Elsevier

The Leadership Quarterly

Volume 13, Issue 6, December 2002, Pages 705-750
The Leadership Quarterly

Leading creative people: Orchestrating expertise and relationships

https://doi.org/10.1016/S1048-9843(02)00158-3Get rights and content

Abstract

Global competition, new production techniques, and rapid technological change have placed a premium on creativity and innovation. Although many variables influence creativity and innovation in organizational settings, there is reason to suspect that leaders and their behavior represent a particularly powerful influence. In the present article, we review the available literature examining leadership behaviors contributing to creativity and innovation in organizational settings. Based on the findings obtained in these studies, we argue that the leadership of creative people requires expertise. Moreover, the successful leader must employ a number of direct and indirect influence tactics—tactics consistent with the needs of creative people working in an organizational environment. The implications of these observations for theory and practice are discussed.

Section snippets

The work

Although we typically associate creative work with artists and scientists, creative work is not defined with respect to a particular occupation (Mumford, Whetzel, & Reiter-Palmon, 1997). Instead, creative work occurs on jobs, any job, that involves certain types of tasks. Specifically, creative work can occur when the tasks presented involve complex, ill-defined problems where performance requires the generation of novel, useful solutions Besemer & O'Quin, 1999, Ford, 2000, Mumford & Gustafson,

Expertise and creativity

Based on their autonomy and professionalism, some scholars have argued that leaders need not share the expertise and creative problem-solving skills of their followers. Indeed, one might argue that the loss of objectivity entailed may make it more difficult for leaders to effectively evaluate the organizational implications of new ideas. Although these arguments are plausible, they are not supported by the available evidence. In fact, the available evidence indicates that technical expertise

Influence tactics

However valuable expertise, visioning, sense making, and social skills, ultimately leaders must get other people to produce new ideas and new products. This exercise of influence must, of course, take into account the unique characteristics of creative people—their autonomy, curiosity, and professional focus. To complicate matters further, leaders of creative people must find a set of influence tactics that allows them to manage three sets of apparently contradictory demands. First, leaders

Structure and climate

The Cardinal and Hatfield's (2001) study reminds us that creativity and innovation will be effected by the organizational context. Accordingly, how leaders, as the occupants of a boundary role position, interact with, and respond to, these contextual demands, may have some noteworthy effects on innovation. This observation, in turn, poses a question. Exactly what aspects of the organizational context surrounding the work influence creativity and innovation?

Over the course of the last

Conclusions

Before turning to the broader conclusions flowing from the present effort, certain limitations inherent in the approach applied herein should be noted. To begin, we have, in the present effort, treated creative leadership as a general phenomenon referencing our conclusions about creative leaders against known characteristics of creative work and creative people. Accordingly, only scant attention has been given to cross-field content differences—the differences we see between scientist, artists,

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Fran Yammarino, Shane Connelly, Jorge Mendoza, Jody Fry, Robert Hooijberg, and Martin Evans for their comments concerning earlier drafts of this manuscript. Parts of this effort were supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Health, R01-NS-42397-01, Michael D. Mumford, Principal Investigator.

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