In this Expert Insight Interview, Felipe Zamana discusses how to be a creative leader and challenge the status quo at work. Felipe Zamana is a creativity professor, researcher, speaker, and strategic advisor dedicated to exploring creativity applied to educational, cultural, social, and organizational development.
This Expert Insight Interview discusses:
- The differences between creative and non-creative leaders
- How our environment affects our creativity
- Why leaders must step outside their comfort zone
Traits of Creative Leaders
The difference between a creative and a non-creative leader is how they think. “Regular” leaders do not think about doing things differently or stimulating your team to think differently. On the other hand, creative leaders always focus on improvement, not just on financial growth but also on creating a suitable environment for their team.
There are two elements to building a creative environment. First, there’s trust. If you’re not comfortable sharing your ideas with others, you don’t share, and if you don’t share, people don’t get new ideas. The second element is support. Each team member needs to feel that their group supports their ideas and growth.
Finding the Space to Be Creative
To build an environment where people can be creative, you have to give them their space. If you’re always working without time to think, explore, or experiment, you can never be truly creative.
Many people think that the more they work, the more ideas will pop into their minds, but the complete opposite is true. We need to rest to allow our brains to find new pathways between existing ideas to come up with something different.
Stepping Out of Your Comfort Zone
If you always stick to the same environment and the same group, you’re depriving yourself of the opportunity to learn from people in other domains. You need to venture outside your comfort zone and deal with things that are not necessarily your specialty to develop new ideas.
Hints from people in other walks of life could lead to ideas that only you can have because of your specific background and experience. This is why it is crucial to keep exploring areas outside of your expertise if you wish to reach a new level of creativity.
Our Host
John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, he has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.
Comments