Critical Leadership Skills
Hughes, Ginnett,and Curphy (2019) textbook covers the various skills leaders need to develop to be effective.
Each student will choose a Leadership Skill that he or she would like to improve. Write a 5 page report (less than 5 pages will not be accepted).
First, you will research the leadership skill and write a minimum of 1 page presenting the literature of the skill.
Next, you will provide a rationale for choosing to work on this particular skill, the plan to improve yourself in this area, your efforts over at least a two week period of time to build skills in this area, your results, and your expectations of using this skill in the future.
Introduction
Leadership skills is a critical concept for enumeration in pursuing organizational goals. The concept describe the talents and strengths demonstrated by individuals to guide ingenuities, direct processes, and navigate employees towards achieving organizational goals. Leaders require specific skills to guide employees to attain goals including communication, patience, creativity and risk-taking skills among others. While leadership skills poise as the linchpin for organizational effectiveness, this paper discusses creativity as a skill that I would like to improve as a vital concept in the organizational leadership.
Literature of the Creativity Skill
In the rapidly changing and complex world, creativity in leadership proves a critical factor to drive organizational success. The leadership roles keep changing and such challenges foster the need for creativity, to guide in solving ill-defined problems, compete effectively, and respond to unleashing opportunities (Guo, Gonzales & Dilley, 2016). Leadership involves attempting complex challenges and potential threats to organizational goals. While challenges emerge in different forms, novel approaches are essential to manage each effectively. Such fosters the need for creative leaders to drive the necessary change in addressing these challenges, to enable the organization thrive in the competitive landscape.
Creativity involves changing mental models and ideas into reality through diverse perception of the world around to actualize the notions. It requires an individual to possess innate ability to unleash concealed patterns, connect ostensibly unrelated phenomena while generating viable solutions to problems. As such, this skill does not only involve thinking, but producing assumingly novelistic information into intangible and tangible ways (Sohmen, 2015). Creativity is fun and involves exploring, experimenting, imaginations, questioning assumptions and synthesizing information. While creativity sparks anxiety, innovation, and excitement due to deviation from the mundane and predictable phenomenon, its need is driven by certain forces (Sohmen, 2015). A major force that drives creativity is the connection of the skill and leadership among individuals who emphasize development. Organizational development requires creativity attitude to deal with issues effectively and maintain competitiveness.
Additionally, human needs keep evolving and hence the need for organizations to produce goods and services that align effectively to such needs. In other words, the need for flexibility in production of goods and services is paramount to meet the dynamic needs of consumers (Cai, Lysova, Khapova & Bossink, 2019). Consequently, creativity is vital to actualize ideas in accordance with the changing needs of consumers. Therefore, creativity is a skill that every leader needs to acquire if they are to thrive in the dynamic business world.
The Rationale
Creativity is an exciting skill and vital for addressing challenges presented by unpredictable internal and external environment. Additionally, the current world is filled with uncertainties and stiff competition due to availability of knowledge by entrepreneurs. Each day presents circumstances that business owners have to deal with, some of which they have limited understanding and knowledge. Such poises creativity as a valuable concept for an organization set for long-term success (Cai et al., 2019). In this regard, I felt the importance of working on this skill. Further, consumers are increasingly knowledgeable and hence opt for the most competitive products and services. Concurrently, entrepreneurs have access to extensive knowledge regarding the market status and needs. As such, even the established corporations face the threat of competition from small firms due to creativity. In other words, creativity dictates a business entity’s share of market against the competitors, hence, only creative firms gain the opportunity to thrive.
Admittedly, the cyberspace is highly threatened and hence firms have no guarantee for the security of their information. In other words, it is possible for a company to loose crucial information that guarantees competitive advantage in the market for its products and services hence poising indescribable threats. Once the information is leaked through the cyberspace, competitiveness is threatened and this positions the company at the verge of collapse. In this case, extensive investment in creativity can aid to prevent such occurrences through abrupt adoption or innovation of other skills and knowledge to produce goods and services (Guo et al., 2016). Lack of creativity in an organization may foster its necessity out of desperation if such threats occur and hence, maintaining a creative attitude is significant aspect. Therefore, the need to work on this skill is paramount for long-term success and healthy competitiveness in the dynamic world.
The Plan to Improve
Various studies describe creativity as an art that is learned and acquired through practice and passion to develop it. In this regard, I set various plans to improve this crucial art necessary for business development, project management, and almost every aspect. Firstly, I planned to become open-minded to pave a way for critical imaginations and formulations of ideas. this involved assuming independence in solving problems unleashed before me without the anticipation for getting outside help. With open-minded, I was able to minimize the forces that drove resistance to change and allowed brainstorming to acquire alternative approaches to solve problems. Besides, I embraced the anticipation to broaden my horizons by seeking a little knowledge about numerous things in surrounding, their uses in their current and modified forms. This involved the desire to learn about other departments in the organization while utilizing knowledge resources such as books, sharing ideas, listening to others, and seminars. In other words, I resolved to become an enthusiastic learner by attempting to embrace new challenges with positivity.
Further, I braced myself to learn from failures by taking on challenges. A critical roadblock to creativity is the fear to fail by facing the unknown. However, with the motivation that other individuals invested creativity to achieve enormous goals, I decided not to let fear drag my anticipation behind. As Burmansah, Rugaiyah, & Mukhtar (2019) articulated, the road to success is never easy and hence challenges will always emerge even upon the attempt to avoid them. With this notion, I chose to overcome fear and assume that a creative minds aid to solve problems that seem difficult and hence produce elegant results, rather than avoiding them and result to frightening outcomes.
My Efforts over a Two Week Period of Time
Creativity As the scholars argue that practice makes perfect, my anticipation to enhance creativity skills will be founded on creative exercises. These will provide an opportunity for the mind to think critically and focus on getting solutions to various challenges. For instance, involved my colleagues to attempt the incomplete figure test which entails drawing. A simple and small scribble resembling half a loop will be provided to the participants to create a full drawing. All the participants will use a similar scribble and then present the results for comparison. The aspect of seeing how my colleagues interpreted the small design will help to discover multi-dimensional ideas while expanding my thinking and creative capacity through the new ideas. Another vital activity to stir up creativity skills will involve the attempt of changing a background by acquiring musical ideas. Such will involve listening to a particular music with specific intentions to inspire new ideas. I may opt to play the music at the workplace or go to a concert and put down the notions that run through the mind as the music plays. Afterwards, I will analyze and assess the ideas to identify it any of them are applicable in solving work challenges.
Further, I will attempt the ‘repurposed product’ creative activity with a three or four of my colleagues. Such involves using the objects in my surrounding such as papers, pictures, folders, and tapes to create new products. Upon completion of the activity, we will compare the creations to identify expediency, inventiveness, and uniqueness (Duman, 2018). The exercise is vital to improve the brainstorming skills. These activities will help me to work out the mind as I aspire to create new products using the available resources.
I scheduled free time for creativity. The need for creativity can strike at unexpected time and hence instilling parameters to indulge in this exercise can exert unnecessary pressure and hence undesired results. Since it is a skill I was attempting to develop, scheduling free time for the activity without strict deadlines and expectations played a critical role in shedding off the pressure to achieve and hence igniting creativity in diverse ways. In this regard, I set a few hours every day to explore creativity without stringent parameters. During this time, I avoided restricting creativity to design-focused results to allow more unleashing and exploring of more ideas.
My Results
The plans and efforts to develop creativity skill were set to yield excellent skills. Firstly, stretching my mind to embrace new ideas, aided to attain new dimensions valuable for growth and development of the organization. The experiences of embracing creativity inspires growth and anticipation for future creative efforts. Literally, the efforts to develop creativity skill were rewarding. Firstly, drawing using an incomplete figure was exciting as each individual came up with a different design. This was stirred my thinking capability and realized that although I initially had a single figure to draw in mind, several others could be formed using the same scribble.
Further, the time set every day for creative thinking was awesome since I engaged in different brainstorming activities. Undoubtedly, I had a greater creativity capability at the end of the two weeks plan due to the numerous activities I engaged in. However, the exercises that involved other participants yielded better results than those that I did individually. Such could result from the zeal to compete effectively and achieve the best outcomes. Ideally, the group activities fostered intensive brainstorming exercise as each struggled to emerge the best Vétillart, 2014). Nonetheless, individual exercise was essentially vital to assess the ability to storm ideas without expectations to obtain help. Such was essential as it built my capability to embrace challenges with assertiveness to evade risky outcomes by finding viable solutions.
My Expectations
Innovation in 21st century is a valuable concept that every organizations needs to compete effectively. While creativity is a key driver to this concept, I aspire to utilize it in the workplace in various dimensions. For instance, issues may emerge that prompt an organization to embrace changes and this calls for creativity to implement new strategies. As a creative leader, I will encourage collaboration among team members since it spurs brainstorming and exchange of information, talents and skills to enhance the outcomes.
Further, creativity activities can be a motivating factor if employed constructively. As team members interact, they get to understand each other’s personality in a broader facet and hence identifying the best strategies to work effectively together (Duman, 2018). Such also enables them to appreciate each other’s’ weakness and this helps them to feel appreciated in their different capabilities, hence a motivation factor. Therefore, I aspire to utilize creativity skill to encourage team spirit to drive organizational performance.
Additionally, globalization sparks the need for creative leadership with multidimensional background to address emerging issues effectively. In regard to the highly competitive world, leaders are expected to handle familiar and unfamiliar complex situations and risks effectively to remain relevant. In this regard, leaders need to establish a strong working relationship with the employees and partner organizations to drive shared values and visions. Such a relationship requires creative leadership to bolster its significance, while maintaining a balanced benefits versus risks for the involved parties. In this regard, I will need to embrace creativity skill to remain relevant and competitive in the business world.
Conclusion
In retrospect, leadership skills present a vital concept in the success of an organization. The tech-world fosters high competition for quality goods and products due to availability of information to the consumers, as well as producers. Among these skills, creativity poises as the most paramount in the attempt to develop new products for the dynamic world. As such, I aspire to enhance this skill as it plays a significant role in unleashing new opportunities vital for business development. The paper discussed its significance in the current business world and the plans I will implement to enhance the skill. Further, the results revealed valuable improvement in organizational performance through motivation and the zeal to achieve more success.
References
Burmansah, B., Rugaiyah, R., & Mukhtar, M. (2019). A Case Study of Mindful Leadership in an Ability to Develop Focus, Clarity, and Creativity of the Buddhist Higher Education Institute Leader. International Journal of Higher Education, 8(6), 57-69. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1230581
Cai, W., Lysova, E. I., Khapova, S. N., & Bossink, B. A. (2019). Does entrepreneurial leadership foster creativity among employees and teams? The mediating role of creative efficacy beliefs. Journal of Business and Psychology, 34(2), 203-217. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10869-018-9536-y
Duman, L. (2018). Developing a resilience-thinking leadership mindset scale. https://aura.antioch.edu/etds/396/
Guo, J., Gonzales, R., & Dilley, A. E. (2016). Creativity and leadership in organizations: A literature review. Creativity. Theories–Research-Applications, 3(1), 127-151. https://content.sciendo.com/view/journals/ctra/3/1/article-p127.xml
Sohmen, V. S. (2015). Reflections on creative leadership. International Journal of Global Business, 8(1). https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Victor_Sohmen/publication/280115059_Reflections_on_Creative_Leadership/links/55ab217308aea3d0868281bd.pdf
Vétillart, G. (2014). Creativity & Leadership: The introduction of creative internal communication practices in organizations. https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2:772938