Does Being Known as a “Creative” Keep You From Leadership Positions?
Posted April 26th, 2011
Everybody likes creativity. Most organizations see it as an asset. But for all its importance and desirability, many organizations seem to be lacking it. Innovation is too often something out of the ordinary, rather than what is expected.
One of the reasons for this, according to researchers at Cornell University, is that creative people are actually perceived to have less in the way of leadership potential. Being creative may actually be a hindrance to moving up in an organization, they said, in a surprising discovery.
In a recent survey, creativity was named by CEOs as the number one quality to have if you want to be successful in guiding a large corporation in the future. So, most businesses see the importance of creativity, and see it as a crucial quality to have. But seeing its importance and encouraging it within an organization are not the same thing. In surveys, the responses showed that people who were seen as creative also were seen as less than qualified for potential management slots.
People always say they value creativity, but when they actually come face to face with it, it makes them a little uncomfortable. They are taken aback a little by it. The problem is that creativity is at odds with customary ideas of what leadership is. It is the job of the leader to create a common goal for employees to work towards and, to do that, leaders need to try to get rid of any uncertainty about achieving that goal. But being creative adds to the uncertainty by going outside the standards of behavior set by the organization to achieve its goals.
Moreover, people don’t have positive attitudes about creative people. They are seen as quirky or unfocused. The researchers said that people who are seen as truly original thinkers are more often overlooked for people who don’t rock the boat too much by doing things as they have always been done.
The researchers said that companies need to fight against this kind of pigeon-holing of creative people. When companies look at how they evaluate performance, they need to look at creativity in a new way, and not through the lens of old stereotypes. Managers need to be trained to look at these biases they may have and how these attitudes are affecting their evaluations.
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