Last Updated on May 8, 2023 by Dave Schoenbeck
If you are a business owner or a leader, the chances are that you have extensive leadership experience. Perhaps you have led departments, organizations, and companies for years or even decades. However, it’s possible that at some point, the influence tactics and leadership skills that got you to this point in your life seem to decline. This is a telltale sign that it’s time to cultivate creative leadership skills.
The Importance of Creativity in Leadership
Finding the single “secret recipe” to inspire your team in a dynamic world and business environment is impossible. Your business, your market, and your team are changing all the time. Therefore, you must constantly reinvent your leadership skills using creativity to remain an effective leader.
No, this doesn’t mean you need a ping-pong table in the office or be a permissive, laid-back boss. Instead, it means inspiring your team to produce their best, most innovative work by experimenting with your approach creatively.
Not sure where to start cultivating your creative leadership skills? One of the best ways to get started is to determine your creative leadership style.
What Is a Creative Leadership Style?
Before we discuss a few creative leadership skills for you to try, it helps to narrow down the ideas to those that fit your creative leadership style. Even if you’ve never considered creativity in leadership, every leader already has a creative leadership style.
You have undoubtedly used creative methods throughout your career to motivate others as a leader. How would you describe your style? How would others describe it?
Competitive? Spontaneous? Generous? Goal-oriented? Spiritual? Inspiring?
As you read some ideas below, consider your creative leadership style and determine which skills fit best for you.
Creative Leadership Skills in Action
Below is a list of ways you can infuse creativity into your leadership style daily:
- Build enthusiasm inside and outside your organization. Amid the flow of work, don’t forget to drive confidence within your team for the exciting things you all are accomplishing. Of course, this works outside your organization, too: while demand generation is all the rage, focus your enthusiasm-building on FUN to achieve the best results.
- Help your team to re-sequence priorities when you see the team stall. It’s easy to determine priorities at the beginning of a project and resist changing them midway through, even if your team seems stuck. Instead, don’t be afraid to re-organize the project to optimize performance.
- Initial visualization of the end goal. How do you and your team sync on the desired result of a project? One creative approach is to visualize the end goal together before starting the project. Then, ask your team to share how they envision the result.
- Determine the best frequency of monitoring ongoing progress. Procedures provide the structure that helps your team do their best work, but that doesn’t mean that these procedures never change—monitor longstanding policies, such as the frequency of ongoing progress monitoring, to determine what works best.
There are countless ways to reinvent your leadership style to remain effective and drive the best results for you and your organization. Join me for a free consult by clicking here to help work on your creative leadership skills.
Coach Dave
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