Understanding and Measuring Creative Thinking in Leaders

More documents

Recommendations

Info

178 THE 71F ADVANTAGEanother in analyses, certainly when compared to the other four factors.Yet such effects of openness on the endorsement of liberal political andsocial values (McCrae, 1996; Van Hiel and Mervielde, 2004), as well asliberal candidates for political office (Caprara and Zimbardo, 2004), arefairly well documented. Of the Big Five, openness also comes closest topredicting personal exploration of spiritual phenomena (versus holdingconventional beliefs) and the profession of virtues such as forgiveness(MacDonald, 2000). To the extent that we are talking about an activecuriosity about the unknown, a desire to experience the unfamiliar,taking an original and innovative approach to problems, and not shyingaway from the complex or abstract, such qualities of the “open” personalitymay indeed be functional for the executive leader operating in anambiguous and culturally diverse strategic environment.Psychometric measures of basic intelligence are correlated withopenness (DeYoung, Peterson, and Higgins, 2005; McCrae and Costa,1997). There is also little doubt that openness is an important ingredientin what Thomas (2006; cf. Earley, 2002) calls “cultural intelligence”(or “cultural quotient” [CQ]) (Thomas, 2007, and Earley, 2002) or “theability to interact effectively with people who are culturally different.”Coupled with a desire for new cultural experiences, another aspect ofopenness, CQ is further enhanced. However, while personality factorssuch as openness are related to the raw capacity for CQ development,the latter remains distinct from its actual development or exhibition in aparticular circumstance, which depends on interactional experiences asmuch as the individual’s motivation (Thomas).In terms of studies that have looked at Big Five models of personalitywith respect to leadership criteria variables, Judge, Ilies, Bono,and Gerhardt (2002) find the following correlational averages with effectiveleadership outcomes across 73 samples: extraversion (.31), conscientiousness(.28), openness to experience (.24), neuroticism (-.24),and agreeableness (.08). While just 23 percent of the variance in positiveleadership outcomes across samples was explained by personality differences,this is a significant number and demonstrates that personality, includingopenness, should indeed be considered part of the variable solutionset for modeling leadership.In his most comprehensive attempt to lay out an integrated theoryof executive leadership based on a meta-analysis of dozens of ArmyResearch Institute and other studies, Zaccaro (2001) identifies such
UNDERSTANDING AND MEASURING CREATIVE THINKING IN LEADERS 179personality characteristics as openness, curiosity, flexibility, adaptability,and risk propensity as all being requisite for executive effectiveness beyondexpertise, intelligence, and other cognitive capacities. Streufert andSwezey (1986) also provide evidence in the civilian sector that executiveswho possess greater “multidimensional thinking” make better decisionsand, therefore, more valuable contributions to their organizations.When it comes to the special case of transformational leadership,the results for Big Five linkages are somewhat different than for leadershipgenerally. In their review of study results from 14 samples of leadersrepresenting over 200 organizations, Judge and Bono (2000) reportthat transformational leader behaviors had moderate zero-order associationswith higher extraversion, agreeableness, and openness. Surprisingly,there were no significant effects for neuroticism and conscientiousness.In a more sophisticated analysis incorporating a militarysample, Ployhart, Lim, and Chan (2001) employed structural equationmodeling that differentiated “typical” versus “maximum” performancecriteria related to transformational leadership to show that extraversionwas strongly predictive of both types of criteria, but openness had predictivepower only for the maximum criteria, and low neuroticism wasexclusively related to the typical performance criteria.Along with a highly developed conceptual capacity, deeply heldethical values, and a mature and flexible perspective, Jacobs (2006) believesthat openness is a critical attribute of transformational leaders becauseit enables them to consider new ideas and solutions without dismissingthem based on preconceived notions. Indeed, Jacobs states flatlythat openness, in terms of a disposition toward intellectual curiosity,imagination, and creative problem-solving, may well be the most importantBig Five dimension for strategic leadership. This is partially becausestrategic leaders must not only be able to apply a systems perspectiveto gauging their organization’s environment in time and space, butthey also must take that necessarily complex understanding, fashion avision for an organizational path forward consistent with that understanding,and communicate that vision in an effectively parsimonious,meaningful, clever, and ideally original and inspiring manner.It should be noted that openness is not a panacea, especially whentaken to an extreme. Jacobs (2006) makes it clear that “[t]op-level executivesmust understand the necessity to fix it even ‘when it ain’t broke’”and that openness helps a strategic leader be functionally proactive in
Page 1 and 2: Chapter 8Understanding and Measurin
Page 3: UNDERSTANDING AND MEASURING CREATIV
Page 7 and 8: UNDERSTANDING AND MEASURING CREATIV

Understanding and Measuring Creative Thinking in Leaders

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?