Cultivating Creativity: The Cornerstone of Effective Leadership

Great leaders know that creativity is a key component of survival. You must demonstrate to your team members every day of every month of every year, year after year, what creativity means and how important it is to the organization.

In a survey conducted by the American Management Association, 500 CEOs were asked, “What must one do to survive in the 21st century?” The top answer across the board was, “Practice creativity and innovation.” Yet, only 6 percent felt their organizations were doing a great job of it. According to Training & Development magazine, the biggest roadblock to creativity and innovation within organizations is fear.

The extensive changes we are currently experiencing throughout the world are going to demand a particular style of leadership so utterly revolutionary that it will challenge any and all existing paradigms. New thinking must become the norm in any organization where high quality and effective leadership will be the competitive edge. It must supersede outdated and obsolete management paradigms. When there is truly effective leadership, team members are mobilized to be and do their very best. It is the catalyst for transforming the organization and galvanizing everyone toward a common purpose.

Walk the Talk

The potential for greatness and innovation in your organization already exists. It’s up to the leader to recognize, retrieve and redeem this competitive capital. The answer lies in the leader’s ability to unite his or her team and be able to create an environment that is conducive to creativity.

Effective leaders know that their team members are their greatest assets. They cultivate, encourage, and engage the talents and skills of these team members to be able to consistently find new and better approaches that will ultimately improve bottom-line results. They believe that understanding, participation, and involvement of team members are essential to earning respect, loyalty and commitment. There is no better way to do this than by “walking the talk.” A true leader teaches by example. Yet, there are so many people in leadership positions who practice “Do as I say and not as I do.” When you preach one thing and do another, your adverse influence diminishes respect and trust.

To generate a culture of creativity, an organization’s vision and core values must be articulated so that team members see them as being high priorities. Vision stimulates and fosters creativity. This vision, along with the core values, must be infused into everything you say and do, so that everyone can accurately anticipate the future and avoid repeating past mistakes.

Leaders must become the model of the transformation they are envisioning. Leaders set the tone or tempo of the organization. Powerful leadership requires the leader to model the right behaviors. Team members copy their leader’s behavior! The single most important way to ensure that your team members become the best they can be is to “walk your talk.” If you want to be effective, don’t just set values or talk values. Instead, practice and demonstrate values. Team members make judgments about their leaders based on what they see the leader do rather than what they hear the leader say. Actions really do speak louder than words! Make sure your actions demonstrate what you say. The failure to walk the talk results in distrust and low morale.

Mahatma Gandhi, the great Indian social reformer, was perhaps one of the greatest and most powerful leaders of all time. He personified what it means to “walk the talk.” He believed in nonviolent methods, that there must be no fighting but rather fasting and non-retaliation. His determination and willingness to set the example eventually led to his nation’s independence. He defeated the British Empire with all of its military might. Gandhi was a truly remarkable man who will be forever revered for his exceptional leadership.

People will believe you when you model the behaviors that you want them to practice. The most natural way of influencing people is by example. If you want your team members to be more creative, then show them by being creative. If you want them to be more organized, then you must be more organized. If you want them to be more enthusiastic, then enthusiasm must begin with you. If you want punctuality and you start your meetings late, that’s saying it’s okay not to be punctual. If you want your team members to be more disciplined, then your responsibility is to begin with your own discipline.

There is hardly an organization (or a family either, for that matter) that doesn’t have a communication problem of one kind or another. And yet, people in the top positions of many organizations don’t even speak to team members by saying a simple “Good morning.” If you want the communication in your organization to be effective, then the communication should begin with you.

Your behavior has to correspond with whatever expectations you have of your team members. It is that simple. In his book, Sacred Cows Make the Best Burgers, co-author Robert Kriegel tells the story of an outstanding individual, Frank Pacetta, a sales manager at Xerox, who took his district from the bottom-ranking performer to number one in his region. He says, “I believe in the power of personal example. At the minimum, a leader has to show his troops the route of the march and the destination.” Team members who have a strong leader will look out for fresh ideas, take on new challenges and learn new things.

Suppose you announce that you are committed to customers. However, in your day to day behavior, you find your customers to be bothersome and you ignore or avoid them wherever possible. Your behavior demonstrates the opposite.

If your team members see that your behavior exemplifies a specific behavior you want them to have, they will do as you do. The most important way to communicate your commitment is through your behavior. All that you do sends a message; how you spend your time, the goals you set, the ways you reward performance, as well as your verbal and nonverbal communications.

We are all dealing with the same primary issues and challenges: obtaining commitment, improving communication and accountability, overcoming roadblocks to change, doing more with fewer resources, and reducing negativity. These are the day to day issues that most of us have to handle. They have to be dealt with in the appropriate manner, which ultimately boils down to two words: effective leadership!

We only have to take a look at the leadership of an organization to understand why certain companies flourish and others merely exist. You can walk into any business and know, within a few minutes, the kind of leader the company has at the helm by the kind of service you get. What happens at the top filters down to all. A leader’s ability to lead is critical to the establishment and continuity of creativity, increased productivity and retention of good team members.

This article originally appeared in the Summer 2024 issue of CHOICES Magazine