Leading for creativity in anxious times

Leading for creativity is hard at the best of times, but right now it’s harder than ever.

It takes courage to enable creativity against the forces that can push against it in anxious times. But what does the courage to overcome those forces look like in daily practice for a leader?

It takes courage to be creative

Matisse speaks to the courage needed for an artist to share their ideas with a judgmental world: creativity is easily crushed and it takes courage to risk that.

His statement is just as true in business, of course. It takes courage to express your creativity at work, especially in a culture where you don’t feel included or heard, or if you know your half-formed thought will be shot down.

Creativity is a business essential in today’s innovation-hungry world though, so making Matisse’s statement feel less true is a crucial challenge for many leaders.

And that takes a different kind of courage: the courage to lead in ways that enable not crush creativity.

In this anxious year it’s harder than ever to create the conditions for creativity to flourish, because creativity is fuelled by leadership behaviours that can seem ‘nice to have’ or ‘too risky’ in tough times. Efficiency and risk-avoidance can become the dominant drivers, pushing leaders back into controlling behaviours that feel like a faster, safer route to results.

So leaders need the conviction and the courage to make space for creativity in the face of these pressures. To hold on to the sometimes scary but enabling things they do on their best days to make the alchemy happen. Things like these, perhaps…

1. Having the courage to free people from fear

One powerful way to enable creativity is to try to free people from fear as much as you can. There’s enough to be afraid of out there without also being afraid at work, and it’s a fundamental barrier to creativity.

What I see in my coaching work is that most fear in organisations breeds by accident: most leaders don’t want to create fear around them, of course.

But it’s rife nonetheless. Under the kind of pressure this year is putting on leaders it’s all too easy for even the best intentioned to fall into critique mode, jumping on mistakes and focusing only on what’s not being achieved. And because humans are wired to be on high alert for threat signals, that critique will quickly tip people into a fearful ‘survival state’.  

Research into cognitive ease vs cognitive strain underlines the disabling impact on creativity of being in that fearful state. As Brown, Kingsley & Paterson remind us in The Fear-Free Organisation, “when fear dominates our external environment and our internal world, our guard goes up and we become defensive, vigilant and cautious. Fear blocks creativity”.

Freeing people from fear in practice means creating a climate of psychological safety, with all the inclusion, authenticity and respectfully honest communication that involves.

It means having the courage to build a culture where diverse talents are welcomed and collaboration is genuinely enabled, not just demanded.

It means having the courage to be compassionate: caring leadership is particularly important right now. And it means having the courage to learn to give skilful, constructive feedback, not clumsy critique.

2. Having the courage to trust

Most innovation challenges are too new or complex now to be solved by one person. So as Linda Hill says in her excellent TED Talk on creative cultures, leaders need to shift from being the top-down boss with all the answers to being a “social architect” who creates the empowering conditions for “everyone’s slice of genius” to be released.

But in these anxious times that can be hard - it feels safer of course to rely on what you’ve done before, on what you know, and on your trusted few.

Leading with trust in practice then means having the courage to manage your need for safe control. It means being self-aware about what stops you from empowering others and doing the work on your own fears and habits to make that shift.

It means having the courage to set people up to succeed with clear expectations and then coach them to contribute, not control them to comply. And to encourage their creativity by treating ideas that didn’t work as opportunities to learn, not to scold.

And it means having the courage to prioritise excellence over rigid rules – process matters of course but it needs to be flexible if creativity is to flourish.

3. Have the courage to bring your whole self to work

To quote the brilliant Brene Brown, “courage starts with showing up and letting ourselves be seen”. Bringing your whole self to work is exposing, but it will help you make Matisse’s assertion less true if you do.

Because when you have the courage to bring your whole self to work (your strengths, values, purpose, imperfections, vulnerability…) you will inspire people to want to bring their best to you, because they'll see you are relatable and trustworthy. So when you ask them to dig deep for their best ideas they are just more likely to bother.

And because bringing your whole self will enable them to do the same. As a coach, when someone tells me they are “completely different” at home to how they are at work, I tend to think (and at some point usually say!) “I wonder who or what is making it feel hard for you to be yourself at work?”

When people know they are safe to be themselves, when they feel encouraged to use their strengths and know they are not expected to be perfect, just like you, it enables them to throw their energy into their creativity with confidence and less need for courage.