creative, again, “NO.” None of this is absolute, of course. There are always exceptions.
We should encourage creativity in staff as well as leaders. That becomes difficult in a culture that tends to view the creative types as quirky, nerdy types lacking in leadership potential. So who’s to lead these groups. Leaders have retreats designed to bring out their creative ability—but we should also be expected to train company creatives to lead, and others to tolerate and respect what each individual brings to the table, and leave the old corporate culture competitiveness behind. (That’s probably the toughest chore.) This is a new corporate culture, tolerant and bright–maybe even a bit quirky. You can’t get rid of it all. And, to some extent, we are already doing the training we need to do in the near term. In creative environments where non-creative managers are in the minority, we train creative people to lead and manage because we can’t have them be “just one of the guys.”
Can you train someone to be creative? I think you can pose scenarios, offer meditation techniques, reflection and observation techniques. There are tons of training tools available off the shelf or in our creative minds already. As for teaching the creative types leadership and management? Sure, you can teach organization and time management skills as well as effective communication, collaboration, mediation, negotiating and facilitating skills. We’ve been training leadership for years, but maybe it’s time to take another look and re-evaluate the importance of creative thinking and expression. We shouldn’t ignore the good old standards that work either, but let’s use them to bring out the creative solutions we need. And, add to that flexibility, which goes along well in bringing creativity out of leadership.
The creative geek and the leader. We tolerate the geek. Some of the most successful companies today put the geek in the chairman’s seat.
Typically,we hire people who fit, people who are team players—not necessarily the creatives…that is unless we have a specific job for them, and then we tolerate them and their idiosyncrasies. Obviously, there are companies that are creative by nature—they deal in artistic and graphic representations, or problem-solving… Wait that’s still most of us. So, while we can look to obviously creation-based companies, there are elements in all companies. All deal with a measure of problem solving, which is a key point of creativity. Solutions are “ah-ha” moments, therefore, creative.
Because of my arts background, one would probably think that my situation is different from your situation. Actually it’s not; I just see it partitioned a little different. Sure, I work with creative people all the time in theatre and not-so-creative people in my day job with the federal government. Easy to believe—but I think it’s not so much the case anymore. Just as there are non-creative people in theatre, there are creative people in government. To be honest, some are just not in a “position” that would allow such creativity.
But why not? That is a management training question. Ironically, someone demonstrating creativity can threaten another employee by simply getting attention, if the creativity is work-related, of course. Leaders—even creative ones—must stick to certain protocols that are expected to keep the non-creative type workers happy. Remember, creativity is out-of-box thinking (read change) and change is hard to accept. Companies, and I include government here, often work by committee (or a group of managers) so warranted attention doesn’t go to one person or a small specific group. The reason for that is that “we want everyone to feel a part of the company’s successes,” but sometimes that just “isn’t productive.” Really? Too many cooks…and the fact that rank has its privileges and influence–not exactly the best prescription for creativity to flourish.
I worked on a communication steering committee, whose sole purpose was to change the way the organization presented itself to others. We had every division represented and if they weren’t, it just wasn’t fair. It took us over a year of bi-weekly meetings rubber-stamping sub-committees work or having one division try to diminish its effectiveness. It became a power play that ended well only for the chiefs; the lower-level creatives who did the real work of making the product given honorable mention, “It couldn’t have happened without you.” A small group of creatives could have put together a proposal in a couple of weeks.
It may be time again for a culture change, and trainers of leadership and creativity skills will be key players.
Creative people can be leaders and often are, but the perception of someone who exhibits that creativity too openly is not of the norm; he or she is seen as odd—useful but odd. Think of creative people who suddenly have been thrust in a leadership position. Did their behavior change? How were they perceived by those creative people around them? Those theatre people chosen to run the board of directors of the theatre company were most likely creative people before, my experience has been—if they are creative now—they don’t exercise it openly because, they say “of the business nature of theatre.” On the flip side, when those same theatre people were directors, they would see a project through from the concept to product delivery. On the board, it’s almost as if they had overcome their creative nature to be acceptable to the rest of us. No, they shouldn’t.
Theatre is obviously a business that encourages creativity—as is any business such as advertising or marketing that wants to get people’s attention. There are ways it can help business leaders as well. See this article on using the arts to train leaders. We can only conclude many businesses have creative leaders who don’t necessarily exercise their creative thinking in their problem solving once they became CEO. They delegate. It’s time they stop delegating, use the creative skills that got them there, and allow others the freedom to use their creative ability well. Nothing like a little freedom to see what they can really do. If they can’t be creative, get them some training.
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