Are Effective Leaders Creative?

This paper explains in layperson’s terms how an agent-based model was used to investigate the widely held belief that creativity is an important component of effective leadership. Creative leadership was found to increase the mean fitness of cultural outputs across an artificial society, but the more creative the followers were, the greater the extent to which the beneficial effect of creative leadership was washed out. Early in a run when the fitness of ideas was low, a form of leadership that entails the highest possible degree of creativity was best for the mean fitness of outputs across the society. As the mean fitness of outputs increased a transition inevitably occurs after which point a less creative style of leadership proved most effective. Implications of these findings are discussed. It is widely assumed that creativity is an important component of effective leadership. (Bellows, 2004, Basadur, 2004; Puccio, Murdock, & Mance, 2006; Simon, 1986; Sternberg, Kaufman, & Pretz, 2003). This paper explains in layperson’s terms how a computer model was used to examine the relationship between creativity and leadership. Although the results we obtained made sense when we thought about them, there were some interesting surprises. First we studied how leadership affects the effectiveness and diversity of ideas in a society. Second we studied to what extent creativity is desirable in a leader. I'll begin by telling you a bit about the computer model itself, and then explain the experiments.