Creative Leadership: Driven by Design

By Rama Gheerawo

The changing realities of our time - especially the unprecedented situation in 2020 - calls for leadership that moves beyond outdated models or frameworks that are driven by the tired rhetoric of management, business or patriarchal notions of commandment. There is a need for new forms of leadership that are more empathetic and expansive, conversational and communal, and above all, creative. This informative and accessible book examines whether designers can actually be leaders and, if so, whether they can be better leaders because of their creative capability. It then examines how the tools of design, particularly in its most human-centred and collaborative form, might actually hold the key for the next generation of leadership. Creative leadership is based on three values that give everyone leadership potential: creativity, clarity and empathy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lund Humphries
• Release date: Jan 3, 2022
• ISBN: 9781848225114

Book preview

Preface

And Now … Leadership

This is a story for three types of people. Established leaders, emerging leaders and the biggest group of all – those who were never billed to be leaders. I sit firmly in that last group.

This is not just a book for designers. It is for the creative that lives in every human. However, it did start with my life as a designer where instances of human exclusion regularly frequent my work.

Inline-image The same sun sets and rises on us all every day.

But that day can bring a radically different experience depending on your ability, health, gender, race, geography or economic context – just a few of the many aspects of human diversity that are often not included in mainstream consideration. This book aims to share strategies for change, stories of challenge, celebrate success and voice aspiration. I have always held the belief that a more creative approach can help us reduce the many fractures, hates and hurts on this planet of ours.

On rare occasions though, these issues have edged me to the end of my energy and battled me to the brink of my beliefs. As I sat, over a decade ago, overwhelmed by the deep challenges of fighting for inclusion at every single step, a small thought raised its shy hand in the back of my mind:

Inline-image What if there was an overarching way to address separation and exclusion?

The answer reverberated back – look at leadership. You change leadership and you change everything. You start to redress imbalance. You enable inevitable growth. You empower individuals and organisations. You engender ambition and aspiration. Especially if leadership is not seen as a positionality of power, but simply as a creative potential that lives within us all. This lends itself to the topic and title of the book.

However, none of this is straightforward. There is a passage in a 2000-year-old text on yoga that begins with the Sanskrit sentence: Atha yoga anushaasanam. It can be loosely translated as: ‘And Now … yoga’. There are many hypotheses as to why the author, Patanjali, began in this manner, but one of the most enlightening and entertaining comes from the book Inner Engineering by Indian mystic and yogi, Sadhguru. He posits that once you have tried everything else in life, and it has not worked, you then turn to yoga.¹ This statement captures that moment!

And so it was for me with leadership. I realised that after years of designing to make a difference, we also needed to rethink, re-energise and even redesign leadership. In that feeling of futility and frustration, I realised that as we have tried everything else, it is now the turn of leadership. The reference from another epic rang in my ears. Could this be like the famous symbol of power in J. R. R. Tolkien’s world of words, The Lord of the Rings? Could leadership, in this instance, represent the ‘one ring to rule them all’? So began my journey over a decade ago of leadership discovery. Alongside yoga, maybe leadership is also evolving for everyone in today’s world.

This book contains lessons learned from projects we have run across the globe with organisations from government, private sector, public sector and academia. Its ideas have become tried and trusted internationally. However, leadership is also a personal and creative journey for us all, so individual learnings and reflections from myself and my fellow travellers are shared throughout.

Reflecting back, I realise that my footfall on the leadership path started before I was aware of it. I think this is true for many of us. When I was nine years old, I took part in the launch of Band Aid, and remember being interviewed by Bob Geldof on stage. I think it was at London’s Albert Hall. Nervously leaving my mother in the dark comfort of the stage wings, I walked into a world of many faces. Bob welcomed me by name, then asked what I thought was the reason that people were starving in the world.

I still remember that the single answer popped in my head – ‘It is because of greed.’ There was a rising murmur of agreement, and then Bob asked for an example. We were learning about the Second World War at school so I spoke about war, as an act of ‘taking what is not yours’. I do not recall the exact words, but I can still feel the intensity of my emotions – that greed and force lead to famine. The whole auditorium erupted.

So even now, when I think of Creative Leadership, in my heart of hearts, it exists to redress the imbalances that so upset my nine-year-old self – especially greed in any form. We have all seen people who have gone after money and made profit their single purpose and their only mantra. But if you are ‘making a killing’, someone is ‘making a dying’. Your existence should not create imbalance. I believe social consciousness is changing though. The rise of collaborative attitudes to reduce consumption, the sharing economy and new models of social business all fill my heart with joy. And that nine-year-old boy applauds it.

My ancestral leadership journey has covered continents. My family moved from India to Guyana in 1838 as indentured labourers, escaping rural poverty in India to work the Demerara sugar cane fields. When the Guyanese political situation changed in the 1970s, my family fractured and fled to the UK, the US and Canada. The racial, social, economic and personal challenges that resulted informed this thought on leadership in me: There is so much imbalance in the world today, and leadership needs to bring it back into balance. You do not treat imbalance with more imbalance. This ache for equity underpins my work in Creative Leadership.

I never thought that I was a leader. I felt that I was too reticent, too untalented, too inarticulate and too invisible. My final school report said that I was suited to a quiet academic life. My skin colour and my soft demeanour seemed to work against me. This changed when I actually led something aged 20, namely a sandwich shop at an arts festival in Oxfordshire that saw around 20,000 visitors attend over four days. No authority figure had ever seen me as a leader, but it was my friends who volunteered me to run the team. I put all of my attention, all my empathy into this. I felt that creating an atmosphere of love and service was the only skill I had – and I hoped that it was enough.

In the course of selling a lot of sandwiches, a magic moment happened. A woman in her fifties came up to me afterwards and said, ‘my friends and I loved being on this team because you showed care for us all … staff and customers alike. You made this a joyful experience despite the 12-hour shifts. Never forget … that is your strength as a leader.’ In that simple but powerful exchange, I realised two things: firstly, that I could lead, and secondly, in that moment, she was actually leading me to myself.

In writing the following pages about what makes a Creative Leader, I want to share some discoveries, and even some secrets to help you learn a little more about yourself, and become an enabled, empathic, strong and abundant human being. Some ideas may seem incremental – I have found them transformational. Much of them come from experience, and not just my own. I am very lucky to draw on a range of Creative Leaders to share their pathways as well.

In June 2020 I held a talk at the Royal College of Art where I am based, as part of our In Session lecture series. It was a simple hour-long conversation with a friend, Christopher Patnoe from Google, with the topic billed as a discussion on leadership. Instead we spoke about everything else. It was a personal exchange that embraced yoga, politics, play, insecurity, inclusivity, food, music, love and career failure – all of which are actually about leadership. Many of the other individuals in this book have expanded conversations to this bandwidth.

So the leadership you read about here is different – the case studies are different. They are not Fortune 500 dossiers. They measure success in human value, not fiscal return, although these are not mutually exclusive. They signal empathic action, rather than being limited to shareholder satisfaction. They inspire us with a more creative, people-centred pathway forward.

In this book, I express my Indian heritage. If I had been asked to write this book three years ago, I may not have done this so vocally, but the protests following the death of George Floyd changed many things. It made me braver, and steady enough to present my truth, my colour and my heritage.

Creative Leadership is about open-sourcing leadership. It is about deconstructing it and reconstructing it together so that we are not held hostage to recurring and repeating challenges. It means an open mind, an open heart and an open hand. It is not a closed fist, an authoritarian voice, or a knee on the neck. Leadership should not stifle breath, literally or figuratively. It should enable us to be the most vibrant and visible versions of ourselves. So this book:

does not make political statements. It makes human ones.

is not written to simply inform. It aims to inspire.

does not only contain business cases. It is also a journey of the soul.

does not teach career achievement. It is about life in all its dimensions.

is not about preaching. It is about questioning. You get to decide the answers.

It is not simply a personal story, management book, design publication, outline of business strategy, statement on holistic healing, or a list of insights, tips or tricks.

It touches on all of the above.

In witnessing this book into existence, I write this dedication into its pages:

That if there is a place in the world for Creative Leadership, it grows to fill it.

That if the universe needs it, it becomes visible and vocal.

That if there is a call for it, we can answer it.

With all our Heads, Hearts and Hands.

Inline-image 1 Creative Leadership is about activating and bringing your Head, Heart and Hands into dynamic and powerful balance. This image contains the action of the practice. Image by the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design

1

The Leadership Landscape

Inline-image Everyone can be a leader.

I honestly believe this. Regardless of age, ability, gender, race or any other human attributes. Leadership is not about being the tallest, loudest, proudest, most alpha or most militarised figure. It is not about training to be a CEO, or winning the management relay race. It is about open-sourcing. It is about all of us, no exceptions. This means the democratisation of leadership, not falling into the historical trap of letting a few people define it, and a select few live it.

Inline-image So … what if most of what we were taught about leadership was wrong?

Well, what has gone awry? Many things – from what leadership looks like, to who we hold up as leaders. From the mechanisms that tell us how to be a leader, to imposed definitions of what leadership is. This question has been growing in me over the years in potent silence, and it made me realise a simple truth:

Inline-image We need to create new cultures of leadership that stand beside the existing ones. Radically and immediately.

This has led to a path of deep enquiry and lifelong learning around leadership.

Two ideas emerged that have driven me since. The first, drawing on the opening statement above, is that:

All of us have leadership ability: leadership is not the stereotype of the suited CEO, the elected President, the medalled General or the ‘letter of the law’ Manager. All of us have leadership qualities and capabilities within us that need to be recognised, grown and enabled. Every day, we all have to be leaders in different aspects of our lives, so we have to expand recognition of leadership from the realm of business to the home, the community, the neighbourhood and the individual. Every person leads. Every parent knows and grows leadership skills, for example. Every person’s accomplishments can help both themself and others. If you can influence just one life, even if it is your own, you are a leader.

The second realisation is that:

True leadership starts with you: lead yourself, and you can then lead others. Leadership is not only upskilled by someone else, or imbibed from organisational culture. It does not just sit in