Sometimes leadership seems like a mystery. We know “command and control” rarely works to motivate people, and even more rarely allows women to lead authentically. We like this insight from Dana to help you round out your leadership style. – InPower Editors
I recently had the chance to talk to a very successful leader about what he thought was the foundational driver of his success. Of course things like integrity and emotional intelligence came up a lot, but I was struck by his observation about creativity.
“I used to think creativity was reserved for painters and writers,” he said thoughtfully. “But now I realize that no one is more creative than me when I’m removing barriers to help my team be more successful.”
Intrigued, I probed for what he meant by “removing barriers.” Essentially, he said that he noticed after taking over a new group a few years ago that most of his team would bring him problems. “That’s what they’d been trained to do with their problems, bring them to the ‘leader’ to solve.” But he found that when he solved the problems for them he became a bottleneck and was soon inundated with more problems to solve than he had capacity for. So he switched his tactics and started helping them redefine the problems into opportunities and empowered them to take advantage of the opportunities they discovered. Soon two important things happened:
- his team got better at thinking and talking in terms of opportunities instead of problems and the energy of the group changed and became more positive, future-oriented and enthusiastic;
and - productivity, satisfaction and quality metrics went up as people felt accomplished at seeking and realizing opportunities wherever they found them.
“As I was working with people to find the opportunities lurking in the problems, I became aware of just how often we all, myself included, start with the negative ‘why not’ aspects of any particular situation,” he said. “Turning that around to find a positive opportunity required a lot of creative thinking on my part.”
He went on to say that now he defines himself as a creative person for being able to find opportunities where others see problems.
This leader is right. Creative people are problem solvers but they tackle problems differently than analytical thinkers. Creative problem solvers look outside the available information, the “why nots” and the barriers to progress that helped define the problem in the first place. They find inspiration by assuming there is an opportunity that just hasn’t been discovered yet and intentionally seeking that opportunity.
Do you define yourself as a creative leader? How heavily do you rely on creative problem solving principles in your leadership style? How often do you encourage your team to accept that problems and barriers exist, but coach them not to get stuck on them?
This post originally appeared on Smartblogs on Leadership.
