Leadership is a creative act

“That’s so creative!”

When I think of something creative, I often think of something artistic or novel. I just searched for an image to go with this post, and the majority were of paintbrushes and lightbulbs.

But creativity shows up in the everyday work too.

It’s a complex space. We move across a spectrum of creativity depending on what we’re doing, and the supports we need change with it.

Leaders play a big role in that. Not just in bringing creativity into their own work, but in shaping the environment where their teams can be creative too. If that’s the case, then good leadership might be one of the most creative acts there is.

There’s a lot of talk about creativity as a key future skill. But if creativity itself is complex and context-dependent, maybe part of the challenge is that we don’t always know what it looks like or how to enable it.

Photo: My Life Through a Lens, Unsplash