Paper Example on Creative Leadership: Understanding & Practicing Diversity

RULES OF CREATIVE LEADERSHIP

1. Understanding creativity and practicing diversity

Creative leadership is firmly based on the team's creativity and not that of the leader. The military team leader is, therefore expected to understand creativity and its facilitation process deeply. Most importantly, the leader should practice diversity, a commonly ignored principal. Diversity is the core foundation of creativity. A team with a variety of cultural backgrounds and ethnic ideas creates an even greater room for critical thinking and creativity. Diversification allows for the exchange of different experiences by different minds brought in unison to bring up innovative ideas.

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2. Identification of strong and weak points while upholding the trust

A team leader is expected to be well acquainted with both the strong and weak areas of team players. This particular skillset enables the leader to maximize the team's effectiveness. Individuals might be vulnerable in one area and secure in another, therefore, allowing the leader to correct the distribution of resources and skills according to one's expertise. Micromanagement in the military is a significant hindrance to creative leadership and should, therefore, could be avoided. Most micromanagers are believed to lack trust in their team members and always want to be the decision-makers. A trustworthy leader will provide clear guidance and resources to the team but let members achieve the set goal in their professional way. Trial and error have been proven to be a promising approach and creates room for the exchange of small ideas.

3. Accepting failure and encouraging debate

Even though mistakes are a great hindrance to progress, especially in the military field, they also contribute to success. Given today's renowned successful militiamen, failures and mishaps were a major inspiration. The leader should, therefore, offer strong support whenever people fail and encourage them to keep trying harder without giving up. Another effective measure is having sessions of sharing failure stories so that it can be experiential learning for each team player. Debate encouragement for a diverse team helps promote respect for ideas and enabling viewing of ideas from different perspectives. Healthy debates within the military will also promote positive criticism amongst members instead of waiting for customers to critique on the given results. Prior criticism helps in the preparation of the anticipated comments and possible flaws that can be worked on before the final work is rolled out.

4. Championing realistic ideas

Finally, for creativity to viewed successful in a leader, realistic and practical ideas should be advocated by the leader. Team ideas that are advocated by the leader have a higher chance of being realized and put to actual practice. It is imperative that the leader also clearly demonstrates belief in the team and their ideas. The team will feel the sense of leadership devotion not to the leader but the team wholly.

Critical thinking and its elements

Military leaders should be equipped with strategic leadership skills because the environment in which they exist is strategically volatile and uncertain. Critical thinking goes hand in hand with strategic leadership since it helps the leader be aware of the posed challenges of the environment. The leader is, therefore, possible to confidently simplify complex environmental situations and clarify areas of vagueness. Critical thinking, according to Schwab and Starbuck (2016), is said to be the master of strategic military leadership. He defines critical thinking as the self-directed thinking that makes ones thinking more explicit and more defensible. For a leader to develop critical thinking, there are eight essential elements to be considered.

1) Intent

A critical thinker military person makes it a priority to assess the intention behind their actions and thinking. The intent for thoughts should be in line with the set goals, the team's values, and desired results. There should be an important purpose overcoming all false intentions.

2) Query

Critical questioning is an essential aspect of critical thinking and can be employed in three different means: using critical questions continuously, interrelating essential queries, and asking and answering essential questions at a precise time. A critical thinker must be able to recognize a primary problem, evaluate how to answer a question at the required time correctly, and solving the right issue in the required way.

3) Data

Information is generally in plenty of use in the military, and a critical thinking leader should carefully determine vital information and its quality. The information should link the entire organization.

4) Perception

Perception is perceived as the most powerful element of critical thinking. Without usage and comprehension of concepts, it is almost not possible to understand the changing environmental world. Conceptual thinking opens room for different viewing of ideas and new information provided.

5) Interpretation

It involves the conscious ability of the mind to draw inference-based conclusions. Interpretation, however, can be true or false. For one to correctly understand interpretation, application of good judgment to have precise conclusions and proper evaluation of possible assumptions need practice. In so doing the urge of jumping into conclusion is evaded.

6) Hypothesis

A hypothesis is a statement of belief, classified into two major segments: descriptive and value-based. A descriptive hypothesis is a clear explanation of the world's existence, whereas the value-based hypothesis is highly based on beliefs of the world's actual existence.

7) Opinion

The ability of differently viewing ideas and concepts is vital in terms of critical thinking. From a military point of view, terrorism can be viewed from either a security or political domain. A critical thinking leader should wisely merge opinions and point out the differences.

8) Consequences

Each time we are about to make decisions, it is advisable to expect a certain outcome. Consequences are based on one's actions and opinions that are enacted. Consequences can be likely, unavoidable, and possible, according to Schwab and Starbuck (2016).

Considering the discussed important aspects, and elements of creativity and critical thinking in regards to the military, critical thought and creativity should utmost be emulated and put to good use.

References

Baumgartner, J. (2019). The Nine Principle Rules of Creative Leadership.https://www.creativejeffrey.com/creative/creative_leadership9rules.php?topic=creative

Schwab, A., & Starbuck, W. H. (2016). Collegial "nests" can foster critical thinking, innovative ideas, and scientific progress. Strategic Organization, 14(2), 167-177. https://doi.org/10.1177/1476127016643715