Creativity starts with humility. It starts with saying “I don’t know the answer”. The resulting journey to find that answer most times results in creative solutions. Creativity stops when we think we know everything and no longer become sojourners on a journey of inquisitiveness. It also stops when our teams become unbalanced because of homogenous recruitment to the team.
Jaussi, Stefanovich & Devlin (2008) argue that there are four categories of effective followership for creativity and innovation. They build on Roberts Kelley’s dimensions of effective followership, and label their categories as follows:
1. Creative Skeptics – Challenge and prod new ideas through bold questions that challenge assumptions.
2. Creative Statics – Bring calm, rational energy and a sense of stability to the team.
3. Creative Supporters – Open to creative solutions but have an easier time with incremental new thoughts that build on existing thoughts, than coming up with brand-new ideas.
4. Creative Catalysts – Inspire creativity by idea dropping, and create positive disturbances through those ideas.
A leader needs to build a team around him/her that has all four qualities/people on it. If the team is unbalanced towards on or more quadrants, creativity and innovation will be severely hindered, dysfunctional or irrational in the organization. Leaders must intentionally recruit diverse team members to their teams, that are different than themselves. This diversity will become a primary catalyst to creativity.
Jaussi, K.S., Stefanovich, A. & Devlin, P.G. (2008). Effective followership for creativity and innovation. In R. Riggio, I. Chaleff & J. Lipman-Blumen (Eds.). The art of followership: How great followers create great leaders and organizations (pp.291-307). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Tim Vanderpyl is a Certified Human Resource Professional (CHRP) with Canada’s largest catholic healthcare organization. He holds a Master of Arts in Leadership from Trinity Western University and is working toward a Doctorate in Strategic Leadership at Regent University.
Leaders need to foster creativity, and I can concur that the four categories of effective followership are useful, but creativity is a component of innovation process and I suggest that sometimes the two are sometimes confused or condensed. According to Manu (2007), innovation is a four step process:
1) Imagination
2) Creativity
3) Innovation
4) Progress
Imagination utilizes images of what might be and includes looking at the future without a specific problem. Creativity is the tool used to solve problems that have been identified, which is followed by innovation, the creation of something that did not exist before. The reason for undertaking innovation should be to create progress of some sort, a bettering of society, the organization, the individual, etc.
You made a great point, leaders should encourage diversity, and I would add diversity of viewpoint, knowledge and foresight in order to create teams that are better able to deal with possibilities as they are presented. Your article does not state it implicitly, but it certainly implies that the four categories require involvement in the process. An added benefit of involvement is that involvement helps defuse the new knowledge to others. (Cutcher-Gershenfeld, et al., 1998).
One thing a leader needs to do in order to foster the innovation process, is create a safe environment where people act in friendship (Senge, 1990), and as friends value other opinions that may not match that of either the leader or of the other team participants.
Cutcher-Gershenfeld, J., Lin, W.-J., Nitta, M., Moore, M., Barrett, B. J., Mothersell, W. M., et al. (1998). Knowledge-Driven Work: Unexpected Lessons from Japanese and United States Work Practices. New York: Oxford University Press. Manu, A. (2007). The Imagination Challenge: Strategic Foresight and Innovation in the Global Economy. Berkeley: New Riders. Senge, P. M. (1990). The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization. New York: Doubleday.