According to a 2010 IBM survey of more than 1,500 CEOs, creativity is the most important leadership skill—more than rigor, management discipline, integrity or even vision.
As someone whose personal mission it is to help individuals and teams reach potential through their creativity, I read a lot of business articles focusing on creativity, but see few businesses with formal training or processes for nurturing creativity within their organization.
Why is that? I believe the elephant in the room is fear.
- Fear of Failure
- Fear of Success
- Fear of Change
- Fear of Costs
- Fear of Confrontation
- Fear of Losing Authority
- Fear of Losing Identity
- Fear of No Longer Being “The Smartest Person in the Room”
- Fear of Not Being Creative
- Fear of Not Knowing How
- Fear of Taking On Yet Another Another Process
- Fear of Taking Too Much Time
- Fear of the Unknown
- Please, add your own ______________________
I don’t mean to minimize these fears. Some are real issues. But in the world of creativity, issues are not barriers; they’re problems to solve. And each of these issues have good solutions to help mitigate the fears.
So the even bigger question, which I will discuss in my next post is, what happens if we aren‘t creative.
A Marketplace of Ideas 
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