Humanity’s Imperative: Heart-Based Creative Leadership

At a time when the multi-dimensional crises facing humanity are more severe and existentially threatening than ever, a call for “heart-based leadership” could seem tone-deaf, impractical, and irrelevant, even if vaguely comforting.

It could sound a bit woo-woo when many of the planet’s inhabitants are barely escaping raging fires, drowning in historic floods and megastorms, suffering under increasing totalitarianism, or fearing the next pandemic outbreak.

When you look at virtually every sector of society globally, you see division, animosity, polarization, and acrimony. If humanity were one body, virtually every part of it would be diseased. And of course it is, and so it is.

Where are the leaders helping us find common ground to find new solutions to shared problems?

Where are the creative leaders empowering us to find new solutions to whatever “insoluble” problems we may face?

Where are the creative organizations who recognize the value of genuine care for employees, who work to empower and value staff at all levels, who promote higher levels of creative collaboration and fun because these are all elements of vibrant resilient organizations?

Where are they all?

May I suggest that the leaders and organizations trying to become more creative are too busy wracking their brains trying to figure out how to survive an era of unprecedented uncertainty and breakneck change. Slowly but surely many are coming to the realization that it is the people of the organization themselves who have abundant stores of untapped creative energy, let alone practical ideas, that could be harnessed and implemented for the good of the organization and even for the greater good.

Spending enough hours on Zoom for the past 18 months has a way of birthing an undeniable hunger to be creative.

Creativity Inside

What if within each human being, there is actually an infinite supply of creative energy waiting to be tapped?

Let’s explore that idea. At the heart of every human being’s genetic makeup is the power of creation. We are all born with the coding and the biochemistry to create another life. It’s programmed into our DNA so the species and our genetic line can continue to produce at least one more generation.

This undeniable creative energy is not reserved for procreation. Indeed, we have the power to make creative choices in every moment of our lives, creative choices that could support our growth and evolution or diminish it.

This innate creative power is not the exclusive province of those who are called “the creatives” — those artists, designers, painters, singers, composers, filmmakers, actors, writers, and poets who contribute their artistic skills to the world.

What a disservice it is only calling those with exceptional artistic skills as “the creatives” when the single mother working two jobs to make ends meet while creating a warm and nurturing home environment could be far more creative than someone skilled with Canva or Tiktok dances. True creativity expresses not only through artistic talent, but it especially expresses in the form of creative solutions to complex relationship issues both professionally and personally.

Creativity expresses in the way we choose to shape our life as a pandemic maintains its vice grip on our individual freedom and our communal well-being.

Creativity has a chance to express itself in the thousands of everyday thoughts and choices we easily forget are actually a matter of individual creative choice.

Were you one of the many people who were discouraged from expressing any sort of creative or artistic impulse as a child? Were you warned not to sing or dance or paint or write, since those pursuits are “dead-ends” professionally-speaking, and “you need to focus on professional skills in life” and “save the artsy stuff for retirement”.

Were you one of those children whose surging creative spirit was suppressed by a well-meaning parent, teacher, sibling, friend, or later, your boss?

Is it any wonder that our organizations lack creative fire and passion, and most leaders are totally bereft of it?

What if our fundamental nature is, as I am asserting, to be creative? That’s who we are, and creative energy is what we are all made of.

If that’s true, it follows that heart-based creative leadership would be essential and would be the only appropriate antidote to the mundane, self-oriented, competition-driven style of leadership employed by most leaders today.

By heart-based creative leadership I’m suggesting that the next generation leader we need today recognizes that every member of that school or hospital or corporation or government agency needs to have their creativity welcomed, enhanced, amplified and rewarded. A heart-based creative leader understands we have collectively gone through all stages of grief through this pandemic, with no end in sight. We need to be nurtured, comforted, hugged, encouraged, applauded, listened to, valued, and loved.

Only in a safe supportive environment can one’s true creative nature flourish, become grounded, and then expressed. This is the culture a heart-based creative leader creates.

Think about this: the female and male leaders throughout history who have been most admired were revered for their depth of courage, compassion, inspiration, inclusivity, flexibility, and perseverance – all traits we commonly associate with the heart.

Leaders We Admire and Why

Nelson Mandela, Greta Thunberg, Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Albert Einstein, Princess Diana, Mahatma Gandhi, Maya Angelou, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Malala Yousafzai …. the list goes on. Our heart warms just to hear these names uttered. Courage, compassion, inspiration, inclusivity, perseverance, passion. The unmistakable qualities of a heart-based creative leader.

Interesting also that there are no billionaires on that list. Am I suggesting billionaires are somehow not creative? Obviously not, as the sheer operational and strategic creativity that is required to grow a business and then see it mature in the face of daunting challenges and competitive pressures, takes remarkable skill and is absolutely essential to survival and success.

But does the way most billionaires usually think – putting themselves and their enterprise first, while the social good, community well-being, even the survival of the human species may not make the top five – give us any sort of hope for the future of Planet Earth?

When you look at the life of Nelson Mandela, it would have to be considered a supreme feat of creative energy for him to be able to transmute his aggression and animosity toward the white oppressors and even his guards, into forgiveness. This act of creative transmutation established the inspiration and then the foundation for a young nation to begin to “reconcile”. Was this not a remarkable creative act? Did not the release of this remarkable creative energy awaken the same power in millions of South Africans to create change that would have been unthinkable only a few years before?

The fact that the young nation is not beyond crisis in its own maturing process, should in no way diminish the power of Mandela’s gift to his nation and to millions of his people who “awoke” in ways they couldn’t have imagined before his rise. Madiba could have easily been eaten alive by the poisonous energy all around and inside him. Instead he chose the path of creator and helped create a new nation, not just a free and inspired life for himself.

Creativity in fact is an essential element of all great leaders. Great leadership requires the ability to understand deeply the gravity and full scope of a moment in time. Rather than be ruled simply by past history, dogma or rules, the great leader turns a seminal moment into a Creative moment.

In more than forty years in various business leadership roles, including teaching leadership skills at the Stanford Business School, I have observed in myself and many others Five Catalysts that can be triggered to awaken the necessary creative energy in an individual, a team, or an entire organization.

Five Catalysts

Mindfulness is essential to the creative awakening as it takes a measure of self-awareness to identify blocks in any creative process and reflect on how to move these blocks out of the way. Mindfulness is also essential so the individual and team are constantly fine-tuning their own creative process through ongoing input from life.

Movement is essential for flow, that state of creative inspiration that science has shed new light on how to create. Movement itself is more important to creativity than is generally recognized. Many have observed that in the long periods of lockdown and work-from-home, our usual ways of moving and enjoying regular exercise were dramatically diminished. Simply moving joyfully on a sunny day, or dancing to a favorite song, playing a favorite sport or strolling by a lake or river – all these examples of simple movement can bring with them a release of an energetic fatigue allowing creativity to start flowing again. Plus movement is fun, and fun catalyzes creativity.

Nature is at once suffering like never before, and is also our tonic, our elixir, our soothing bath when the soul is dry and weary. We must protect Nature for the future of our species but we must be grateful for Her many gifts if we are to take meaningful action to save her. Day to day, more time spent attuned to Nature yields a flow of creative energy, which is all around you when you walk through Nature listening to its creative life force.

Playfulness is the essence of creativity itself. Observe children lost in a world they have created through blocks, legos, dolls, or miniature creatures and you will have entered a creative playground of the highest order. Notice how you look differently while in the child’s world. Notice how your voice changes and your body relaxes. Notice how you want to exhibit the childlike traits you never completely lost. Playfulness is the wonder drug of Creativity.

The catalyst known as Artistic Expression demonstrates that attempting a new artistic practice of any kind, “primes the pump” of creative energy in all ways, creating new neural circuitry gained during learning to draw, to dance, to sing, to take photos, to exercise virtually any artistic discipline. Your neural circuitry and its neurochemistry changes as we attempt new artistic feats, no matter the outcome.

Heart-based Creative Leaders will embrace these catalysts and their workplaces will honor them. They will align their cultures, their values, their missions, and their visions to the pursuit of full creative capacity for each team member.

The problems of our world can easily feel terrifying and beyond solution. What if a new era of heart-based Creative Leadership was one of the key solutions waiting for us?

We’ve got about 7 billion creators waiting to be activated.

Bruce Cryer is the President of The Graduate Institute, an accredited institution dedicated to a holistic worldview in its graduate education. He was one of the co-creators of the internationally acclaimed HeartMath system. His first career was as a singer, dancer, and actor on the New York stage. Later he became an artist, photographer, writer, and Mentor. He was commissioned by Stanford University to develop a course on Creativity for Well-Being in 2017 and he is the founder of the creativity movement known as Renaissance Human. His guided meditations and original songs can be found on iTunes, Spotify, Amazon Music, and many other digital music platforms.