Purpose: To learn how to integrate creativity and innovation in identifying your leadership style.
Scenario:
Consider the following scenario:
You have just received a promotion to become the supervisor of the public information office for your agency. You are thrilled about your new job and anxiously await the opportunity to work with your staff of seven people, both to improve how your agency responds to requests for information and to create new avenues for communication between your agency and citizens in the community.
At the conclusion of your first staff meeting, you ask your staff to help you begin identifying what they think are some of the problem areas and opportunities that the unit can and should address. After a period of silence, a senior staff member finally says, “What’s the point? Our unit isn’t a priority. Everything we’ve come up with has been shot down.” Another staff member adds, “Citizens don’t respond to our efforts to communicate with them. They are completely apathetic.” After a few more similar comments, you conclude the meeting by expressing appreciation for their comments and your hope and vision that things will change for the better.
Later in private meetings, you talk with your staff about your desire to approach problems creatively and to come up with some new and innovative approaches to achieving the unit’s mission. In the course of these discussions, you learn that the prior supervisor not only did not solicit ideas but also routinely shot them down if they were raised. The previous supervisor’s favorite response to suggested innovations was, “We tried that once, and it didn’t work.” Staff confided that they had learned a long time ago that they just needed to keep their heads down and do their jobs. One commented, “Besides, it’s enough to just keep up with all the requests we get. We don’t have enough staff to do anything else!”
Directions:
Consider the techniques for fostering creativity and impediments in creativity in organizations that you learned about in your assigned textbook readings (Chapters 3 and 10) and discuss the impediments to creativity that are present in the above scenario. As the new supervisor, discuss ways you could create a culture that encourages creativity among your staff and two types of teams that you would implement within the organization to help create and promote change.
When responding to classmates, consider the differences or similarities to your own ideas.
