Fostering Creativity for Leadership and Leading Change

Creativity is about more than imagining or making something that has not previously existed. Though most of us perceive of the concept of creativity actualized as creation, creativity is really much broader—it is that force in each of us that begins with a yearning to answer an unanswered (or ill-answered) question by imagining more than one correct new answer. Being comprehensively creative then concludes when an answer is realized. Often this concluded answer has to do with changing something that was true before we thought and acted creatively, in order to make a new or additional truth. In such cases, being creative is most fundamentally about advancing change in or about something. This paper examines the differences between imagining, thinking, and acting creatively and about how each is related to leadership and change.