Developmental Testing Service, LLC

theo@devtestservice.com, http://devtestservice.com, http://discotest.org

Thursday, October 27, 2011

Unleashing creativity and employee engagement

Prepared by Dr. Theo L. Dawson1, Developmental Testing Service, Inc.

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Introductory exercises The purpose of these introductory exercises is to get participants on “the same page” before they address the central issue of this workshop—unleashing creativity and employee engagement.

What is creativity? In this exercise:

a. Participants will (working individually) sort a set of definitions of creativity according to their level of agreement with these statements. (Statements were drawn from a wide range of sources.)

b. They will then discuss these in small groups (2-3 people), to see if they can agree on two or three “best” definitions.

c. Finally, the full group will reconvene to report and discuss their rankings (and their reasons for these rankings).

What is creative leadership? Participants will use what they have learned from the first exercise to craft a definition of creative leadership. In crafting this definition, they will consider:

d. How being creative in a leadership context differs from (or is similar to) creativity in other contexts;

e. How workplace creativity differs from (or is similar to) creativity in other contexts; and f. The circumstances that call for creative leadership (and those that don’t).

What is strength-based leadership? Participants will construct a definition for strength-based leadership through a guided discussion. The resulting definition should resemble the following:

Strengths-based leadership involves leveraging the strengths of employees by encouraging (1) ongoing development in areas of strength, and (2) collaborative efforts among employees with diverse areas of strength. It does not mean ignoring the weaknesses of employees.

Part of the motivation for supporting strengths in this way is to increase creativity at the cutting edge of expertise, where novel solutions are most likely to emerge.

Unleashing creativity During the remainder of the workshop, participants will address the following questions:

1. How can leaders unleash the creativity of the work force? 2. What institutional structures foster creativity? 3. What practices unleash creativity? 4. What are the potential benefits of a strengths-based approach (an approach that highlights and

promotes the development of employee strengths) to creativity in the workplace?

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The creative leadership literature “When creativity is not deeply-understood, it easily reduces to mere “novelty”. And while all genuine creativity produces novelty, not all novelty is genuinely creative… Genuine creativity does not run counter to critical thought; rather, it builds upon it and is interwoven with it. Criticality continually heightens our sense of what is inadequate in what we presently do, think, or assume. It points in the direction of, and commonly suggests, what we need to aim at to get a useful new solution” (Paul & Elder, 2007), p. 42.

Table 1: Creative leadership: Articles

Definition/Model Source

“To be creative, an idea must also be appropriate, useful, and actionable. It must somehow influence the way business gets done—by improving a product, for instance, or by opening up a new way to approach a process.” (p. 78)

Creative leadership involves creative thinking, motivation, and expertise. Managers can enhance creativity by providing appropriate challenges, providing resources, re-configuring workgroups, providing encouragement, and institutionalizing support.

(Amabile, 1998)

There is a strong connection between the characteristics of a work environment and the quality of the creative problem solving that comes out of it. Leaders have the power to greatly enhance followers’ creative thinking.

(Ross, 2007)

Creative leadership is the ability to inspire and harness innovative ideas. Leaders should cultivate an interest in people, establish and uphold high standards of quality, and be devoted to what they do.

(Chernin)

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Table 2: Creative leadership: Research findings to ponder

Finding Sources

Contextual pressures like potential productivity loss and evaluation apprehension have a strong negative impact on creativity.

(Dennis & Valacich, 1993 ; Diehl & Stroebe, 1991; Furnham & Yazdanpanahi, 1996; Jung, 2002-2001)

Employees’ ability to produce creative work is affected by their cognitive style, intrinsic motivation, and the leader/employee relationship.

(Tierney, Farmer, & Graen, 1999)

Transformational leaders elicit more creativity than transactional leaders. (Jung, 2002-2001)

Creative leadership is associated with a facilitative or process-oriented leadership style. (Manz & Sims, 1987; Parnes, 1992)

Successful strategic teams “include members both with deep declarative knowledge, i.e. people who really know the industry, and people with superb procedural knowledge.”

(Grønhaug & Haukedal, 1995)

Diversity can foster creativity. (Ekvall, 1991; Rubenson & Runco, 1995)

Teams composed of members representing diverse areas of expertise are more creative than those with less diversity, especially when led by transformational leaders.

(Shin & Zhou, 2007)

Electronically networked communities of practice can provide support for creative leadership. (Bessant, 1992; Rura-Polley & Clegg, 1999)

Guided experience with morphological analysis, brainstorming, and lateral thinking can increase creativity in “closed-minded” individuals.

(Riquelme, 2000)

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Creativity sort task Creativity is a process through which individuals and groups discover new and useful ideas.

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Creativity is not the ability to create something out of nothing, but the ability to generate new ideas by combining, changing, or reapplying existing ideas. Some creative ideas are astonishing and brilliant, while others are just simple, good, practical ideas that no one seems to have thought of yet.

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Creativity is an attitude. It is the ability to accept change and newness, a willingness to play with ideas and possibilities, a flexibility of outlook, the habit of enjoying the good while looking for ways to improve it.

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Creativity is an inherited ability. Some people are born creative because their right brains dominate their left brains. Others are more analytical because the reverse is true.

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Creativity is hard work. Creative people continually improve ideas and solutions by making gradual alterations and refinements to their work. Contrary to the mythology surrounding creativity, very few works of creative excellence are produced with a single stroke of brilliance or in a frenzy of rapid activity.

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Creativity involves the ability not only to understand an alternate perspective, but to combine multiple perspectives to generate a new point of view.

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Creativity is bringing something into being out of nothing—bringing it into being by force of imagination.

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Creativity is a mental process involving the generation of new ideas or concepts, or new associations between existing ideas or concepts.

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Creativity is a collective process. It begins with the transmittal of knowledge, skills, and practices from a field of practice to an individual. The individual can then produce novel variation that is either accepted or rejected by other experts in the field.

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Creativity is a kind of emergence. It requires openness to new knowledge, experiences, and perspectives, broad interests, expertise in the domain of interest (or multiple domains), good learning, inquiry, and reasoning skills, and an environment that rewards the production of novelty.

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What is your creative potential? To get a rough estimate of your creative potential in the workplace, rate each of the following statements and add up your score. Be honest. (There is no trick here. The higher your score, the higher your workplace creative potential.)

Rating scale categories: 0 = strongly disagree, 1 = disagree, 2 = disagree somewhat, 3 = agree somewhat, 4 = agree, 5 = strongly agree

1. I often work collaboratively with others to solve challenging problems. 0 1 2 3 4 5

2. My field of work involves frequent problem solving. 0 1 2 3 4 5

3. I spend much of my “spare” time learning new things. 0 1 2 3 4 5

4. I have so many interests that I often have a hard time choosing what to learn about next. 0 1 2 3 4 5

5. When I encounter a challenging problem, I feel a thrill of anticipation. 0 1 2 3 4 5

6. I am considered an expert in my (main) field. 0 1 2 3 4 5

7. I would say that I have a good understanding of most of the major perspectives in my field. 0 1 2 3 4 5

8. I tend to become passionate about the things I do. 0 1 2 3 4 5

9. Many of the issues/problems I encounter in my work do not have straightforward solutions. 0 1 2 3 4 5

10. I often find myself noticing what people around me are doing and saying. 0 1 2 3 4 5

11. I am considered an expert in at least two very different fields (two or more of the following:

philosophy, math or computation, a hard science, a social science [psychology, sociology], a physical [kinesthetic] discipline, one of the arts [painting, creative writing, music, etc], a social discipline [political science, history], a technical discipline [engineering, programming], a spiritual discipline).

0 1 2 3 4 5

12. I try to understand the perspective of another expert well enough that he or she would agree with my characterization of that perspective.

0 1 2 3 4 5

13. I like to get outside of myself and look at what other people are thinking and doing. 0 1 2 3 4 5

14. When I’m working on a challenging problem, I prefer to work collaboratively with a team representing different areas of expertise.

0 1 2 3 4 5

15. I have several hobbies. 0 1 2 3 4 5

16. In addition to looking at differences between perspectives, I look for the overlap. 0 1 2 3 4 5

17. I try to achieve excellence in everything I do—even when I know that getting there may take years. 0 1 2 3 4 5

18. I’ll learn whatever I need to learn in order to reach a goal. 0 1 2 3 4 5

19. I frequently use the skills I learn in one area in a completely different area. 0 1 2 3 4 5

20. When I find out I’ve been wrong, I learn what I need to learn in order to get it right next time. 0 1 2 3 4 5

21. When I find myself in an unfamiliar situation, I usually feel a positive sense of anticipation. 0 1 2 3 4 5

22. I often lose track of time when I’m working on a problem. 0 1 2 3 4 5

23. I frequently consult with a variety of expert sources before making important decisions. 0 1 2 3 4 5

24. I really enjoy the challenge of finding a different way to solve a problem. 0 1 2 3 4 5

25. My lifestyle brings me into contact with people from many different cultures. 0 1 2 3 4 5

26. I often find myself questioning “standard” ways of doing things. 0 1 2 3 4 5

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References Amabile, T., M. (1998). How to kill creativity. Harvard Business Review, September-October, 77-87. Bessant, J. (1992). Big bang or continuous evolution: Why incremental innovation is gaining attention in

successful organisations. Creativity and Innovation Management, 1(2), 59–62. Chernin, P. Creative leadership. Executive Excellence, 3-4. Dennis, A. R., & Valacich, J. S. (1993 ). Computer brainstorms: More heads are better than one. Journal

of Applied Psychology, 78, 531–537. Diehl, M., & Stroebe, W. (1991). Productivity loss in idea-generating groups: Tracking down the blocking

effect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 61, 392–403. Ekvall, G. (1991). Change-centred leaders: Empirical evidence of a third dimension of leadership.

Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 12(6), 18-23. Furnham, A., & Yazdanpanahi, T. (1996). Personality differences and group versus individual

brainstorming. Personality and Individual Differences, 19, 73–80. Grønhaug, K., & Haukedal, W. (1995). Experts and novices in innovative, unstructured tasks: The case of

strategy formation. Creativity and Innovation Management, 4(1), 4-13. Jung, D. I. (2002-2001). Transformational and transactional leadership and their effects on creativity in

groups. Creativity Research Journal, 13, 185-195. Manz, C. C., & Sims, H. P. (1987). Leading workers to lead themselves: The external leadership of self-

managing work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 32, 106–128. Parnes, S. J. (Ed.). (1992). Sourcebook for creative problem-solving. Buffalo, NY: Creative Education

Foundation Press. Paul, R., & Elder, L. (2007). Educational fads: Foundation for Critical Thinking Press. Riquelme, H. (2000). How to develop more creative strategic plans. Creativity and Innovation

Management, 9, 14–20. Ross, J. A. (2007). Creative leadership: Be your team's chief innovation officer. Harvard Management

Update, March. Rubenson, D. L., & Runco, M. A. (1995). The psychoeconomic view of creative work in groups and

organizations. Creativity and Innovation Management, 4(3), 232–241. Rura-Polley, & Clegg, S. R. (1999). Managing collaborative quality: A challenging innovation. Creativity

and Innovation Management, 8, 37-47. Shin, S. J., & Zhou, J. (2007). When Is educational specialization heterogeneity related to creativity in

research and development teams? Transformational leadership as a moderator. Journal of Applied Psychology, 97(6), 1709-1721.

Tierney, P., Farmer, S. M., & Graen, G. B. (1999). An examination oi leadership and employee creativity: The relevance of traits and relationships. Personnei Psychology, 52, 591-620.