While things like power can often help us to be creative at work as it liberates us from any fear that our ideas might be rejected, research from Cornell suggests that practice can help even those without such power improve their creativity.

“This is important because when people with more power are able to express their creative ideas more than those with less power, it leads to a rich-get-richer dynamic that reinforces or exacerbates these power differentials,” the researchers explain. “Understanding ways to boost the creativity of lower power workers can help them navigate this low-power disadvantage, generate more creative ideas and promote a more equitable workplace.”

Warming up to creativity

The researchers show that low-power individuals may initially lag behind high-power individuals in creative tasks, but they can eventually catch up and match their counterparts’ creativity. The reason behind this is that the creative task provides feelings of autonomy and liberation that help low-power individuals overcome their initial disadvantage, according to researchers.

The study was conducted through three different experiments. In the first experiment, the creative idea generation session was divided into two rounds. Participants were randomly assigned to high-power or low-power conditions and given roles to induce feelings of power. The study found that high-power individuals were more creative in the warm-up round, but there was no difference in creativity in the second round.

The second and third experiments involved changing the creative task and increasing the number of rounds. Both studies found that low-power individuals’ creativity caught up to that of high-power individuals after the first round. The third experiment also showed that a different creativity task could warm up low-power individuals for an unrelated creativity task.

Overall, the study suggests that feelings of power may initially affect creativity but that individuals can eventually overcome such disadvantages through the creative task’s intrinsic characteristics.

“Given the high value of creative ideas for organizations and for the careers of the employees that champion them, it is important to cultivate strategies that empower all employees to tap their creative potential,” the researchers conclude. “The low power warm-up effect suggests a simple intervention that does just this and overcomes power differentials in the workplace: when pursuing creative work, let employees warm up first.”