Creative leadership at work

Cultivating creativity for your teams

Leading creatively in the workplace

In today’s fast-paced world, we face a constant influx of sensory data. Our brains dutifully organise this information, storing it in mental file cabinets for future reference. While this process aids memory and repetition, it can constrain our ability to approach challenges with fresh perspectives or devise innovative solutions.

Enter our Creativity Toolkit: A resource for breaking free from conventional thinking patterns. The toolkit offers you a curated selection of strategies and techniques to ignite creativity within your organisation. From brainstorming exercises to frameworks for progressing ideas, these tools provide actionable insights and practical guidance for navigating the complexities of modern business.

Download the toolkit today for a comprehensive overview of our favourite methods for sparking creativity in your organisation. If you’re still looking for additional insights and resources that will empower you to lead creatively in the workplace, then explore the rest of this page for some more of our favourites.

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Boost your creativity to get unstuck in your projects

Transformation projects rarely travel in a straight line, and with digital innovation and ambiguity becoming constants in today’s workplace, traditional approaches only count for so much.

To encourage fresh perspectives and ideas that can super‑charge success, creativity is a secret sauce that is too often overlooked. Here, we share eight practical tips for how you can inject creativity into your projects and transform your team environment in the process.

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Every one of us can be creative.

We just need the right environment to flourish – the culture, time and permission

The importance of creativity in leadership

Creativity is critical for business success

Last year we hosted the fantastic Adam Kingl for an evening focussing on creativity, including the launch of his new book, ‘Sparking Success: Why every leader needs to develop a creative mindset’.

Creativity is seen as a top three priority in the workplace, but with almost 94% of companies failing to spend time exploring it there has never been a greater opportunity for leaders to make change.

Watch the video or read more about the event below.

These three traits set them apart!

Hover over to learn how to cultivate them.

CURIOSITY

Creative thinkers are interested in the world around them. They have a wide variety of interests and are intrigued by new knowledge. They often wonder why things are the way they are.

Cultivate curiosity

Make a habit of asking, “Why…?” about things you take for granted. Have you wondered why bread rolls come in packs of 6?
Follow the footnotes. When you read something interesting with a footnote reference, find the reference and read that. Then keep going. This is the deep antidote to shallow social media distraction.

Irreverence

Creative thinkers are willing to challenge established norms. Creativity is the process of coming up with original ideas that have value. Sometimes this means destabilising the status quo.

Cultivate irreverence

Being irreverent is not the same as being reckless. It is maintaining responsibility whilst fostering purposeful instability.

This is an important habit to start small.

Find something normal for your organisation and identify the implied assumptions that underpin it. (Hint: We’ve always done it this way)

Ask yourself how you would do it if these assumptions were untrue.

Imagination

Creative thinkers can envision new possibilities. Curiosity makes them wonder why things are this way. Irreverence forces them to challenge the logic of the status quo. Imagination gives power to how things could be different.

Cultivate imagination

Practice using the phrase “How Might We…?“.

HOW – Gives confidence that there are other solutions and probably many more than one. So try to find as many as you can.

MIGHT – Acknowledges that some things will work and some things won’t, and that’s OK. What’s more important is getting the ideas out.

WE – This isn’t a solo exercise: build on the ideas of others.

CREATIVITY IN LEADERSHIP WEBINAR

Watch on demand

In this webinar, we were joined by London College of Fashion to explore the role creativity plays for leaders, including:

💭 The art of problem-solving.

🌱 Fostering a creative culture by embracing creativity as a practice, not a goal.

⏰ Making space for creativity in our fast-paced world.

Watch on demand now.

Caro Ruttledge

Contact

Spiro Comitis