If you consider yourself a creative person, there’s a good chance that you might also have strong empathy skills. Empathy allows us to build healthy relations to people around us, to our jobs, and build families. In my previous post you will se how empathy is also related to creativity.

In this post I will focus on the ups and downs of empathy in creative leadership. Empathy is an essential skill when working with other people, but if you are a highly empathetic person (like myself), you might at times have felt emotionally overwhelmed. …

What has empathy got to do with creativity? Being a highly empathetic person I was delighted to find that there is a significant correlation between empathy and creativity. The desire to serve or help others seems to become fuel for the designer. There are several examples showing that creatives working with empathy in the design process are the ones who make lasting impacts.

What is empathy?

Empathy is often described as the ability to put oneself in another person’s shoes. And let’s add to that the ability to identify and understand how that other person feels in this specific situation…

How many times have you been asked to think out of the box? Or maybe you even tell yourself or your employees to do so? I never liked that expression, and I didn’t really know why. Until I read a new definition of creativity by professor Lene Tanggaard (University of Aalborg, Denmark); creativity happens on the edge of the box.

Outside the box your idea is out of context, but on the edge you explore new connections to already existing fields, technologies, knowledge, markets, and so on. …

Imagination is our ability to form images and ideas in our minds. This is how we apply knowledge in problem solving. Therefore our imagination is essential to our creative performance and our ability to form sustainable solutions for the future. Let me just quote good, old Einstein to set the scene:

Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand. (Albert Einstein)

You will never hear me say that knowledge is not important. I believe knowledge…

If you are not situated at the heart of a Silicon Valley startup, there is a good chance that your organisation is driven by some degree of traditional leadership. But how do we as leaders build a creative mindset, and can we manage creativity?

Some years ago Harward Business School invited a range of business leaders from companies whose success depended on creativity to discuss this question. Their answer was that managers do not manage creativity. They manage for creativity. This is important to bear in mind when defining your role as a leader. …

There are several books and blogs about how to train your creative skills, and it is beneficial for you and your work place to be aware of your habits. Creativity will help you find better solutions, and most likely it will increase your job satisfaction and well being. What ever your motivation is, I will go through some of the most efficient techniques and habits. …