The Art of Creative Leadership

by Alexander Klebe, 2011
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“How can we create a world in which we all want to live in – and make it sustainable?”

In early 2011 while the preparations for the Haniel Creative Summer School – “The Art of Creative Leadership” at the European University Viadrina took place; many questions on how we teach, combine and use knowledge arose.

The basic question was how creativity could be taught to future leaders and how their ideas could be translated into tangible and sustainable innovation.

Many great minds were involved at various stages of dialogue on the given matter, and soon the possibility of offering a summer school on creative leadership was at hand. The project developed rapidly, and with each step forward, each new “co-creator” won for the project, it became even more interesting than the original concept intended.

1. The involvement of the ideas of many, among them artists, scientists, entrepreneurs and beneficiaries,
2. The common vision: creating an educational product, which would set a milestone in the fields of Leadership Education and Sustainability,
3. The inclusion and development of the skills of combined potentials,
4. The given tools: the financing provided by the Haniel Foundation and the infrastructure of the university,
5. All came together to the creation of a product: The Haniel Creative Summer School on “The Art of Creative Leadership”

The name soon become synonymous with practice, and the very manner in which the event was organized, and the styles of the many leaders, were appreciatively combined giving rise to a holistic approach that in itself defines the very character of the creative leadership. The whole planning of the event became an evolutionary process of collective thought which gave substance and form to our ideas.

As preparations for the summer school continue, we develop a “how to guide” on the Art of Creative Leadership. This roadmap of sorts is intended to help leaders to stimulate creative behavior and creativity and design a social environment in which it can be further developed and engaged.

“We live in a time of tremendous change, the world is getting smaller. It is clear we cannot stay within our own boundaries anymore.” (Dr. Arega Yirdaw)

It is our call to establish a culture of listening, of learning and of taking on greater responsibility.

In the past decades the evolution of the built environment has gained in speed as in number of inventions and events shape our social development. This gain in overall speed and interconnectedness has rendered our world smaller, and more complex at the same time. Innovations in the sectors of digital networks led to personal and democratic empowerment of the people themselves an opened the doors to an era of global and sustainable thinking. It can be compared to a wave of innovation, or might even be considered as an evolution – a beginning of a new thinking and action model,  a change in economy that can be compared in future impact to the industrial revolution a 150ys ago.

Powerful tools were given to the many to face the rising challenges of our times. We are not only talking about financial crisis, the climate crisis or the hunger crisis, which as every crisis as well offer a golden opportunity. We as well consider more complex challenges in the future of our planet: resource shortages, water scarcity, waste and pollution. Accompanying these challenges we are calling upon the development of a new leadership role model. We realize an awakening in the leaders, giving room for new ideas and concepts, that can change the life not only of the few hundred millions in Europe, but of the entire world. Change, which is necessary for the 4 billion people in developing countries. In these transformational contexts, we see a great potential to advance the way of thinking and organizing our “Eco System”, which refers to Economical, Ecological and Ethical aspects of our Society on a whole. In this role creativity and leadership are the tool to be taught to future leaders, in order to establish common grounds for creating core values, clear visions, empowering relationships and innovative actions.

“Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.” (John F. Kennedy)

LEADERSHIP (ON GDP?)

Don’t we all have a goal in life? Whether it be professional or private in nature, something that we are driven to become or to realize, a state of being which we are compelled to achieve.

Economic schools of thought have brought a great many theories on leadership and Management to the fore. How to actually lead many great organizations. Per definition “Leadership” is about setting a new direction, about involving and motivating a group to a vision. Management in comparison is about controlling the resources and to maintain the status quo according to established principles and units of measurement.

We act as leaders, when we set a new goal, and the way to reach this goal (especially when other people are involved) is through the process we call Management.

The aim of economic actions by a corporation or an individual, as seen in the classical economic theory is essentially to generate benefits mostly in terms of profit. Which, in the macroeconomic point of view we learn to measure the Gross Domestic Product of a whole nation.

We tend to forget that: in every decision made, every goal set, every process created we include not only the profit but also the people and the whole environment. Lately as well the Gross National Happiness is taken into account on macroeconomic levels and not only in Bhutan, but as well by the political leaders in Europe. We witness a shift at the microeconomic levels of leadership and management as well. Socially and Ecologically friendly products have found their way onto the shelves and into the minds and interest of the consumers. Character based lending evident in various forms of Micro credits, even Micro Insurances, or Collective Farming and home installed renewable energy production, global education and local empowerment, revolutions backboned via Social media and crowd funding offer a shift of power towards the people themselves.

Even though we behaved as if our planet was invincible – we can as well observe an emergence of social enterprise and the good will of those who have put aside a few billions. We support them in their effort to give something back to society and to the planet. Finally we find the means to address the pressing socio-economical, environmental, geopolitical (to name a few) challenges we face today. Challenges that might indeed be greater in magnitude than the sum of all wars, we as the mankind have been facing until now.

Mayan calendars and many others have foreseen the year 2012 as being an end to all things, or could it in fact be a new beginning? A new beginning, as to the way we think of our economy, of our view of established models of growth, value and wealth creation, and of how we approach people, cultures and global politics. We’ve borne witness to the power of the people to overthrow “sole emperors”, seen for our selves how modern media helps to organize and disseminate information to and among the masses. We have observed that our dependence on oil and other non-renewable cause more trouble in the long-term. We witness a world of people who want change, and who are looking for a (r)evolution.

To put words into actions: We see more of our friends work in social projects such as orphanages, micro credit and leading institutions, in inter-cultural educational platforms, in social care and in media, that gives a voice to the unheard. We realize that there are ways in which we can discover the most valuable means to serve one each other. Maybe it is just a matter of divergent thinking – of creative thinking.

“How can we ‘up-cycle’ products and services (such as education) into new products with what we have most? – Our almost endless supply of ideas.”

CREATIVITY

Creativity is not only associated with new products or certain hot spots of the world, such as Tokyo, New York, Sydney and Berlin but as well used for “pragmatic problem solving” in the poorest and most advancing regions of our world. It is not a magic, it is a mostly a recombination of preexisting concepts, which can best be described by: Copy, Transform and Combine.

Creativity is to posing the right questions then eliciting a possible set of answers. Teaching Creativity at an university also means putting forward the question: “How can we educate responsible Leaders?” To answer this question would mean to allow for re-thinking, listening to our intuition and our hearts, working with our fears and to create room for dialogue. It might be defined as:

Creativity would describe an attitude of a creative to be open to life, to appreciate its beauty and translate it into the bravery to go new ways and create with what you can do best.

CREATIVE LEADERSHIP

In these day Creative Leadership became an opportunity for shaping a shared sense of purpose – e.g. a sustainable future – and could be used as the approach to discover the most valuable ways to serve each other.

Creative Leadership, as we see it, is a style of looking at a system in the long-term, and foreseeing the possible evolutions instead of a keeping a static view on life, economy and people. People are by no means static beings like machines. People are of the most transformable species on earth, as learned from our personal and global history. Why not channel this gift of adaptability to the benefit of the world in which we live? They have everything at hand to learn new ways of thinking.

In order to think about the way we lead, we would reflect following model.

THE 5 STEPS FOR CREATIVE LEADERS

1. Appreciate and Encourage IDEAS Give room to share and exchange the expectations and ideas of your coworkers and the people around you. Create and cultivate a regular base for dialogue and open discussions in your group, encourage them to raise the right questions. Remain open for new approaches and embrace the possibility of failure, and even what you can learn from them.

2. Create a shared VISION The exchange of Ideas and the connection of the minds creating them will lead into a group-thinking, which can be called the ‘Mastermind’ (Napoleon Hill, 1927). Creating a common vision on how a given challenge can be solved means to involve the many. Don’t expect all the answers to be perfect at first, sometimes the most vague ones offer the greatest value if further developed. Sharing ideas needs a developed frame, so people can develop a long term vision as well with security for themselves.

3. Acknowledge and improve the SKILLS Everyone who is involved in the process has certain strengths, skills and power of observation. The Creative Leader helps to identify and strengthen the skills of his associates. In the process of leading development people themselves are the ones who are best equipped to best resolve real solutions. Animate for exchange of knowledge, skills and abilities on a broad range in order to develop more skills and empower the people to find new commonly generated solutions and combinations of personal skills to face the set challenges. Take ownership of your craft and allow others to do so.

4. Use and incorporate TOOLS In order to arrive at a solution certain tools will need to identified and incorporated into the process. Creative Leadership not only means to achieve a set goal with minimum of resources but to further providing the right tools like money, time, Corporate Resources to the Group and the means to use them.

5. Develop PRODUCTS AND PROJECTS Find solutions that create value for the entire societal culture. That is sustainable and can be sustained by those who are in charge of it. Eligible products and projects take serve the many: the Happiness of the people, the sustained health of the planet and the Profit of the organization conveying the solutions.

July, 2011 Alexander Klebe – The Art of Creative Leadership
Lecture at the Haniel Creative Summerschool 2011 for European University Viadrina
www.creativesummerschool.de