Leadership: Types of creativity part two

Dr. Wilbert Mutoko is a Strategist, Professional Speaker, Educator, Coach, Consultant, and Author. He writes in his personal capacity. You can connect with him on LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook or send feedback on email: wilbertmutoko@ gmail.com.

“There is no separation of mind and emotions; emotions, thinking, and learning is all linked.” – Eric Jensen

By Dr. Wilbert R. Mutoko (PhD, FHEA)

Introduction

In part one, we looked at the first type of creativity, which is, deliberate and cognitive creativity. If you have not yet read, Leadership: Types of creativity part one, please read it first before reading this second part. That will give you a foundation to the series. In this article, we will look at the second type of creativity: Deliberate and Emotional Creativity.

Emotional creativity

Kuska etal. (2020) wrote, “Emotional creativity (EC) is a pattern of cognitive abilities and personality traits related to originality and appropriateness in emotional experience.” On the other hand, Oriol (2016) posited, “Emotional creativity is defined as the ability to experience and express original, appropriate, and authentic combinations of emotions.” Thus, in this turbulent business environment, leaders need to know how to harness their emotions and those of others to manage change and lead innovation. Emotional creativity plays a key role in the ability to come up with new ideas because of emotional stability.

Emotional creativity is a product of the ability to experience and express emotions effectively and wisely, whether positive emotions such as happiness, love, gratitude, and excitement; or negative emotions such as anger, sadness, grief, frustration, lust, and anxiety. Every person and every leader need emotional creativity to thrive in business and in corporate. While it is debatable, psychologists believe that positive emotions are conducive for creativity, while negative emotions are not suitable for creativity. This will differ from leader to leader, obviously due to differences in personalities.

Leaders that have high emotional creativity are usually open-minded. As a leader, if you are

Indra Nooyi going to lead through tough times, emotional creativity is a must have.

Short Case - Indra Nooyi

Indra Nooyi, former PepsiCo CEO and Chairperson is an Indian-American business executive. She has been ranked high on the Forbes list of the top 100 most powerful women in the world. She is reputed to have been one of the most emotionally intelligent executives ever. For example, she advocated for sending hand-written ‘Thank you’ notes to each employee at PepsiCo. Indra wrote ‘thank you’ notes to the parents of each of his executives

to thank them for raising responsible and hardworking children who had become useful executives of PepsiCo. In each of the ‘thank you’ notes, Indra informed the parents what their child was doing at PepsiCo and thanked them as follows: ‘Thank you for the gift of a child to our company.’

After receiving the notes, most parents wrote back with emotions, mentioning that this was one of the greatest honors they had ever received. Indra further said that it pays to ensure that every employee feels loved and appreciated, not just taking them as a statistic. When employees are taken seriously, their loyalty increases, and it builds a strong organization.

Your experience

How has been your experience with emotional creativity? What will you do differently to become a better leader? What are the timelines for the steps that you will take to make a difference?

Conclusion

In this article we have considered one type of creativity - deliberate and emotional creativity. We have concluded that it is essential for every leader to master their emotions and other people’s emotions to be able to build thriving organizations. Similarly, if the organization is to become creative, it is a must to ensure that all staff members are emotionally intelligent.

In the coming article we will explore the third type of creativity that you should be on the lookout for to bring improvements to your organization, hence, increasing value to customers and making more money.

I wish you the best of every success as a leader. Together we will sail through crisis.

Feel free to email me any feedback and/or suggestions for the future articles.

References Kuška, M., Trnka, R., Mana, J. and Nikolai, T., 2020. Emotional creativity: A meta-analysis and integrative review. Creativity Research Journal, 32(2), pp.151-160.

Oriol, X., Amutio, A., Mendoza, M., Da Costa, S. and Miranda, R., 2016. Emotional creativity as predictor of intrinsic motivation and academic engagement in university students: the mediating role of positive emotions. Frontiers in psychology, 7, p.1243.