What do you do if embracing creativity in a leadership position poses risks and challenges?

Newsflash ➝ leadership as a practice means constantly embracing creativity, adapting, being agile, resilience, casting a vision, communicating it with meaning, etc. Leadership means taking risks. It means being in front to face challenges. If you're too afraid of what possibilities could come from creative initiatives, you likely need to work on your growth mindset. Focusing purely on the worst-case scenarios will stagnant creative pursuits and crush morale.

In my experience, embracing creativity while managing risks is key. I often use a technique called risk assessment matrices to evaluate potential pitfalls and their impact. By visualizing worst-case scenarios and devising contingency plans, we can foster innovation without compromising preparedness. It's about striking a balance between encouraging creativity and ensuring we're ready to handle any challenges that arise.

Here’s how to make a splash without sinking: Risk Assessment: Clearly identify what could go wrong with each creative leap. Understand the potential impact and the odds of it happening. Develop Contingency Plans: Have a plan B (and C, if you're feeling extra cautious). Knowing you have fallback options can embolden more creative thinking. Set Clear Boundaries: Define the limits of creative risks. Encourage a Test-and-Learn Culture: Promote small-scale testing of new ideas. It’s like dipping your toes in before the full plunge, allowing for adjustments based on feedback. By preparing for risks, you create a safety net that allows creativity to soar without fear of a crash landing.

It is pivotal we need to find out what the potential specific risks are when we consider starting creative initiatives. Such processes can include our evaluation resistance from our stakeholders, the potential impact on on them and reactions to changes in the leadership approaches.

There are much greater risks in not embracing creativity than in taking a chance at potential innovative solutions to challenges. As a leader, your team looks to your spoken and non-verbal responses to their attempts at creativity. When they try to share their perspectives or ideas, are these dismissed with defensiveness or eye rolls? Or do you build on these, inviting someone else to add a layer based on their expertise, or asking questions with genuine curiosity? Team members will be more willing to pose experimental suggestions if they see that you’re looking for progress, not perfection on the first try.

Make sure everyone feels safe to share their thoughts and feelings without worrying about being judged. We want everyone to feel confident enough to speak up and contribute. And remember to really listen to each other—ask questions if you're not sure, and take a moment to understand before jumping in. Let's also take some time to think things over and put ourselves in each other's shoes to really understand where we're all coming from.

Tether the creative exercise to organizational goals and desired outputs/concrete metrics. There can be staggered periods of idea generation, analysis, selection, testing, and evaluation. This provides a framework within which your team is gaining traction toward milestones, instead of being lost in ongoing ideation with minimal action). Remind your team that a minimally viable product that moves the needle is a solid start, and can be increasingly improved based on real-world data and feedback.

Walk the talk of being committed to the collective effort, being willing to ask for input from others, being open to learning about technologies/practices you may be unfamiliar with, and welcoming “fast failing” as a valuable way to validate how realistic creative proposals could be in practice. In your word and action, do you show that you are a leader that cares more about getting the right answer, getting the credit, or getting your team to be confident in their grit and creativity? Celebrate the small wins, and shine a light on the contributions of team members as they persevere toward phased completion.

There is a Chinese saying which states that "Failure is the Mother of Success". We don't grow as leaders because we are always successful all the time. Rather, we become more trustworthy and competent leaders when we are brave enough to step out of our comfort zones, make good decisions for our organization and encounter unavoidable mistakes. Do not repeat these failures. Yet, learn from these failures and acquire timeless gems of leadership wisdom. Don't give up, you will get better if you learn from your failures and apply newfound leadership wisdom in your daily life :)

If failure isn’t a possibility, then your team might not actually be pursuing fresh and original approaches at the extent they could be for truly transformative results. Put scaffolding in place so the team knows how to efficiently conduct post-mortems on failed attempts or errors. The objective should not be on casting blame, but rather on drawing the useful learning that can be the beginning of the next new and improved experiment.

When individuals have made an effort to upskill, acquire new certifications, get hands-on experiences, invite them to share their top takeaways with the rest of the team. This can lead to a learning and creativity “contagion,” as best practices are actively shared within teams by one of their own.

Your leadership will not make people be creative. Leadership is responsible for vision, culture and resources. Provide your team a culture of experimentation, give them time, resources and skill and ultimately show them the outcome your wish for them to achieve. Creativity is not something you do, it's something your are.

Creating an environment that fosters creativity and innovation requires intentionality and commitment from leadership. One of the key ways to do this is to proactively set aside dedicated time and resources for creative work. Far too often, leaders get caught up in the day-to-day operational demands of the organization, leaving little room for the strategic, big-picture creative thinking that is essential for long-term success. The "urgent" tasks crowd out the "important" creative initiatives. To combat this, leaders make a conscious effort to block off time on the calendar for ideation, brainstorming, and exploration of new possibilities. This could take the form of regularly scheduled innovation sessions and design thinking workshops