Introduce creative leadership skills

Citation

Wiegold, P. (2011), "Introduce creative leadership skills", Strategic HR Review, Vol. 10 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/shr.2011.37210aaa.003

Introduce creative leadership skills

Article Type: How to … From: Strategic HR Review, Volume 10, Issue 1

Practical advice for HR professionals

There are many models of working and today business leaders and managers are more open to looking at new and innovative ways of getting the most out of their workforce and creating a productive and positive working environment.

In my work as a composer and conductor, I have developed a new role as a “creative leader”, a creative conductor who brings some of the music on paper, but then works immediately and directly with musicians. This approach to leadership in music fits closely with modern thinking. Firm leadership is combined with performer response from a motivated, pro-active creative team, rather than a passive, re-active team. This concept of leadership, I believe, is transposable to any workplace and the following steps can help leaders apply it within their own organizations.

1. Getting the balance between authority and creative freedom

As a creative leader, the key in a new project is to establish a strong centre, well grounded in the core materials, then a strong “resonance” of the goal to be achieved, leading to a confident, creative response from the team (a confident “band” or ensemble). I have led many workshops for people in business, allowing them to experience, alongside musicians, the feeling of being a responsive member of a creative team.

We also explore how to be a leader who can walk the tightrope between forcing and insisting on one side, and being too loose and allowing indulgence and loss of focus on the other. Getting this balance right is the difference between giving too little control and responsibility to your employees, and reducing productivity by being too relaxed. Every ensemble develops safe habits and they always need to be challenged.

2. Listening and pushing boundaries

There are a number of principles that define this creative way of working. The first step is getting a team to feel comfortable and settled in hearing what others are doing. As in a musical rehearsal, each individual involved must be able to listen to others around them so that they can respond to and work within this group dynamic without throwing the whole sound off.

Having established a comfortable environment where all individuals are active listeners and are working separately but also as a group, the creative leader can then build “permission” to give confidence to push boundaries. In music creation and performance, we are constantly looking to push the boundaries of human performance, and this pressure grows towards the day of the performance. In other work environments, creative leaders should also give permission and confidence to their employees to encourage them to push boundaries and over-reach their habitual performance.

3. Invoking, not describing

In my work as a composer, I also use models for focused creative response, such as giving limited means and timelines for closure – if we can’t resolve something in a certain amount of time we move on in a different direction to continue moving forward and not get stuck on one issue. You need to constantly “recalculate” goals. The clarity of the leader’s instructions is imperative. Creative leaders should clearly differentiate between three areas: “instruction”, “open question”, and the world in between these two: “What if it was like …?”. The right combination of these types of instruction will support creative thinking and engagement from all aspects of your team. A leader must understand that they not only must give instructions but also embody the result. If the vision is truly embodied, it will happen almost by itself, spontaneously. Invoke, don’t describe.

4. Synchronising communication and values

Music provides all sorts of models for problem solving, and for the highest creative activity. Music-making requires enormous facility and skill combined with the finest decisions about timing, sound and communication.

Music requires absolutely synchronised communication and shared values as a group – to get a rhythm to groove, or a melody to sing. It requires a flexible sense of responsibility – moving easily from foreground to background, going from taking a lead to following somebody else with empathy. The best musical compositions have integrity and sense of purpose and voice, while at the same time being fluid, flexible, never staying on ideas too long and always reaching forward for the implied goals. This is true of Mozart, Stravinsky and Miles Davis. Perhaps the same can be said about the best businesses and organisations.

5. Creating the right chemistry

Business leaders are no longer simply authoritarian figures passing out instructions to employees more junior to them. For many organisations and individuals a more fluid and creative style of leadership can improve productivity and performance. Following the skills and principles required of creative leaders in music – a conductor, composer or band leader – can offer business leaders and managers from all sectors a new way of working.

The absolute key is to find the tension between freedom and authority – a working chemistry between what’s known and what may be reinvented. Finding that tension, that alchemy, can lead to truly original music-making and, it could be said, these principles underlie every great creative leader.

Peter WiegoldProfessor based at Brunel University.

About the author

Peter Wiegold is a composer and conductor who has conducted orchestras such as the Royal Philharmonic and the London Sinfonietta. As a composer, one of his most famous pieces was for the BBC Proms in 2007 where he worked with traditional musicians from Uzbekistan, the Coldstream Guards, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and 80 brass players. Now, as head of Music Research at Brunel University, Wiegold is looking at the role of the creative leader in music and is working with businesses and community organisations to look at the creative leader outside music. Peter Wiegold can be contacted at: peter.wiegold@brunel.ac.uk