Despite the stereotype that creativity is the preserve of the lone genius, it is increasingly a collaborative affair.  This fundamental truth sits behind the recent rise in support for collaboration in the workplace.

Despite the emphasis on collaboration, creating the right environment for it to thrive can be challenging. Recent research from INSEAD explores how leaders can do a better job by challenging the notion that creativity is driven from below and instead arguing that the best results tend to be when the leader drives things.

“Understanding these dynamics is crucial since project leaders are often called upon to guide groups in the development of creative products. In sum, how do project leaders effectively guide groups in developing new products and what are the consequences of the processes they use?” the researchers say.

Creative optimum

The study focused on a group of dance teams featuring a mixture of choreographers and dancers.  The researchers interviewed both dancers and choreographers, and identified six key creative processes:

1. Concept-focused launch, which is a more decentralized approach, with the leader giving an overview but the ideas coming from the team.
2. Action-focused launch, which is where leaders tend to lead the creative work with a brief overview of the goals of the process but without fully discussing the concept.
3. Co-creation, whereby all members of the team provide ideas for the solution.
4. Leader experimentation, which is where the leader provides the creative ideas and the team are then tasked with developing and implementing those ideas.
5. Additive synthesis, which is more of a team-driven process where everyone is encouraged to build and develop ideas.
6. Evaluative synthesis, which is a leader-driven process whereby the leader evaluates and refines the product as it emerges.

“Our study reveals how creative centralization emerges and the outcomes that result from different degrees of centralization. Specifically, we found that more centralization allows concepts to develop over time so that the project work influences the product’s creativity and enables evaluative synthesis that improves product creativity,” the authors say. “In contrast, with decentralization, the concept does not change due to project work, limiting the creativity of the output. Instead, a more additive synthesis process occurs that de-emphasizes critical evaluation and timeliness.”

Centralized leadership

The centralized leadership also allows each team member to better play to their unique strengths without also giving them the additional responsibility of creating new ideas.

“In the centralized case, the roles are split. The choreographers are being choreographers and the dancers are being dancers. In the decentralized case, the roles are blurred and no one is really evaluating the process,” the researchers continue. “People can be motivated for lots of different reasons. Sometimes, doing your job very well is motivating.”

So, as a leader, the most important role is to channel energies and ensure there is focus on the right things.  This is important, as even though the dancers viewed a more centralized environment as less creative, it actually enabled them to be more creative.  As such, it’s vital that leaders develop the right skills to support creativity in their teams.

“A directing context is important to understand, not merely because it might be romanticized in popular accounts of leaders like Steve Jobs (Apple, iPod) or Elon Musk (Tesla, electric car), but because it is sometimes the case that the leader is the individual that has the best idea and the wherewithal to execute the idea,” the authors conclude. “Rather than thinking about practices associated with directive creative leadership and those associated with integrative creative leadership, it might be better to consider a tool kit of practices from which leaders pick, influencing how different contexts emerge and are sustained over time.”