Creativity in Leadership

Creative leaders, similar to creative people are different from less creative people. They are generally devoted to their field of work and come up with alternative solutions to different problems. These solutions are generally outside the normal way of thinking and are usually “outside the box”. Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft Corporation, is a good example of a creative leader. When he initially began engineering his future corporation, he saw the future of computers lied in software, rather than the more commonly accepted way of thinking of the day, that the future depended on the further enhancing of hardware. In this paper I will be discussing the various characteristics which make up creative leaders. I will be discussing knowledge, intellectual ability, personality and passion for the task.

“Authority flows from the one who knows.” (Great Leaders, John Adiar, 1989 pg 13)

A common characteristic possessed by creative leaders is thorough knowledge for their field of expertise. This thorough knowledge provides the starting point for coming up with and developing ideas. Jack Welch believed this hole heartedly. The way he went about it was creative in its own right. Jack hated bureaucracy. He did not believe in the initial philosophy of GE, which was that management ruled and there ideas were the only ones to be heard. He believed ideas should come with the people with the relevant knowledge so as to get the best possible solution for their problem at hand.

When describing intellectual abilities, you normally refer to general intelligence. This involves not seeing everything as black or white and developing solutions to complicated problems. Very high levels of IQ are not really what is required when discussing intellectual abilities, rather coming up with creative solutions to problems in a very short space of time. A contradiction to this way of thinking is the selection process of Microsoft Corporation with new recruits. Prospective recruits at Microsoft are put through rigorous testing of intellectual ability, including school grades, past achievements, IQ testing and personality testing to establish if the person s right fro the job.

Creative people demonstrate a very clear and different intellectual style. They are able to see a problem in many different ways as opposed to a non-creative thinker. They also posses the ability to narrow down this choice and to choose the best possible solution to the task at hand.

Another common characteristic of a creative leader is passion for the task at hand. It has been extensively studied that people will perform at their creative best when they have an internal passion for the task at hand and they don’t perform the task because they have to from external factors. As result of this extreme passion, extreme concentration is then achieved. An example of this is Muhammad Yunus. Muhammad has come up with a very creative solution to his cause which he has devoted his life work to – the abolishment of poverty. As the cause is so close to his own heart, he has managed to come up with creative solutions to the many obstacles he has faced in achieving what he has acjieved.

The Creative process

There are many stages involved in creativity. The process generally takes the following form;

• Identifying opportunity or recognition of a problem
• Surrounding yourself with the problem and finding out alternate solutions.
• Incubation
• Insight
• Verification and application

The first step describes the process of identifying the opportunity or problem. Once this problem has been recognised, the person will generally surround themselves with the problem. Firstly they will come up with many alternative solutions followed by narrowing down and identifying the best alternative. Next comes an incubation stage of these new ideas. The person appears not to be working on the idea but the new idea is been digested and the person is coming up with many new solutions during this stage. Next comes insight. The solutions is made clear to the person. This can take as little as a day to a few years. Next comes verification and application. Verification involves gathering evidence, experimenting with new ideas and using logical persuasion.

The creative process case study: Muhammud yunnus

• Identifying opportunity or recognition of a problem

This occurred quite early in life for Muhammad. From his childhood influences, especially his mother, Muhammad quickly recognised the immense problem of poverty and really surrounded himself with the problem.

 “She was full of compassion and kindness and probably the strongest influence on me. She always had money put away for any poor relation who visited us from distant villages. It was she through her concern for the poor and the disadvantaged, who helped me discover my destiny and she who most shaped my personality”(Yunus, 1998 p29.)

Above is a quote from Muhammads autobiography. It describes how his mother was an immense influence in his life calling. How he saw his mother displaying these incredible acts of kindness and in turn inspired him to his cause.

• Surrounding yourself with the problem and finding out alternate solutions.

For Muhammad this took many years largely due to the incredible task he was wishing to take on. Muhammad states that when he thrust himself upon this environment, he came to the realization that he could no longer connect with all the “elegant” economic theories which he taught as a professor of Economics on a daily basis. In order to carry out his vision he would have to re-learn economics by surrounding himself yet again in the poor environment he was trying to alleviate.

• Incubation

Later on in life, as he progressed through his study and profession, in 1974, as a professor of economics at Chittagong University Muhammad conducted a field trip in which he led a group of students to a poor village. Within this village they interviewed a poor woman who made bamboo sticks for a living that she financed through small loans at interest rates as high of 10% per week. Muhammad’s learning from this was as follows;

“Had she been able to borrow at more advantageous rates, she would have been able to amass an economic cushion and raise herself above subsistence level” Website (Yunus, 2006)

This was the realization stage for a solution to his problem. Muhammad then went into incubation deciphering how he could apply this new realization broadly.

• Verification and application

This stage is, and continues to be, Muhammad’s legacy. His immense research into micro- credit and his application of his research to form the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh.

In today’s business world, it is highly advantages for a leader to posses a creative flair for problem solving. The creative leader will bring with him or his/her creative ideas or processes which did not previously exist. Through the various personality traits of a creative leader, this leader type will work through the five steps of leadership before coming up with a new, innovative solution.

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