What is creative leadership? Why is it important? How is it achieved?

1. Creative Leadership: A
Western Perspective
International Summit Forum
Development of Creative Leadership
Talents in the Process of Globalization
Shanghai Jiao Tong University
• 15 June 2014
• Donald C. Menzel, Ph.D

2. Creative Leadership:
A Western Perspective
Donald C. Menzel, Ph.D.
2005-06
President
American Society for Public
Administration

3. What, Why, How?
• What is creative leadership?
• Why is creative leadership important?
• How is creative leadership achieved?

4. Big Questions
• Can creativity be learned?
• Can leadership be learned?

5. What is creative leadership?
• Creative
– Doing something different?
– Doing something better?
– Doing something no other has dared to do?
• Leadership
– Motivating others?
– Realizing a vision?
– Getting the job done?

6. Creativity
• Creativity and creative thinking have become
an essential life skill.
• Creativity is about more than imagination,
diversity in thought, or simply standing out as
different.
• Creativity is the ability to produce original
ideas that serve some value or solve some
problem.

8. “Creativity is intelligence having fun.” Albert Einstein

9. Creativity
• True creativity involves three ingredients—
novelty, usefulness and realization.
• Thus there is a close conceptual relationship
between creativity and problem solving.
• Leaders need to be creative problem solvers.
• Creativity and innovation are widely viewed as
fundamental to professional success.

10. Basics
• Leaders
• Managers
• Leaders vs Managers

11. Management Triangle
Top mgt
supervisors
Middle
mgrs
Frontline
workers

12. Managers as Leaders
• The manager does things right; the leader
does the right thing;
• The manager administers; the leader
innovates;
• The manager relies on control; the leader
inspires trust.

14. Why is creative leadership important?
• We are in an era of an unprecedented pace of
change that is innovation heavy.
• In the last 200 years there have been a total of 25
inventions, both social and technical, that have
qualitatively altered our lives—it took more than
3,000 years before 1800 to achieve the same
number of life-altering inventions.
• To deal successfully with complex and turbulent
times—Mastering complexity is key to creative
leadership.

15. Creative Work
• In 1900 less than 10% of the United States
population worked in what are considered
“creative” jobs, i.e., work that requires higher
order thinking and imagination. One hundred
years later this figure increased to 30%.
• Content on the worldwide web doubles every
18 months which has led to ubiquitous
availability of information.

16. Social Networking
• In the 20th century the term “social networking”
had no meaning—today, it’s mind boggling—with
Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr,
Flickr, Youtube, Pinterest
• Facebook has ~1.3 billion monthly active users

17. Confounding Factors
• Globalization & Revolution in Information
Technology
• Blurring of boundaries (private/public)
• End of Hierarchy
• Diversity
– Cultural
– Religious
– Race/Gender
• Situational/contextual

18. . . . More confounding factors
• Interdependency & networking
• Internet
• Individualism—empowerment
• Organizational complexity

19. What is creative leadership?

20. Types/Styles of Leadership
• Transactional—Henry Ford (Model-T)
• Transformational—Steve Jobs (Apple)
• Entrepreneurial—Bill Gates (Microsoft)/Mark
Zuckerberg (Facebook)
• Transcendent—Mohandas Gandhi & Nelson
Mandela
• Charismatic—Ronald Reagan (USA President)/Bill
Clinton (USA President)
• Creative--??Mark Zuckerberg
"Move fast and break things. Unless you are
breaking stuff, you are not moving fast
enough."

21. Creative Leadership
• Creative leadership is highly relational,
grounded in process, utilizes diversity, requires
self-reflection and is focused on accomplishing
positive change
• Resides between transformational and
transcendent approaches
• More than individuals with vision

22. Creative Leadership
• . . . is the combination of creativity (the
ability to generate ideas) with leadership (the
ability to execute them through the actions
of others).
• Is the ability to deliberately engage one’s
imagination to define and guide a group
towards a novel goal—a direction that is new
for the group.

23. Creative Leadership
• Draws together three distinct but
interconnected constructs—creativity,
leadership, and innovation
• Creativity is believed to be the “catalyst to
innovation.”
• Is an improvisational and experimental art

24. How is creative leadership
achieved?
Leadership Development Programs

25. How is creative leadership achieved?
• The Good News? – in many ways
• The Bad News? – maybe in too many ways?

26. Basics
• Employee learning programs in U.S. business
is “big” business
– $170 billion in 2012
• US companies spend $14 billion annually on
leadership development

27. Creative Leaders
• What separates creative leaders from non-
creative leaders is their ability to generate and
execute innovative ideas.
• Traditional leaders tend to execute “tried-and-
true” strategies such as cost-cutting or
product extensions, but they rarely disrupt
their industries or create new product
categories.

28. Creative Leaders are . . .
• Humble yet visionary
• Able to recognize mistakes and transcend
them
• A master at empowering members of his/her
team to greater leadership

29. Qualities and Skills
• Tolerance for ambiguity
• Ability to assess and be comfortable with risk
• Ability to quickly and effectively assess an
individual
• Ability to balance passion and objectivity
• Ability to change
• Creative leaders are comfortable with
ambiguity and experimentation

30. Leadership Development Programs
• Successful?
• Failures?

31. Successful Programs?
We just don’t know!!

32. Why do leadership development
programs fail?
1. Training – development is not equivalent to
training
2. Training focuses on best practices;
development focuses on next practices.
3. Training is often a rote, one size fits all
4. Training usually occurs within a vacuum
driven by past experience, not by future
needs

33. Why leadership development
programs fail?
• Training focuses on maintenance;
development focuses on growth
• Training encourages compliance; development
emphasizes performance
• Training places people in a box; development
fees them from the box
• Training places people in a comfort zone;
development moves people beyond comfort
zones

34. Four Common Mistakes
1. Overlooking context—a brilliant leader in one
situation does not necessarily perform well in
another.
2. Decoupling reflection from real work
– Onsite vs off-site programs
3. Underestimating mind-sets
– Changing behavior means changing mind-sets
4. Failing to measure results
– Begins and ends with participant feedback (not sufficient)
– Monitor participants’ career development after the
training

35. Creative Leadership:
A Western Perspective
Donald C. Menzel, Ph.D.
2005-06
President
American Society for Public
Administration

36. Sources
• David C. Bauman, “Leadership and the Three Faces of Integrity” The
Leadership Quarterly 24 (2013) 414-426.
• Nicholas Clarke, “Model of Complexity Leadership Development.”
Human Resource Development International 2013. 16:2 (135-150).
• David V. Day, John W. Fleenor, Leanne E. Atwater, Rachel E. Sturm,
Rob A. McKee, “Advances in leaders and leadership development: A
review of 25 years of research and theory” The Leadership
Quarterly 25 (2014): 63-82.
• Jessica E. Dinh, Robert G. Lord, William L. Gardner, Jeremy D.
Meuser, Robert C. Liden, Jinyu Hu “Leadership Theory and Research
in the New Millennium: Current Theoretical Trends and Changing
Perspectives” The Leadership Quarterly 25 (2014): 36-62.

37. Sources
• Doug Guthrie, “Creative Leadership: Managing
Complexity to Achieve Alignment” Forbes
5/24/2012
• Gerard J. Puccio, Marie Mance, Jeffrey Zacko-
Smith, “Creative Leadership: Its Meaning and
Value for Science, Technology and Innovation.”
https://www.academia.edu/Documents/in/Creati
ve_Leadership
• Pierre Gurdjian, Thomas Halbeisen, and Kevin
Lane, “Why leadership-development programs
fail.” McKinsey Quarterly (January 2014)

38. Sources
• Mike Myatt, “The #1 Reason Leadership
Development Fails”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/mikemyatt/2012
/12/19/the-1-reason-leadership-
development-fails/
• Mike Myatt. “leadership Basics—5 Keys to
Success”
http://www.n2growth.com/blog/leadership-
basics/