Creative Leadership

Leading anything, a business, a team, a project, community engagement can be a hugely rewarding and demanding part of person’s professional life. One of the greatest gifts an enlightened leader or manager can give themselves is to be vulnerable enough to reflect on and question their professional leadership practice. Are you ready to explore your leadership in a new light? Try starting with creative leadership.

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Gain new perspectives on your leadership approach.
Improve your sense of wellbeing.
Hone your creative mindset and lead with creative confidence.
Capitalise on your greatest natural resource – your creativity.
Discover your unique leadership style, energy and expression.

Out with the old

Contemporary and future challenges facing organisations require new approaches to leadership and management. Traditional leadership approaches and business as usual thinking is far less effective, as traditional business models are disrupted by technological advancement, competitor innovation, multigenerational change and increasingly complex systems.

The complexity and uncertainty experienced by many businesses highlights a need for imagination, flexibility, courage, and the ability to adapt and work creatively with change.

Embrace the new

Creative leadership coaching and workshops encourage leaders and managers to pause, reflect and consider the way in which they lead. Our workshops are designed to help open people’s hearts and minds to different ways of leading and to think of leadership as terms of professional artistry.

When you bring your aesthetic mindset into the workplace, you recognise that efficiency isn’t the only goal – it’s about belonging, collaboration, creativity, communications, attention, creative problem-solving, and more. Creating an enriched environment forms the conditions to achieve greater success and satisfaction.

Your Brain on Art – How the Arts Transform Us
Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross

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“A review and change in my professional life brought me to a point where I had a number of options to consider. I took the opportunity to explore one of those options, a business idea, with Dr Cathryn Lloyd of Maverick Minds. Through guidance, questioning, using images as visual stimulation, metaphor, and stories I was about to see the bigger picture as well as detail for this project. Cathryn is a skillful coach. She holds the space well for people to focus on what’s important for them while drawing out what else is possible.”
Kerryanne Farrer

Galleries Manager, Redland City Council

How does it work?

If you keep on doing the same things, it’s likely the outcome will be the same. Is your leadership approach serving you and your organisation well? Are you ready and excited to explore your leadership in a new light?

During our creative leadership workshops, we work with aesthetic and arts-based theories, concepts, and experiential learning that gives you the opportunity to investigate and think creatively and differently about your leadership.

We help you step outside of your busy everyday thinking and give you a safe and creative space to embrace uncertainty and ambiguity, and gain confidence to take that first step towards positive change and leadership artistry.

Through our creative leadership development, you’ll gain greater self-awareness, kindness and empathy for yourself and others, and appreciation of your creative strengths. This will have a positive impact on the people around you both within and outside your organisation.

Creative leadership workshops can be delivered over a few months via half-day and full-day workshops. We can collaborate in a neutral space, or I can come to your site for some creative in-residence workshops. Whatever best suits you and your availability. Programs can include individual and team coaching to enhance and embed learning.

Check out some leadership workshops in action!

What do I get out of it?

New perspectives on the quality and nature of your natural leadership.
Identify the type of leader you want to be.
Formulate your creative approach to leadership.
Develop creative confidence in your leadership.
Encourage others to hone their creative potential.
Become a reflective leader ready for change.
Let’s chat

FAQs

What is an example of creative leadership?

An example of creative leadership is a business leader who looks at everyday business challenges and applies systemic and creative thinking to those challenges (such as our ‘Artful Inquiry’ methodology). In turn the leader gains confidence expressing new ideas and solutions, takes action, and is able to encourage and support the people around them to do the same.

What are some creative leadership characteristics?

  • Reflects on and questions their professional practices.
  • Engages holistic thinking and being.
  • Embraces change and finds new ways to innovate.
  • Has an open mind and non-judgemental.
  • Open to new information.
  • Adpots a curiosity mindset.
  • Seeks Innovative ways to solve problems.
  • Adapts to a changing and unpredictable environment.
  • Readiness to learn.
  • Finds new ways to work creatively with conflict.
  • Accepts guidance and advice from others.
  • Has behavioural flexibility and empathy.

Interested in taking the Innovation Skills Assessment to help you identify both strengths and opportunities for growth? Cathryn is a certified Innovation Skills assessor with Creating Futures that Work.

What is creative leadership and why is it important?

Creative leadership is creative and systemic thinking combined with artful ways of thinking and being. Our unique creative leadership services are helpful for even the most established leader. It sparks another way to approach leadership and step into the artistry of leadership.

Through our Artful Inquiry methodology leaders and managers are given the opportunity to experiment with different ways of working. The creative learning experience enables people to apply new and innovative leadership strategies in the workplace.

How to embody creativity in leadership

The best way to embody creativity in leadership is to begin with an open mind and heart and engage in our Creative Leadership workshops and coaching programs. Consider the following steps toward leadership artistry:

  1. Leadership and management understand there are no quick fixes or tricks; that this is a transitional and transformational process.
  2. Discussion with client – find out the organisation’s and leader’s needs/issues.
  3. Create a coaching program that will create a catalyst for change and deliver the results the leader and organisation needs.
  4. Deliver the program in line with the agreed timeframe and budget and using arts-based and aesthetic methodologies.
  5. Reflect and review the program outcomes, and discuss future actions.

Your catalyst for change

Dr Cathryn Lloyd is an accredited Team Management Systems (TMS) Team Management Profiles (TMP) and (LLP) practitioner, and a certified senior practitioner team coach with the European Mentoring and Coaching Council. And that’s just for starters.
Meet Cathryn