The Innovative Team and the Role of the Leader

Photo by NIKHIL on Unsplash

When do employees get the most out of their leaders? And when do leaders get the most out of their employees? There is an unspoken belief that a good leader must be decisive: someone who knows, who solves, who directs. Yet a team reliant on its leader for answers quickly loses its creative spark, especially in the very spaces that worship innovation. When managers try to coach their people, what inspires creativity? The myth of leadership is dismantled by recent findings; creativity cannot be forced by telling people what to do.

In a study by Szabó and Ratiu, it was discovered that business employees pertain two types of lens in order to problem solve; rational, structured and logic driven, or creative, imaginative and open ended. The findings open a new avenue of conversation; leadership as command is not as effective as what has been previously believed. Instead, leaders who step into the roles of inspiring facilitators is the spark required for creativity to blossom.

There are three types of coaching behaviours adopted by leaders:

1)       Guidance – through solutions, advice, helping the employee ‘do it right’

2)       Facilitation – asking questions, opening a space for thought, allowing employees to generate ideas of their own

3)       Inspiration – activating motivation, vision and possibility

Out of all three, guidance fails to encourage creative problem solving, so it’s possible that the approach is misdirected in the times creativity is needed the most.

When leaders habitually guide, they risk reducing autonomy; the catalyst for creative thinking, boxing employees in a limited space. While the leader so frequently offering guidance may feel supportive, they inadvertently stop people from accessing expansive thought, trading the future for the comfort of the present – what is known.

The trick, instead, is to turn attention to other methods of leadership. Facilitation is often uncredited in leadership circles; it is invisible, there are no obvious merits to not giving answers.

Until there are.

The most subversive work of the leader is within facilitation, combining the ability to keep one’s own knowledge to themselves, allowing opportunity for curiosity to grow by allowing someone else the opportunity to step forward with their thoughts and suggestions. The employee now has the chance to navigate the possibilities of finding the answer themselves. They can explore, interpret and sculpt new ideas, and while this may not be the most efficient way (unfortunate when business so often requires immediate results), it could be the key to maximum benefit in the long term.

And what of inspiration? A word that has been sugar-coated by the corporate lens, but offers a psychological key – permission. When a leader allows an employee to connect to meaning, a grander vision and the possibility of their own potential, people begin to create more boldly. The lines are blurred, people can start to imagine, ask questions, fail and try again and still have a sense of belonging. It’s someone saying ‘yes, you are allowed to go beyond what is rationally safe’.

Creativity is not a trait, but a state of being. It is not something a person does or doesn’t have, it is whether or not they have the environment, and leadership, that allows them to be creative. This poses the unsettling thought that so many organisations have missed out on business-evolving innovation because their leaders were so focused on guidance. The blame for a non-creative team reflects back on the one supposedly meant to encourage it.

If leadership was leaned into more as a role for influencing the expansion of someone’s mind instead of an influence to the outcomes, so much more opportunity may be achieved. Leaders might take a step back, lead less by answering and more by asking, learning to inspire not by trying to be inspirational but through showing people the meaning behind the work. It is not a coincidence that the most creative teams have the best leaders, where employees are not rescued from the discomfort of thinking, but encouraged to utilise it instead.

When depth psychologists consider creativity, it is from the perspective of the shadow. Creative thinking doesn’t emerge from the parts of the psyche that are always on show, but the hidden truths of the unconscious. When a leader guides too tightly, they remain in the performative persona, the person who is socially acceptable and predictable, and mirror that back to the people they lead. Facilitation and inspiration allow employees to approach the unconscious, speak ideas that are still forming, explore thoughts that may have otherwise been silenced in case of embarrassment and risk revealing the non-curated parts of themselves. Creative problem-solving is the loosening grip of the ego enough for the unconscious to offer its contribution, with the leader’s hands on the rope.

For the full research article, see International Journal of Coaching Psychology (2021): Volume 2, Article 6.: Volume 2, Article 6 – International Journal of Coaching Psychology

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