As many organisations continue to operate in a hybrid work environment, HR and business leaders are being asked to develop new skills and perspectives to lead business transformation and address workforce shifts in their organisation.
To do so effectively, many have been compelled to deviate from previously entrenched practices and demonstrate out-of-the-box thinking to introduce their own style of creative leadership.
Speaking with HRM Magazine Asia, Dickson Tang, keynote speaker and author of the book, Leadership for Future of Work, shared:
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Creative leadership is your ability to unlock your team’s ideas and creativity towards future business growth. In a VUCA world filled with volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, figuring out the path to future business growth is one of the priorities for modern organisations. Creative leaders are also likely to empower their team members with new ways of doing things. They will ask questions such as: “Is there something we should stop doing as a team, or is there something we should start doing as a team?” |
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Looking out for individuals who are curious, open to new possibilities, and possess a “why not” attitude. They must also embrace the challenge of generating, organising, and prioritising new ideas, particularly those that support business growth and improvement. |
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After identifying the creative leaders in their ranks, organisations can leverage on them to embed a “why not” mindset, and encourage employees to come up with new possibilities and eradicating “cannot do” attitude.
As creatures of habit, it is perhaps not surprising that many people struggled to adapt to the life changes the pandemic brought, including in the workplace. However, to tap into future growth opportunities, creative leaders must help to build a culture of “possibilities”, where team members are encouraged to brainstorm and visualise a range of potential options, without considering their practicality at the start. This open-ended approach helps unlock new possibilities related to new products, new services, and new ways of operation. |
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Creative leaders can also turn regular team meetings into ideation sessions by engaging members to express their ideas, rather than routinely going through the regular agenda items in meeting minutes.
Get your team members to come up with new ideas to enhance the employee experience and to identify new revenue growth opportunities. The small shift from ‘updating’ to ‘ideating’ carries big impact to your team and to your business. |
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Creative leaders must consider current practices and whether they are still relevant and effective as the business environment and organisational needs continue to change rapidly.
Your team might be too comfortable working in the trenches and are repeating the same processes from the past. You may want to get your members to pause and think about the things that they should stop doing as a team. |
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Creative leadership also entails encouraging the creation of ideas through both synchronous and asynchronous ideation.
While synchronous ideation means getting team members together to brainstorm in real-time, for example, through a live brainstorming session over Zoom, asynchronous ideation is about getting team members to contribute ideas by a deadline. With hybrid team members spreading across multiple time zones and work locations, asynchronous ideation is easier to arrange and allows team members to contribute a diverse range of ideas. |
Extracted from:
https://hrmasia.com/accelerating-business-growth-with-creative-leadership/
By: Shawn Liew | April 26, 2023
