Creative Leadership

Leadership Development experts distinguish between reactive and creative leadership, and research shows that 70% of leaders operate from a reactive framework.  But leaders who lead from creativity are significantly more successful in business performance.

Ben Papa has broad experience and unique skills to help leaders at all levels make the fundamental shift from reactive to creative leadership.

Here are the key differences:

Reactive Leadership is the default mode of leadership – how we lead on autopilot. It is connected to your deeply engrained “fight or flight” stress response.  Reactive leaders see leadership (and life) as an obstacle course, a series of problems to solve and issues to address.  Reactive leadership is about “not losing,” and focuses on safety and predictability.  When in this default mode, you have less access to your full brain power and therefore see and process information in limited ways.  We lead reactively when we lead from within our Enneagram number.  Research is clear that Reactive Leadership is inversely associated with both leadership effectiveness and business performance.

Creative Leadership is less common and requires you to tap into and lead from an embodied sense of safety, rather than the nervous system’s default state of “high alert.”  Creative leadership sees life and work as an opportunity, an open canvas, and actively looks for ways to use leadership to support your deeply held purpose and vision for your life, your organization, and the world.  Creative leaders are self-authoring and focus less on outside forces (e.g. competitors, shareholders etc.), reacting to what they think is “out there.”  They integrate their thinking with their emotions and push for sustained action to implement their goals.  Creative leaders transcend and integrate their Enneagram strategy.  Creative Leadership is strongly correlated with leadership effectiveness and business success, including profitability.

Ben Papa facilitates interactive learning experiences on how to shift from Reactive to Creative leadership.  He also coaches individual leaders and teams as they develop the internal and external skills to lead their organizations and businesses in creative and business-forward ways.