Leadership - Chap 11 - Dubrin

Characteristics of Creative Leaders

They are devoted to their fields and enjoy intellectual stimulation, and they challenge the status quo, which leads them to seek improvements. Above all, creative people are mentally flexible and can see past the traditional ways of looking at problems.

4. Ample supply of the right resources

Time and money are the most important resources for enhancing creativity. Setting a time deadline will trigger creative thinking because it represents a favorable challenge

1. Give creative people tools and resources that allow their work to stand out.

To achieve such high quality, they usually need adequate resources, such as state-of-the-art equipment and an ample travel budget for such purposes as conducting research.

Additional Leadership Practices That Enhance Innovation

1. Emphasize transformational leadership if possible 2. Continually pursue innovation 3. Take risks and encourage risk taking 4. Emphasize collaboration among employees 5. Avoid innovation for its own sake, Innovation just for the sake of innovation is not always valuable 6. Use loose-tight leadership 7. Integrate development and production

Methods of Managing Creative Workers

1. Give creative people tools and resources that allow their work to stand out. 2. Give creative people flexibility and a minimum amount of structure 3. Give gentle feedback when turning down an idea 4. Employ creative people to manage and evaluate creative worker

Self-Help Techniques to Enhance Creative Problem Solving

1. Practicing creativity-enhancing activities 2. Staying alert to opportunities 3. Maintaining an enthusiastic attitude, including being happy 4. Maintaining and using a systematic place for recording your ideas 5. Playing the roles of explorer, artist, judge, and lawyer 6. Engaging in appropriate physical exercise

Steps in the Creative Process

5 Stages Step 1 is opportunity or problem recognition Step 2 is immersion Step 3 is incubation Step 4 is insight Step 5 is verification and application

Passion for the Task and the Experience of Flow

A dominant characteristic of creative people that is closely related to personality is a passion for the work. Passion for the task and high intrinsic motivation contribute in turn to a total absorption in the work and intense concentration, or the experience of flow.

2. Staying alert to opportunities

A key characteristic of creative leaders is that they can spot opportunities that other people overlook Opportunity seeking is associated with entrepreneurial leadership because the entrepreneur might build an organization around an unmet consumer need.

The Pet-Peeve Technique

A method of brainstorming in which a group identifies all the possible complaints others might have about the group's organizational unit. Sources of complaints include inside customers, outside customers, competitors, and suppliers. Although the pet-peeve technique is not well known, it is potentially valuable.

6. Engaging in Appropriate Physical Exercise

A well-accepted method of stimulating creativity is to engage in physical exercise. Exercise facilitates creativity is that exercising pumps more blood and oxygen into the brain. Exercise also enhances activity in the frontal lobe, the region of the brain involved in abstract reasoning and attention.

1. Practicing creativity-enhancing activities

An established way to sharpen creative thinking is to regularly engage in activities that encourage flexible thinking. Puzzles of all types are useful in stretching your imagination; many creative people regularly do crossword puzzles. Another standard technique for become a more flexible thinker is to ask yourself "what-if" questions.

Experience of Flow

An experience so engrossing and enjoyable that the task becomes worth doing for its own sake, regardless of the external consequences.

8. Have favorable exchanges with creative workers.

Another insight into encouraging a creative climate is for leaders to have favorable exchanges with group members, as defined by LMX theory.

Basic formula of human behavior

B=f(PxE) (behavior is a function of a person interacting with the environment).

3. Give gentle feedback when turning down an idea

Creative employees are emotionally involved with their work. As a result, they are likely to interpret criticism as a personal attack on their self-worth

Cognitive Abilities

Creative problem solvers, particularly in business, are often bright but are not at the absolute top end of the brilliance scale. A subtle exception here is that when the creativity centers on highly technical matters, the creative business person is often brilliant.

Overcoming Traditional Thinking as a Creativity Strategy

Creative problem solving requires an ability to overcome traditional thinking. The concept of traditional thinking is relative, but it generally refers to a standard and frequent way of finding a solution to a problem.

Creative people

Even if extraordinarily high intelligence is not required to be creative, creative people are facile at generating creative solutions to problems in a short period of time. Creative people also maintain a youthful curiosity throughout their lives, and the curiosity is not centered just on their own field of expertise. Instead, their range of interests encompasses many areas of knowledge, and they are enthusiastic about puzzling problems.

Systematically Collecting Fresh Ideas

Creativity is often referred to as a numbers game, because the more ideas you try, the greater the probability of finding one that works. Several approaches to systematically collecting fresh ideas are listed next 1. Straightforward collection of ideas 2. Establishing idea quotas 3. Making whiteboards regularly available for sketching ideas 4. Granting tinkering time

9. Give financial rewards for innovation.

Creativity is self-rewarding to some extent because it is so exciting. Nevertheless, financial rewards for contributions to innovation help sustain a climate of innovation.

The Morality of Enhancing Creativity

Creativity writer Gerald Sindell emphasizes the need for creative thinkers to place their work within a moral context. He notes that creative work and output never exist in a vacuum. In contrast, every idea and product has potential harmful consequences in minor and major ways. Example Smartphones

6. Supervisory encouragement and linking innovation to performance.

Develop a permissive atmosphere that encourages people to think freely. Praising creative work is important because, for most people to sustain their passion, they must feel that their work matters to the organization. Creative ideas should be evaluated quickly rather than put through a painfully slow review process.

5. Playing the roles of explorer, artist, judge, and lawyer

Explorer. Speak to people in different fields and get ideas that can bring about innovations for your group. Be an Artist by stretching your imagination. Judge, After developing some imaginative ideas, at some point you have to evaluate them. Playing the role of lawyer. Negotiate and find ways to implement your ideas within your field or place of work.

Cognitive Abilities of creative leader

Highly Intelligent, intellectually curious, able to think divergently

4. Maintaining and using a systematic place for recording your ideas

It is difficult to capitalize on creative ideas unless you keep a careful record of them. A creative idea trusted to memory may be forgotten in the press of everyday business. An important suggestion kept on your daily planner may become obscured.

Knowledge

Knowledge provides the building blocks for generating and combining ideas. Most creative leaders are knowledgeable, and their knowledge contributes to their charisma.

4. Employ creative people to manage and evaluate creative worker

Managers of creative workers should have some creative ability of their own so that they can understand creativity and be credible as leaders.

2. Give creative people flexibility and a minimum amount of structure

Many creative workers regard heavy structure as the death knell of creativity. Typically, the leader/manager will have to achieve a workable compromise in this area that stays within the framework of organizational policy. Regular office hours, for example, are a must for team assignments. Also, creative people may need help with meeting deadlines because many creative people do not manage time well.

2. Intellectual challenge.

Matching people with the right assignments enhances creativity because it supports expertise and intrinsic motivation. The leader or manager must understand his or her group members well to offer them the right amount of challenge. Moderate time pressures can sometimes bring about the right amount of challenge.

Leadership Practices for Enhancing Creativity

Nine leadership and managerial practices are particularly helpful in fostering creative thinking 1. Hire creative people from the outside, and identify creative people from within 2. Intellectual challenge. 3. Empowerment including freedom to choose the method. 4. Ample supply of the right resources 5. Effective design of work groups 6. Supervisory encouragement and linking innovation to performance. 7. Organizational support. 8. Have favorable exchanges with creative workers. 9. Give financial rewards for innovation.

Personality of a creative leader

Nonconformist, Self-confident, Trill-seeking, Energetic and persistent

3. Empowerment including freedom to choose the method.

Part of the creativity was attributed to empowered workers having a sense of self-determination, which sparked their creative thinking. Workers also tend to be more creative when they are granted the freedom to choose which method is best for attaining a work goal

Intrinsic motivation principle of creativity

People will be at their creative best when they feel motivated primarily by the interest, satisfaction, and challenge of the work itself—and not by external pressures.

Personality Factors

Personality factors or the noncognitive aspects of an individual heavily influence creative problem solving. Creative people tend to have a positive self-image without being blindly self-confident.

Brainstorming

The best-known method for creativity improvement is brainstorming, which you have probably already done. Although brainstorming is often condemned as being superficial, it remains a key idea-generation method for even the most advanced technology companies.

7. Organizational support.

The entire organization as well as the immediate manager should support creative effort if creativity is to be enhanced on a large scale. The company-wide reward system should support creativity, including recognition and financial incentives.

Step 2 is immersion

The individual concentrates on the problem and becomes immersed in it. He or she will recall and collect information that seems relevant, dreaming up alternatives without refining or evaluating them.

Step 5 is verification and application

The individual sets out to prove that the creative solution has merit. Verification procedures include gathering supporting evidence, using logical persuasion, and experimenting with new ideas.

Organizational Methods to Enhance Creativity

The leader has a dual role in implementing creative problem-solving techniques, the 3creativity-enhancing, problem-solving techniques described here are (1)systematically collecting fresh ideas, including the use of whiteboards and granting time to explore ideas; (2)brainstorming; and (3)the pet-peeve technique.

3. Maintaining an enthusiastic attitude, including being happy

The managerial leader faces a major hurdle in becoming a creative problem solver. He or she must resolve the conflict between being judicial and being imaginative. Situations calling for judicial thinking include reviewing proposed expenditures and inspecting products for quality or safety defects.

Step 3 is incubation

The person keeps the assembled information in mind for a while. He or she does not appear to be working on the problem actively, but the subconscious mind is still engaged.

Establishing a Climate and Culture for Creative Thinking

The point is that top management purposely sets about to take steps to make the organization more innovative. A foundation step in fostering organizational creativity is to establish a vision and mission that includes creativity

Step 4 is insight

The problem-conquering solution flashes into the person's mind at an unexpected time, such as on the verge of sleep, during a shower, or while running. The Aha experience

Innovation (creativity)

The process of creating new ideas and their implementation.

Creativity

The production of novel and useful ideas. Creativity is an essential characteristic of leaders.The role of a creative leader is to bring into existence ideas and things that did not exist previously or that existed in a different form.

Rules of Brainstorming

the various rules of brainstorming can be regarded as goals, including (a)generate quantity, (b)avoid criticism, (c)combine and improve on previous ideas, and (d)encourage free-wheeling.

5. Effective design of work groups

Work groups are the most likely to be creative when they are mutually supportive and when they have a diversity of back grounds and perspectives. Blends of gender, race, and ethnicity are recognized today as contributing to creative thought. The various points of view often combine to achieve creative solutions to problems.

Thinking outside the Box constraints and limits

Workers still need some constraints as to how far outside the box they are permitted to think. Effective project leaders establish parameters and prepare their teams for idea generation by pointing them in a specific direction. example telling the team "we need to find ways of saving the company energy costs but that no suggestions will be used that are too expensive or result in widespread employee complaints"

By thinking creatively

a person can form a new enterprise or enlarge an existing one that can keep many people engaged in productive activity. However, the creative idea has to be executed properly for innovation to take place.