Creative and human leadership is the future of business. Here’s why.
The key principles and values of leadership haven’t changed much over the decades. But two big drivers are changing the way that leadership has to function to be successful in the 21st century.
Getting to grips with these changes is important to all leaders, but especially those who lead game-changing businesses rooted in mission and authenticity.
The first big change involves what today’s employees want from their leaders.
Like all employees, they value clarity, purpose and a place where they can bring their whole selves to work. They want leaders who tell the truth, model the company’s values in their own behaviour, communicate properly and create a sense of direction through clear decision-making.
What’s different is that today’s workers also want far more frequent feedback on how they are performing, how they are growing and developing in their role, and what their contribution means for the business and its purpose.
They have a keen sense of the “entrepreneurial self”, a sense of authorship over their personal development, personal purpose and personal brand, which means that they are not content to sit behind the same desk for decades and wait for their gold watch. Their career development is an essential part of their development as human beings, and they want workplaces that understand and reflect this.
The second big change is happening at the level of organisations and business ecosystems.
Working arrangements are changing on the inside, whether through the rise of remote working, portfolio careers, “teal organisations”, agile business, horizontal management structures or outright holacracy. On the outside, whole sectors are facing technological disruption at an historic scale. Flexibility and adaptability have become paramount virtues.
These two changes require two distinct responses. To meet the changing needs of employees, leaders must become more human. To survive, adapt and thrive in a fast-changing world, leaders must become more creative.
Human leadership
What does it mean to become a more human leader? In general, it means creating workplaces that are more in tune with the wellbeing of people than that of systems. Organisations that are people-shaped, not vice-versa.
There are three facets of human leadership that we think are particularly important.
#1 Be seen and known
How could you make yourself more available, visible and open to your employees? Laura Tenison of JoJo Maman Bébé, to take a practical example, has lunch everyday in the staff canteen, eating elbow-to-elbow with her team.
More broadly, are you leading from the front and truly owning and living the company’s message? Elon Musk of Tesla is a great example of a leader who personally embodies his company’s purpose, rather than leaving the message to the marketing team.
#2 Show vulnerability
In the past, leaders would never admit to faults or mistakes. Today, leaders are increasingly dropping the mask and being open, honest and humble about their strengths and weaknesses. It takes courage to do this, but it creates more authentic and human relationships within the workplace. What’s more, being honest about where you need help also serves as an invitation for employees to step up.
As Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks puts it, “when the leader demonstrates vulnerability and sensibility and brings people together, the team wins.”
#3 Coach more than lead
Human leadership is as much about coaching people to lead themselves as it is about traditional leadership. After all, aren’t traditional “leadership skills” — whether that be communicating, decision-making, showing empathy, motivating, prioritising — ultimately valuable skills for everyone in the business?
This is especially important in workplaces with a high degree of employee autonomy. The more you can distribute leadership skills and a leader’s mindset across your business, the more your employees will be able to flourish.
This means taking a light touch and spending time truly getting to know your team and what drives them.
Creative Leadership
Radically creative thinking is winning the day. CEOs and policymakers from around the world continue to make pilgrimages to Silicon Valley to better understand how disruptive companies like Amazon and AirBnb are using creative leadership to smash old business models and plot a new course.
Of course, radical thinking can be found everywhere. The challenge for creative leaders is how to recognise it, how to cultivate it and how to execute it. Under truly creative leadership, radical thinking succeeds because of the way the organisation and its infrastructure is set up, not despite it.
How can you become a more creative leader? Three factors stand out.
#1 Cultivate the right conditions for creativity
Creative leaders look for ways to encourage people to be playful, curious and experimental.
At a basic level, this might mean nixing the 9-to-5 and giving employees the flexibility to find their own creative rhythms.
It also means increasing opportunities for collaborative working, bringing people from different disciplines together to avoid silo thinking. Famously, Apple’s circular “spaceship” HQ in Palo Alto is designed to “naturally” bring people from different teams into day-to-day contact, increasing the likelihood of serendipitous encounters.
Using collaborative software such as Slack or Yammer can also do the trick — the key is simply being prepared to invest the time and resources into cultivating spaces for creativity and ideas sharing.
Being creative means more than just indulging in blue-sky thinking, however. It also means encouraging employees to challenge the consensus, explore differences of opinion and to step into other people’s shoes. There is a danger of sticking too firmly to one idea about how your company should achieve its mission. Creative leaders such as Sharon Chang, serial entrepreneur and co-founder of businesses such as Invest Forward, LQD, Yoxi and Living Osa, will go as far as to deliberately appoint people who will contradict them.
Finally, remember that being creative means embracing risk. Giving people permission to experiment must mean giving them permission to fail and learn.
#2 Create an environment of possibility through dynamic focus
In a fast-changing world, organisations themselves must be creative in how they operate. Creative leaders have the ability to see opportunity in uncertainty, be comfortable with ambiguity, while at the same time driving hard at what they believe they can deliver.
We call this “dynamic focus”. It’s the ability to be really clear on the plan, while staying open to the possibilities — to commit to a direction, while always scanning the horizon and being sensitive to changing customer preferences, changing market conditions and new technological opportunities.
Drilling down, this can also mean a willingness to tinker and experiment with the very structure of the business. Companies such as GE, Zappos, Medium and Trivago have adopted fresh-thinking systems, such as agile business or holacracy, that allow teams of employees to figure out for themselves how to set and meet goals.
#3 Always stay in tune with your mission and purpose
Ultimately, it’s difficult to build the right conditions for play, creativity and risk in a company where short-term financial performance is the number one indicator of success.
The confidence to be creative and take risks, to go after the blue sky while remaining tethered to reality, relies on having a clearly defined and fully embodied sense of purpose, both for you as an individual leader and for the company as a whole.
Keeping purpose constantly front-of-mind can mean the difference between achieving rich, sustainable and creative growth together, and getting bent out of shape by copying other people’s innovations or expanding just for the sake of it.
Organisational purpose is something to be cultivated over time, not just etched in stone once and for all. There will always be forces pulling you and your team away from it. Go back to it, check in with it, stay in tune with it. Use your human leadership skills to create the space for honest dialogue about how the company’s purpose is being lived, what pressures it’s coming under and what new opportunities it might open up.
By embracing human and creative leadership, forward-thinking leaders will build businesses that change the world — and have fun along the way.
This article originally appeared in the Autumn 2017 print issue of Purpose. For more on creative leadership, problem solving and purposeful business, please visit thehouse.co.uk or get in touch at hello@thehouse.co.uk.
