5 Steps to Creative Leadership

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Creative leadership is a mindset and a process you need to implement on a daily basis. Creative leadership can help stop you from slipping into a mundane  routine and it can challenge you and your organization to explore exciting possibilities. Just like business magnate Donald Trump, finding your creative edge can lead to the best business and leadership decisions.

For a leader seeking the best opportunities, creative leadership techniques allow you to initiate successful endeavors. It’s more about positioning yourself to think correctly so that you can find new ways of being a leader.

Here are five steps for you to begin implementing creative leadership in your life, along with some tips from Trump himself.

1 – Meditate each day.

Start with meditation. Just 15 minutes a day of conditioning yourself to be quiet can start your imagination flowing. Think about things as they are – not as they were or as they might be in the future—and allow your mind to expand and explore. It is in this exploration exercise that you can begin to open yourself to something new on the horizon.

Creative leadership through meditation enables new methods, new ideas and new processes. Meditation helps you to think differently, to approach problems from a different perspective. Trying something new just for the heck of it is dangerous, but using mediation allows you to sort out the junk from the treasure. For a creative leader, something new may be just what you are seeking.

Trump Tip – “It’s the great business person that can decide between practicality and creativity.  You have to be able to strike a balance.  If you don’t strike a balance, it’s not going to work.”  – Donald Trump about creative leadership

2- Exercise your skills as a visionary.

Within you lies the ability to construct the future long before you ever arrive physically. Challenge yourself to see beyond what is currently in front of you. Creative leadership needs vision to help direct ideas to their best use.

This does not necessarily mean looking for something on the horizon that you have never seen before. Instead, you might want to look at something old in a brand new way. You can do an excellent job of constructing your vision of the future based only on materials, skills and attributes present in your current reality.

Visionary leaders tend to think more about where they want to end up rather than the path to get there. Using creative leadership ideas with your vision gives you many paths to reach that vision.

Trump Tip – “A good leader has to be able to recognize the strengths and weaknesses of employees.  A leader has to be able to see who is really strong – where, and if they don’t do it, it’s not going to work out very well for that leader or for that company.”  – Donald Trump about creative leadership

3 – Look beyond your own circle of peers.

It’s natural to surround yourself with people that are like you, but consider expanding your network of reference. This will broaden your horizons and challenge your thought processes. Individuals not in your field of expertise may be just the ones to propel you toward your future.

Branching your creative leadership out to new people gets perspective from multiple views. However, you aren’t really looking for confirmation of your ideas in a new circle. Instead you are looking for people with different experiences – people who approach tasks with varied mindsets.

Creative leadership is fuelled from finding more than the standard methods of leading. If you are a group effective leader, look for sharing ideas with thorough leaders who get it done and vice-versa. If you are a forceful leader, try exploring how persuasive leaders put feelings before tasks and vice-versa. Finding people outside your regular circle enables a larger scope for creative thinking.

Trump Tip – “In business it’s important to adapt.  If you don’t adapt, you’re never going to be good in business and you’re never going to be successful.  Show flexibility.  Be able to make a change.”  – Donald Trump about creative leadership

4 – Lead by example.

No matter where you find yourself in the hierarchy of the organization, the opportunity is yours to be creative. Once you have a vision of your desired future, step out of your everyday routine and begin planning how to bring it about. Your creative leadership will garner attention and inspire others to set their sights on the future.

Creative leadership by example, enables others to find new areas of expressing themselves, if you lead them to that approach first.

Trump Tip – “Leadership is very important in business.  You have to inspire your staff.  You have to really make them respect you.  People like working for the Trump Organization because I make it fun.  I make life interesting.  It’s always different.  It’s always exciting.”  – Donald Trump on creative leadership

5 – Deal with conflict.

There might be those who don’t agree with your vision of the future. Dealing with conflict can be difficult. However, if you implement creative leadership skills, you can bring about a positive outcome. One of the most important things to remember is to focus on similarities first. Look at what it is that both parties desire and focus on the good points of each side. From this vantage point, it will be easier to understand the other person’s point of view.

Most leaders have to deal with conflict all the time, internally with employees and externally with clients. Tapping your creative leadership helps you bring the other side’s perspective of the conflict into consideration. Practice coercing others not by force, but by thinking outside of your box, putting yourself in their shoes and finding common ground.

Trump Tip – “Getting along with people is very important to success.  If you’re not going to get along with people you may be successful, but it’s going to be a lot harder”  – Donald Trump about creative leadership

The picture has been painted in your mind. It’s your dream; make it come true. Creative leadership starts with you stepping out of your comfort zone – whether you are Donald Trump or Jane Doe, it’s something you can make happen.

Transforming Sorrow Into Service: Effective Leadership In Action

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“Only when we learn to be humble about ourselves, can we begin to respect others.” – Lindsay Leigh Kimmett

Lindsay Leigh Kimmett was an athlete, a leader, and a medical student with enormous potential to do great things in the world. But her life ended when, as a seat-belted passenger, she was tragically killed in a single car rollover in 2008. Lindsay’s parents were consumed with unimaginable sorrow at her untimely passing, “but in an attempt to move forward positively,” they were determined to carry on her legacy. Lindsay’s family and friends created the Lindsay Leigh Kimmett Memorial Foundation in honor of her memory.

To date, more than a million dollars has been invested into our community in Lindsay’s name across an array of initiatives, including Valedictorian Scholarships at all the three Cochrane high schools, The Dr. Lindsay Leigh Kimmett Prize in Emergency Medicine at the University of Calgary Medical School, and Lindsay’s Kids Minor Hockey and Ringette Sponsorships. Since her death, Lindsay’s family has also been very active in supporting Alberta’s distracted driving legislation and asks all to drive responsibly without distractions.

Effective leadership displays the willingness and capacity to turn sorrow and hardship into a gift that benefits others. Those who experience grief and have the courage to work with it and work through it, emerge a better person, enabling leadership qualities like perspective, patience, clarity, and empathy. Through learning to grieve in a healthy way, you open yourself to the capacity required to live in harmony and balance with one another and the earth.

Here are five ways to transform loss into a gift that benefits others:

  1. Make room to grieve – Let life touch you. Stop and allow grief to surface when it is present. Go to funerals. Allow yourself to cry. If you can, be with your pet when they die. Spend time with a dying relative or friend. Community can be built in tragedy. Don’t be afraid to grieve and share your grief with people you care about and who care about you. Allowing yourself to grieve enables you to accept loss as a part of the good life. Grieving is a lonely journey and should not be traveled alone. You may never “get over it,” but you can work through it – by acknowledging honestly what is happening inside you, and allowing your heart to open, both with yourself and with others.
  2. Let go of the anger – Anger is often born out of suffering, especially when someone or something has caused your loss. While it is part of the process of grief, unacknowledged anger or anger that festers inside, turns into the bitter poison of resentment. The antidote to anger? Name it. Claim it. Take responsibility for your reactions to life. Then have the courage to let it go. An indication of strong character is the courage to bear an injustice without a motive of revenge.
  3. Be willing to not know – Sometimes the best you can do is accept what is. Although it is human nature to seek control through answers, sometimes the answers simply aren’t there. Often you have to delete your need to understand. A sign of maturity is the courage to accept the vast and inevitable unknown of the human experience, and the willingness to let go of the need for complete comprehension.
  4. Let grief be your teacher – In the arduous journey of grief, if you pause every so often to open your heart and look within yourself, you will discover that the grief is guiding you to be a better person. While you may not be able to find your gifts in the immediacy of tragedy, keep an open mind to what life’s adversities can eventually teach you. Loss and subsequent grieving can foster, among other things, the ability to be compassionate, to connect more meaningfully with others, and to gain perspective and clarity about what matters most.
  5. Turn sorrow into service – In an effort to move forward constructively, find ways for your loss to fill a need in the world. While establishing a foundation was the Kimmitt’s way to transform grief into positive action, there are many ways you can make the world better through your loss. Being open to what grieving can teach you will amplify your ability to impact others through a stronger leadership presence.

I have deep admiration for what the Kimmett family has done for our community and beyond in light of their tragic loss. Their willingness to turn sorrow into service is authentic leadership in action. May their story inspire you to embrace the inevitable and at times seemingly unjust and often unanswerable tragedies of life as you stumble forward – with courage, conviction, and compassion – on the journey to being a better person and a better leader.

The Roots Of Self Leadership: Living A Good Life

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Last week my wife, Val and I took time to transplant trees and re-pot houseplants. It’s been good for me to slow down and spend some time working with soil, getting my hands dirty and connecting to the land, reminding me of the value farmers bring to our culture. I’ve been learning from Val, our resident plant expert, that a healthy root system is necessary to ensure a robust plant. Through their natural intelligence, plants know this and develop extensive roots before their energy is transferred into growing foliage. You’ll see this in a houseplant that will get root bound in a pot before they flourish above the ground. The root system is first developed in the dirt, thus enabling the plant to support its growth above the surface.

Self Leadership is like that. The source of what is manifested in the world is not seen by the world. Like a plant, whose strength and energy come from its roots, the strength and energy of a leader comes from within. A good life – through a person’s roots – precedes good leadership. Below is a short list of what a good life means to me, and the roots that will sustain and support you to do the work that you are called to do.

  • Clarity – Clarity is about living your life by design rather than by default. Living without clarity is like embarking on a wilderness journey without a compass. Any way will get you there if you don’t know where you are going. Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare and precious achievement. You’ll be told in a hundred ways what is expected of you and what is needed of you to be a success. The real discipline in life comes in saying no to the wrong opportunities.
  • Courage – If you have ever walked through something that frightens you, and you grew through to the other side, you know that courage is inspiring. It inspires you and it inspires those around you. Courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is facing fear and walking through it. There have always been courageous men and women who have been prepared to die for what they believe in. What do you care enough about to give your life for?
  • Character – If you want to attract others, you must be attractive. Strong character demands that you shift from being the best in the world to being the best for the world, to strive not for what you can get, but what you can give, to endeavor not for what you can have, but for who you can be. A job title, the letters behind your name, the size of your office, or your income are not measures of human worth. No success by the world’s standards will ever be enough to compensate for a lack of strong character.
  • Calling – Calling is a devotion to a cause beyond you. It is inspiring to be around people who have a dedication to a cause they care about. When you feel an internal calling, a deep sense of pursuing what you are meant to be pursuing, you take a step toward completeness in your life. “A musician must make music,” wrote Abraham Maslow, the famed American psychologist, “an artist must paint, a poet must write, if they are to be ultimately at peace with themselves.” Whether you are paid or not to express your calling, a good life requires you listen and respond.
  • Contribution – When we come to the end of our days on this earth, we take no material thing with us. It’s not what we have gained for ourselves but the contribution we have made to others that makes life meaningful. It’s not what we get from life that has the greatest most lasting reward. It’s what we give. A good life requires a generous spirit and a giving heart. A life of contribution is a good life.
  • Connection – After three decades of observing and learning from thousands of leaders in hundreds of organizations and in every walk of life, I finally understand what my parents tried to teach me more than forty years ago. In an interdependent world, everything is about relationships. It’s not all about models or strategies or programs or the latest technology. Whether you are CEO building a company, a middle manager leading a division, a supervisor ensuring results on your team, a front-line sales person, a customer-service representative, or a parent attempting to develop capable young people, leadership is all about making contact and building connections. And caring is at the root.
  • Centering – “Dwell as near as possible to the channel in which your life flows,” wrote Henry David Thoreau. For me, a good life is built around a spiritual centre that I constantly seek and return to. From this foundation I find security amidst uncertainty, serenity in the middle of success and failure, stability among the fleeting emotions of happiness and sadness. It is this centre that sustains me and provides connection in loss, humility in achievement, perspective in chaos, strength in weakness, and wholeness in fragmentation.

It’s an exciting time to be living in this wondrous world. What concerns me is the possibility that our efforts to continuously improve and advance everything will create a society that is actually less satisfying to live in. Every day we have an opportunity to invent a new world through the choices we make. Not just in a narrow economic sense, but also in a broader human sense: for ourselves and for our children and for our children’s children.

What does a good life mean to you, and how does living in accord with what matters to you make you a better person and a better leader?

Good Leadership: How To Motivate People

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I recently returned home after leading a three-day leadership development program with a long-term client and her team of managers who run a successful grocery business. The morning of the first day I arrived an hour early to set up and was eagerly met by the VP of IT who was already had the AV equipment all set up for me. In the process of getting organized, we discovered that I didn’t have the right adapter for his television screen. Enthused and accountable, he sped off across town to get what I needed. He was obviously motivated. Passionate, service minded, and wholehearted are just some of the words to describe this amazing leader.

During the workshop, and referring to the VP who helped me that morning, I asked one of the participants what he felt led to this colleague’s passion for his job. And later that evening I sat with one of the long-term executive team members and got the whole story.

“This manager, who now is on the senior executive team, worked for fifteen years on the floor stocking shelves. While his work was okay, he was unmotivated, unhappy, and pretty miserable to be around. He used up every sick day he had; came in not a minute early and went home not a minute late after his shift; didn’t really talk or interact with anyone; classic disengaged employee. In fact, we were on the verge of firing him because of his attitude when the new General Manager arrived three years ago.”

“So, how did this unhappy employee get from the shop floor to the executive suite in three years?”

“Good leadership,” was the reply. The new GM took the first several months of her tenure to wander around, listen to people, and make a personal connection with everyone on the floor. And she saw potential in this man. She saw something that perhaps he couldn’t even see in himself. She found out he was a leader in the community and started to wonder why we couldn’t bring that capacity out in his work. She thought he had good ideas and asked him if he would be interested in taking on the role of shop steward. She then worked with the union to make this happen.

As it turned out, he thrived in this role. Through some more conversations, it was soon discovered that he played in a band and had unique computer and technical abilities. Informally, he took on the role of the organizational “techie” and, before long, was promoted to VP of IT. The more responsibilities he was given, the more he excelled. And now, he is one of the foremost leaders in a 125 million dollar operation. In the last three years he has never been off work sick. He comes early and stays late, and is one of the most positive people in the company.

Here’s my short take on how motivate people:

  1. Care. Care enough to listen. Care enough to find out what matters to people. Care enough to find out people’s unique abilities, talents, and gifts. If you spend enough time, you will eventually discover that everyone is talented, original, and has something to offer. And everyone wants to make a contribution – if you can find the right niche. If won’t reach everyone, but you reach a lot more if you care.
  2. When you care enough about people you will soon realize that you can’t really “motivate” anyone. What you can do is create a climate where people shine. Motivation is essentially about aligning talent and passion with what the organizational needs.
  3. Never stop believing in people. You never know what people are capable of when you stop controlling them and start unleashing their potential. Good leadership is about seeing in others what they cannot see within themselves.

Leadership: Lessons From My Father

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As Father’s Day approaches this weekend, I have been reflecting on my late father, Harlie, one of the first leaders in my life. He was a true mentor leader – even though I didn’t fully realize it when he was alive. Here’s some lessons I learned from him and hopefully you can relate them to your work as a leader.

  1. Give what you expect from others. Harlie engaged me by first being engaged himself. Leadership is about energy, and if you want energy on your team, you must bring energy to your team. Energy – whether it’s positive or negative – is contagious. Harlie was passionate about so many things. He was passionate about learning, about growing, and about life. As a former national gymnastics champion, he kept himself in great shape. He lived what he led. If you want engagement from others, you must be engaged. We cannot give what we do not have.
  2. Be motivated by love. Great leadership is largely a matter of love. If you are uncomfortable with that word, call it caring, because leadership involves caring about people, not manipulating them. Dad was tough on me when I needed it, but I never doubted his motive: he genuinely cared. He cared more about me than the results which were a means to a higher end. Harlie was motivated by love. You can’t fabricate love; people will see right through you. What you can do is decide to care about people. People don’t care how much you know until they know  how  much you care.
  3. Live your passion. Our basement was filled with evidence of Dad’s passion: exercise equipment, a tumbling mat, weights. Every morning Dad would exercise at the crack of dawn. Although he couldn’t always get me engaged, especially in my early years, he lived his passion. He preached the importance of exercise without saying a word. When I was in junior high, Dad took me to the YMCA to teach me how to exercise on the parallel bars. I didn’t have the strength to lift myself up, much less do any maneuvers on them. After several disappointing attempts, Dad soon got the message: I was just not meant to be a gymnast. Even though I have memories of him being disappointed that he couldn’t engage me in gymnastics, he kept his own passion alive.
  4. Tune in to what drives people. When I was 14, dad was teaching me to drive our old 1954 Chevy truck. When I pulled over into a farm yard a mile from our home, dad sensed that something was wrong. We sat in silence for a few moments and I opened up about an incident in physical education class. “We ran a mile  and I couldn’t finish it without walking… I came in last, but I want to be the best miler in our zone track meet next year.” Dad knew little about running, so we went to the library and found every book we could on running. Dad became my coach, and the next spring I won the mile race in our zone track meet. Everyone has a passion. Everyone is engaged about something. The key is to create the space to listen and tune in to what matters to people. When you are committed to helping people find and express their voice – their unique gifts and passion, you’ll get engagement.
  5. Have a vision of greatness. Greatness wasn’t an external thing for my father. His life was about making a difference, not making a buck. He never had a mission statement. But he had a mission and it was expressed in how he lived his life. When you have a vision, whether it’s expressed explicitly or implicitly by your actions, it inspires people. In his “I have dream speech,” Martin Luther King did not say, “I have a strategic plan.” While plans may be necessary, it is dreams that inspire, uplift, and engage us. “If you want to build a ship,” writes Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, “don’t herd people together to collect wood, and don’t assign them to tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” Whatever your vision, live it well and you will inspire others to engage with you.
  6. Be a good gardener. Dad was a good gardener and he taught me a lot about leadership by the way he gardened. No plants ever grow better because you demand that they do so or because you threaten them. Plants grow only when they have the right conditions and are given proper care. Creating the space and providing the proper nourishment for plants – and people as well – is a matter of continual investigation and vigilance. But another reality about gardening is that you really don’t have much control over the harvest. Despite your best efforts, for a myriad of reasons, some plants simply won’t make it. You can’t engage everyone. It’s a reality we all live with.

Good Leadership Means Helping People Know They Make An Impact

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This past week our family buried our pet and companion, Freddie. After a long and good life, we laid him to rest in the field behind our home where he loved to chase squirrels and gophers and lie in the sun. As part of a little funeral for him we each told stories about what we loved and remembered about him, what he contributed to our family, and the impact he had on our lives.

What I’ve learned from dogs is that, like people, they give back what has been given to them. Good leadership – in families, communities, and workplaces – means ensuring that every person is given respect and a purpose so they will return the same to those around them. Having a meaningful role and a sense of contribution and significance gets people engaged in something worthwhile. By being needed, listened to, and taken seriously, individuals will feel validated and will want to contribute to the best of their ability. While it is up to every employee to understand how they make a difference, good leadership creates a place where people have chance to be their best, to realize their potential, and to be recognized for their achievements and for the impact that their contribution makes.

Three Ways Good Leadership Helps

Here are three ways you can help those you serve realize that they make an impact.

  1. Don’t wait for a funeral to give a eulogy. Be careful of the natural human tendency to take people – especially your best people – for granted. Make it a habit to express regularly what you appreciate and value about the people around you. It may feel awkward and phony at first, but keep at it until it becomes a part of who you are.
  2. Ask your employees what they know about the positive impact they make to the organization and team. They may need some coaching to come up with an answer, but know that if they can’t answer this, they are likely not engaged. Helping them affirm, for themselves, the difference they make, will always have a more lasting impact than simply being told.
  3. Discuss with your employees the difference between chores and contribution. Chores are the items on a job description. They are the daily duties that need doing to make an organization run. Contribution is what makes a difference. Contribution connects chores to the purpose of the organization. While chores provide you with a job, contribution provides a place where you belong.

Leadership only exists when people have the ability and the choice to not follow you. The art of good leadership is getting people to want to do what must be done. The path to get there is through helping people know the difference they make.