How To Become a Creative Leader — And a Better Startup Founder

For entrepreneurs and especially startup founders to thrive, they need to hone a specific set of traits. Passion helps them gain the drive to push through challenges and make the best decisions for their business, while self-discipline helps them create habits that achieve good results.

However, today’s leaders face a lot of competition moving forward. To stand out, they need fresh ideas and unique perspectives. That’s why career expert LHH believes that creative leadership is the right solution for today’s business challenges. Creative leaders possess the perfect mix of curiosity, flexibility, and decisiveness to drive their businesses forward.

Here’s how you can become a creative leader — and, in the process, a better startup founder.

Build a team you trust

Being a creative leader doesn’t mean coming up with all the great ideas by yourself. Instead, the creativity and overall success of your startup will depend on the people you work with — so build a team you can trust. Choose skilled, independent, and resilient people from all walks of life. These individuals will give you multiple perspectives and provide strengths to make up for your own weaknesses. More importantly, trust your team enough to let them learn by doing. By avoiding micromanagement and allowing your team to work in their own way toward set goals, you’ll see a similar diversity in methods and increased effectiveness in their final results.

Encourage open-mindedness

Welcoming diverse perspectives into your startup means they’re likely to clash every so often. Don’t take this as a form of conflict that needs to be quelled. Instead, look at it as a form of debate that allows ideas to be further scrutinized and refined. Encouraging debate helps team members respect and understand the opinions of their colleagues. More crucially, it will foster better productivity and creativity in the workplace by allowing more ideas to be heard and encouraging teamwork between team members. However, it’s important to note that any debates in the workplace must be done respectfully.

Try out new ideas

Ideas are everywhere, which is why building a trustworthy diverse team that appreciates the importance of healthy debate in the workplace will make your startup a great place to do some brainstorming. So when good ideas do appear, take the lead and guide your team towards their realization. Always prioritize ideas that you believe will be of value to both your startup and your customers. This will help your team realize your trust in them and encourage their creativity even further. You’ll also give your startup the agility it needs to successfully innovate. Such efforts can help your startup stand out from the crowd and ensure its long-term growth in your chosen industry.

Embrace failure

Not all of your startup’s ideas will be successful — and that’s okay. Creative leaders know that there are risks to trying out something new. They also embrace these risks wholeheartedly, knowing that mistakes and failures are the only way they can learn. As the startup founders interviewed by the World Economic Forum put it, harder falls mean there are more lessons to take away from them. Accepting failure allows you to discover what works for your startup and what doesn’t. More importantly, it gives your startup the guidelines it needs to more successfully implement creative innovations down the line.

Creative leadership is a concept that can be hard to define and difficult to embody. Keeping these few tips in mind when founding your startup can give you the starting point you need to find your own path — not just as a creative leader, but as a successful startup founder.

Also check: Why is Brainstorming important for Entrepreneurial Success?