Topic 4

Leadership: Intelligence and Creativity

How do Intelligence and Creativity Affect Leadership?

Cognitive Ability and Knowledge of Business

Leaders need to have cognitive ability to formulate suitable strategies, solve problems, and make correct decisions

Effective leaders have knowledge about the company, industry, and technical matters

SUPER

Intelligence

Intelligence is a person’s all-around effectiveness in activities directed by thought.

Intelligence is relatively difficult to change.

Intelligence can be and is modified through education and experience.

Intelligence and Leadership

Intelligent leaders: Are faster learners. Make better assumptions, deductions, and inferences. Are better at creating a compelling vision and developing

strategies to make their vision a reality. Can develop better solutions to problems. Can see more of the primary and secondary implications of

their decisions. Are quicker on their feet than leaders who are less intelligent.

Theories assessing the nature of intelligence:

Intelligence is a unitary ability. Intelligence involves a collection of

related mental abilities. Intelligence is based more on the

process by which people do complex work rather than the number of mental abilities.

The unitary view

The unitary view is founded on findings early in this century that individuals’ scores on different types of intelligence were all positively correlated – a person doing well on a vocabulary test was likely to do well on a memory or numeric reasoning test and vice versa.

The multiple intelligence’s view

The multiple intelligence’s view is based on common observations of people and finds that every person possesses linguistic, musical, logical-mathematical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, intrapersonal, and interpersonal intelligence.

Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory of Intelligence

Analytic Intelligence

Practical Intelligence

Creative Intelligence

Cognitive Resource Theory Concerns The apparent dichotomy between intelligence and

experience: Research showed not only that many leaders were

both intelligent and experienced, but also that they would fall back on their experience in stressful situations and use their intelligence to solve group problems in less-stressful situations.

The leader’s ability to tolerate stress: Leaders may do well in high-stress situations even

when they lack experience because of their inherent ability to handle stress.

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Cognitive Factors

Cognition refers to the mental process or faculty by which knowledge is gathered

Leaders must have problem-solving and intellectual skills to effectively gather, process, and store essential information

Six cognitive factors related to leadership effectiveness have been identified

Cognitive Factors and Leadership

The WICS Model of Leadership in Organizations

This model of leadership encompassesand synthesizes

wisdomintelligence, andcreativity

to explain leadership effectiveness

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The WICS Model (cont’d)

According to the WICS model, a leader needs the following for the successful utilization of intelligence:Creative skills to generate new ideasAnalytical skills to evaluate whether

the ideas are good onesPractical skills to implement the ideas

and to persuade others of their value.

Implications for Leaders

Research has shown that leaders tend to be somewhat more intelligent than others in their groups. Nevertheless, intelligence alone is no guarantee a person will be a good leader, and extremely intelligent people may have a difficult time communicating with followers.

Intelligent people do not always make successful leaders and sometimes can make quite a mess out of their lives. In his book, Intelligence Applied, Sternburg (1986) described some of the reasons why smart people fail, which include:

Sternberg’s “Why Smart People Fail”:

Lack of Motivation Lack of Impulse

Control Lack of Perseverance Fear of Failure Inability to translate

thought into action Too Little or Too

Much Self-Confidence

Inability to See the Forest for the Trees

Distractibility and Lack of Concentration

Indecision Procrastination Inability to Complete

Tasks Spreading oneself too

thick or thin

Leaders and Stress: Cognitive Resources Theory

Leaders with higher experience but lower intelligence perform better under high stress conditions, while leaders with lower experience but higher intelligence will do better under low stress conditions. The best leaders are often smart and experienced.

Emotional Intelligence and Leadership

Emotional Intelligence is:A group of mental abilities that help people to

recognize their own feelings and those of others.Another way of measuring human effectiveness

and a set of abilities necessary to cope with daily situations and get along in the world.

The degree to which thoughts, feelings, and actions are aligned.

Implications of Emotional Intelligence People can be extremely ineffective when their thoughts,

feelings, and actions are misaligned. Leaders who are thinking or feeling one thing and actually

doing something else are less effective in their ability to influence groups toward the accomplishment of their goals.

When recognized and leveraged properly emotions can be the motivational fuel that help individuals and groups to accomplish their goals.

Some researchers believe that emotional intelligence is more important than intelligence when it comes to leadership success.

It appears that EQ attributes would be difficult to change as a result of training intervention.

Components Of Emotional Components Of Emotional IntelligenceIntelligence

Self-awareness

Managing emotions

Self-motivation

Empathy for others

Interpersonal skills

Emotional Intelligence What’s your Emotional Quotient? EQ Handout

Limitations Of EQ Literature

Research does not indicate that EQ is more important than intelligence in leadership.

Few EQ researchers have acknowledged the existence of personality-leadership effectiveness research.

If the EQ attributes are essentially personality traits, then it is difficult to see how they will change as a result of a training intervention.

Organizational Creativity Leaders should remember that their primary role is

not so much to be creative themselves as to build an environment where others can be creative.

Research has shown that people tend to generate more creative solutions when they are told to focus on their intrinsic motivation for doing so rather than on the extrinsic motivation.

Leaders may want to hold off on evaluating new ideas until they are all on the table, and should also encourage their followers to do the same.

Leaders who need to develop new products and services should try to minimize the level of turnover in their teams and provide them with clear goals.

Creativity and Leadership

Organizations not only solve problems which require the use of proven procedures; they must apply innovative solutions to unexpected situations.

What is Creativity?

Also known as divergent thinking, creativity involves seeing things from a new perspective. Intelligence is a necessary but not sufficient condition for creativity. Tests of creativity have many possible answers and have no hard and fast standards for judging responses.

The Components of Creativity

Creativity is composed of expertise (knowledge base from which to generate solutions), imaginative thinking (ability to recognize new connections or patterns), and intrinsic motivation (interest or satisfaction in solving the problem for its own sake).

Blocks to Creativity

Lack of technical expertise ,concern about evaluation of ideas, focus on extrinsic motivation, and lack of autonomy may stifle creativity.

Steps for Improving Creativity Look at things from as many

perspectives as possible. Use analogies (synectics technique) or pictures. Use power relationships constructively to enhance creativity. Be receptive to new ideas, encourage open expression, reward successes, and empower followers. Form diverse problem solving groups.

Implications for Leaders

Being a good leader in today’s dynamic environment means being creative or at least stimulating and nurturing creativity in others. A clear vision of the goal or goals is needed in managing creativity.

Characteristics Of Creative Characteristics Of Creative LeadersLeaders

Perseverance when facing

obstacles

Self-confidence

Willingness to take risks

Willingness to grow and

openness

to new experiences

Tolerance for ambiguity

Creativity and Innovation

Creativity is the production of novel and useful ideas

Innovation refers to the creation of new ideas and their implementation

Organizational creativity is the creation of a valuable, useful new product, service, idea, procedure, or process by individuals working together in a complex social system

Steps in the Creative Process

Characteristics of Creative Leaders

Componential Theory of Individual Creativity

Creativity takes place when three components join togetherExpertise: the necessary knowledge

to put facts togetherCreative thinking: the ability to

imaginatively solve problemsTask motivation: persevering or

sticking with a problem to a conclusion

Outside the Box Thinking

A box in this sense is a category that confines and restricts thinking. A creative person is not confined to a box, but sees opportunities outside the box.

A box in this sense is a category that confines and restricts thinking. A creative person is not confined to a box, but sees opportunities outside the box.

Organizational Methods to Enhance Creativity

Systematically collecting fresh ideas Brainstorming Using the pet-peeve technique Using the forced-association

technique Equipping a kitchen for the mind Engaging in playful physical activities

Leadership Practices for Enhancing Creativity

1. Intellectual challenge2. Freedom to choose the method3. Ample supply of the right resources4. Effective design of work groups5. Supervisory encouragement6. Organizational support7. Having favorable exchanges with creative

workers8. Leaders as talent magnets

Methods of Managing Creative Workers Give creative people tools and resources

that allow their work to stand out Give creative people flexibility and a

minimum amount of structure Give gentle feedback when turning down an

idea Employ creative people to manage and

evaluate creative workers

Leadership Initiatives to Enhance Innovation Continually pursue innovation Take risks and encourage risk taking Acquire innovative companies Avoid innovation for its own sake Loose-tight leadership enhances creativity

and innovation Integrate development and production Encourage people across divisions to share

ideas

Summary

A creative leader brings forth ideas for things that did not exist previously

The creative process involves five steps: opportunity or problem recognition, immersion, incubation, insight, and verification and application

Summary (cont’d)

Creative people have five distinguishing characteristics: knowledge, intellectual ability, personality, and passion for the task and the experience of flow

Creativity requires overcoming traditional thinking

There are several organizational and self-help techniques to enhance creative thinking and problem-solving

Summary (cont’d)

Effective leadership requires establishing a climate conducive to creative problem-solving

Special attention should be paid to managing creative workers

Leaders can enhance innovation through several initiatives