“As important as creativity has been in our species’ recent centuries, it is the cornerstone for our next steps. From our daily activities to our schools to our companies, we are all riding arm-in-arm into a future that compels a constant remodeling of the world.” -via The Runaway Species: How Human Creativity Remakes the World by Eagleman and Brandt
And yet…
Research and studies inform us that we have a inherent bias against creativity, especially in leadership roles. As Heidi Grant Halvorson shares in her 99u article, The Bias Against Creative Leaders…
“Our idea of a prototypical creative person is completely at odds with our idea of a prototypical effective leader.”
While David Burkus follows up in his article from The Creativity Post, Why Do We Keep Creative People Out Of Leadership Roles? of evidence published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology by researchers Mueller, Goncalo and Kamdar that when they analyzed their findings on creativity and leadership…
“They found a negative correlation between creativity and leadership potential. The employees were assuming that those with more creative ideas were less prepared to be leaders.”
However, the bias against creativity did not stop with leaders and leadership roles. We actually harbor individual bias’ against creativity itself. In a follow-up study led by Mueller it was found that “Participants said they desired creative ideas, but subconsciously rejected creativity.”
For which Burkus adds…
“Perhaps the explanation for both studies is our preference for order and the status quo. For an idea to be creative, it must be novel and useful. For a leader to be creative, their ideas and methods must be novel and useful. But if an idea is novel, it departs from the status quo or established order. That same order is often used for evaluating whether the idea is useful.”
We know that our brains crave certainty. And in the same way, even though we purport to be in favor of creativity, deep down, we still cling to order and the status quo.
As Eagleman and Brandt share in The Runaway Species…
“This mandate for innovation is not reflected in our school systems. Creativity is a driver of youthful discovery and expression – but it becomes stifled in deference to proficiencies that are more easily measured and tested. This sidelining of creative learning may reflect larger societal trends. Teachers typically prefer the well-behaved student to the creative one, who is often perceived as rocking the boat. A recent poll found that most Americans want children to have respect for elders over independence, good manners over curiosity, and would prefer them to be well behaved rather than creative.”
Which may be one of the reasons that our organizations deal much better with ideas of reform and incremental change, over disruptive, transformational and even exponential shifts. Even though we love to hear the stories of the latter, we cling to the former.
If creativity is as important as we believe it to be for the future success of our individuals, organizations, and even society, as stated in the opening quote by Eagleman and Brandt, yet we inherently hold onto bias’ against creativity and creative leaders, then we will most assuredly continue to struggle to effectively move towards any type of deep transformation of our organizations and systems that move us beyond incremental changes that run in line with the current order of things.
And should not be surprised that we continue to march forward in a predictable, linear, status quo fashion.
“If we want a bright future for our children, we need to recalibrate our priorities. At the speed the world is changing, the old playbooks for living and working will inevitably be supplanted – and we need to prepare our children to author the new ones.” -via The Runaway Species: How Human Creativity Remakes the World
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