Leadership Development News Roundup: Fostering Creativity at Work Edition

Whether it produces the next big product innovation, a streamlined process or an alternate revenue stream -- creativity can enhance organizations and help them thrive. Creativity isn’t limited to artists, designers and marketers, it’s something every employee can learn to tap and use on the job. Do you have some creative people at your company? Would you like more?For this week’s Leadership Development News Roundup, I’ve assembled a collection of articles and blog posts about fostering creativity at work and how you can do it within your organization.

• 7 Ways to Unlock Your Company's Creative Juices. Entrepreneur: “Welcome crazy ideas. As a leader, embrace creativity like a long lost friend and welcome it into your organization with open arms. And once you’ve allowed new ideas and thinking inside, let them flow freely without restrictions or sanctions. It’s only then that employees will be happy to put their head above the parapet and offer up the ideas and suggestions that will transform your company -- bringing a whole new dimension of purpose, energy and productivity to you and your staff.”

• The 4 Stages of Creativity. Inc.: “You might think creativity starts with an idea, but the truth is that ideas don't arise in an intellectual vacuum. If you want your brain to come up with innovative notions, you need to feed it materials to work with. This essential but under-celebrated stage of the process is simply called preparation and involves trying to learn lots of things. At this point, rather than searching for magic leaps of understanding, your brain is using attention, reasoning, and planning to gather information.”

• Yes, You Can Manufacture Creativity. Here’s How. Fast Company: “While this is a controlled process in a carefully curated environment, many clients often feel a lack of control that scares them, Hibma tells me. Clients are so used to sitting in a conference room and generating results after a quick brainstorming session so, particularly during the early part of the day, clients can feel they are being unproductive and inefficient. ‘We’ve learned that we need to assure them that we will arrive at an answer by the end of the day,’ she says. ‘It puts people at ease, allowing them to relax into our method.’”

• Where Does Creativity Come From? NPR: “[Elizabeth] Gilbert:...what I've discovered over the years is not that you have to be fearless -- because I don't believe in fearlessness, and I don't advise it. I think the only truly fearless people that I've ever met were full-blown psychopaths or really reckless 3-year-olds. And I don't think we want to aspire to be either of those things. I think instead what you have to do is recognize that fear and creativity are conjoined twins…. And so what I've had to figure out how to do over the years is to create a sort of mental construct in which I make a lot of space to coexist with fear.”

• Management Skills 108: How to Foster Creativity at Work. Vantage Point: “Offer structured freedom: If you want employees to come up with bright ideas, they need to know that their voices will be heard, they can make a difference, and they won’t be shot down….Plug creative thinking throughout the organization: Critical thinking should pervade the forefront of everyone’s minds throughout the organization, including functions like finance and IT. By evaluating the context of several standpoints in reaching a final decision, organizations can encourage a spirit of reflective and divergent thinking.”

Let us know if you’d like our help developing strategies to enhance creativity within your organization.Success Labs is a full-service, strategic organizational and leadership development company located in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. For more than 25 years, our expert team of consultants has worked with hundreds of companies to explore their business potential and improve their company and cultural performance. Contact us to get proactive about your people strategy.