Teaching leadership as creative problem-solving.

Abstract

Teaching leadership, particularly to individuals not yet identifying as leaders, requires a conceptual framework that provides opportunities for explicit lessons, implicitly emulates the processes of leadership, and facilitates students' engagement in constructing a coherent understanding of leadership. This paper asserts the utility of the creative problem-solving process as an effective pathway to engaging leadership, particularly when executed as a series of roles in an authentic experience. An example of implementation is discussed.

Introduction

This paper examines the pedagogical utility of creative problem-solving as a conceptual framework to teach introductory leadership, more specifically to facilitate the student's initial formulation of leadership as a dynamic process and leader as a potential identity. Creativity has been noted as an important trait for leaders, and problem-solving a critical skill for leadership. However, consideration of the creative problem-solving process as a potential pathway to engaging leadership represents a shift in emphasis from how leaders can develop creativity to how creativity can help develop leaders. This alternative approach offers both instructional opportunities as well as social and motivational benefits. In other words, using creative problem-solving to teach leadership offers students both learning and the fun of doing so.

Leadership Formation, then Development

Learning leadership comprises a process of both formation and development. Leadership formation involves the individual changing how they conceptualize themselves, by definition shaping them into an essence that did not previously exist. With that changing concept comes a change in how an individual views and uses the tools of leadership he or she currently possesses. Leadership development, by contrast, builds on that essence, i.e., grows or evolves to more complex understandings of leadership. Distinguishing between formation and development may serve as a critical juncture in one's progression from competent human being, to whom many leadership lessons apply, to effective leader, which is an identity comprising a specific endeavor and application of those lessons.

As any experienced leader will attest, the most immediate impetus for exploring leadership often lies in the management facets, that is to say, an individual in the early stages of leadership seeks practical answers to the immediate challenges posed by organizing others to accomplish a task. And, though the leadership field has advanced to embrace management and leadership as complementary (Yukl & Lepsinger, 2005), it is commonly understood across multiple fields that conceptual understanding progresses from simple to complex and from concrete to abstract. What is less commonly understood is how to facilitate this conceptual development.

Research in cognitive psychology provides a good deal of insight into how concepts are structured and formed in the mind. Early psychological approaches asserted associations between behaviors, outcomes, and conditions. Entering the "black box" of the mind has since been encouraged. Today, we understand that human beings are constantly taking-in and processing information within the context of their constructed understanding, both from the external environment as well as from their own memory, emotion, and physiological states. Conceptual change happens incrementally as individuals internalize repeated activity and assign it meaning, thus the experience or "crucible of leadership" that Bennis and Thomas (2002) assert is essential to leadership development. Unfortunately, that crucible is not always available, nor can organizations afford the consequences of difficulties simply for the sake of developing their leaders.

Leadership educators generally agree that learning to lead requires initial focus on the individual leader, namely what should a leader know, do, and be like. The agreement ends at this general level. Leadership studies comprise a broad spectrum of skills, knowledge, activities, models, and "lessons". As individuals interact with this knowledge base, they necessarily must pick and choose the pieces that best suit their interest, personality, and context as a leader. They also necessarily construct and reconstruct their understanding of leadership and their own identity as a leader. Assumedly, the more information to which a leader is exposed, the more likely he or she will find what best motivates, develops, and guides their activity as a leader.

Explicit Lessons, Implicit Framework

Many leadership teaching programs have found success to varying degrees by providing students the opportunity to engage in their community (e.g., servicelearning), interact with real-world leaders (e.g., interviews, guest speakers, mentoring), or apply lessons to an organizational setting (e.g., student clubs or work setting). A recent report by the Kellogg Foundation titled Leadership in the Making: Impact and Insights from Leadership Development Programs in U.S. Colleges and Universities (2000) examines the characteristics and outcomes of 31 funded college-age leadership development programs from 1991-1998. The report notes the importance of a clear theoretical framework, and explicates common practices incorporated by the leadership programs studied, one of which is problem-solving. Further, a Leadership Roundtable at the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard University identified leadership curriculum as one of the key themes in leadership. In summarizing that theme, the group advocates that leadership curriculum focus on "... how leaders function ..."(Pruyne, 2002, p 16), although they go on to endorse applied case studies and learning leadership tools as the preferred pedagogy. In fact, the most recent innovations in teaching leadership continue to focus on the explicit curriculum, examining vehicles such as film, literature, philosophical writings, and challenges activities to deliver and drive home lessons of effective leadership (Pillai & Stites-Doe, 2003).

While many of these pedagogical activities effectively teach leadership lessons, they are often not interlinked within a conceptual framework that closely parallels leadership in both character and practice. If, as Drath and Palus (1994) assert, leadership itself is a constructionist process that emerges through a social process of meaning-making, then emulating this process at the implicit level as a context for learning leadership provides an embedded process that is more representative of how leadership functions than specific theories or a list of lessons drawn from an experience (Ospina & Schell, 2001).

Leadership by definition comprises some common elements that transcend levels of analysis to apply broadly across organization types, contexts, situations, and individual leader. These elements also represent the most difficult concepts to master for their complexity, their abstract nature, and their broad variety of applied settings. In other words, what concepts, are learned through the implicit lessons of the crucible? As such, these concepts are difficult to embed in the classroom. As an initial proposal, I assert that these concepts include (a) leadership as dynamic, interconnected, continuous process; (b) the nature of influence, and (c) understanding self vis-a-vis multiple levels of analysis. In other words, one needs the metacognitive and mindful disposition to envision the full picture of leadership across various contexts.

Learning and understanding a process-oriented social function such as leadership also requires the metacognitive ability to break out of the socially constructed meanings, namely our mental constructions and routines that constrict our perspective. Developing leaders need to give themselves a "whack in the side of the head" as creativity author Roger von Oech asserts (1992). If leadership can be approached and taught in such a manner that these metacognitive awareness dispositions are developed via the pedagogy, many of the most challenging facets of leadership development can be instilled early and subsequently built upon.

With the classroom as a limiting parameter, creative problem-solving as a conceptual framework for teaching leadership provides such a vehicle. The challenge for any recipient of new knowledge is the assimilation of that knowledge into their current understanding, and the translation of that knowledge into practice. For newly developing leaders, that challenge is both immediate and difficult as they lack the more extensive knowledge and experience repertoire of veteran leaders. Creative problem-solving, and its associated roles, enables students explicitly learn leadership lessons while implicitly engaging in processes that are closely aligned to leadership.

Creativity and Leadership: Similar Phenomena

"The interplay between ability and process by which an individual or group produces an outcome or product that is both novel and useful as defined within some social context." (Plucker & Beghetto, 2004, p. 156). This quote by Plucker and Beghetto defines creativity, but it could very easily have been a definition for leadership. Both leadership and creativity have been defined in turn as an innate ability, an individual skill set, a specific outcome, and a process. Personality characteristics associated with creative activity overlap those traits found in effective leaders. Creativity theories vary in where creativity resides--in the creative person, in the context, and in the relationship between person and context. Similarly, leadership theories place leadership in the leader, in the situation, and in the relationship between leader and follower. A creative product may at the same time be the innovative, "out of the box" actions of an effective leader. Only the novelty aspect of the creative product and the focus on influencing others in leadership distinguish the two. And, even those concepts intermingle in the practice of each.

Unfortunately, although leadership and creativity share so many facets, little research has been done to examine the full capacity to which creativity could enhance leadership development, instead focusing on the use of creativity in leadership practice.

Creative problem-solving is a well-established process that generally entails identifying issues, elaborating ideas and solutions, critically assessing those ideas to arrive at a solution, and then implementing that solution. Perhaps one of the best-known creative problem-solving models is the Osborne-Parnes CPS Model (Osborn, 1963). The Osborne-Parnes model breaks the process down into six steps, all rooted in divergent thinking, the essential activity of creativity. The steps include: (a) fact finding, (b) problem finding, (c) idea finding, (d) solution finding, and (e) acceptance finding. Parnes (1981) added a crucial step that occurs before the steps in the problem-solving process, namely the task of identifying the problem. Problems do not always directly present themselves, and quite often individuals must work to enhance their problem sensitivity. Parnes offers prompting questions designed to elicit areas that may have been overlooked in identifying areas of concern.

Creative Problem-Solving Roles for Leaders

I'm not a leader, but I play one in class. Examining new identities is a hallmark of adolescence, and it is particularly acute during the college years. The University setting strives to provide this conceptual safe space within which new ideas can be examined, practiced, manipulated, and tried on without the interference of real-world pressures. Curricular activities in leadership seek to emulate the experience of leading, in effect asking students to play the role of leader, and consequently learn from that experience. No doubt students learn from these experiences, but successfully assuming a role requires one have a relatively good understanding of that role from the start. The challenge for leadership educators lies in how to most closely emulate the experience of leadership while maintaining this safe space within which to learn and build those understandings.

One approach that capitalizes on the power of assuming a role is to create more concrete roles with which students are more familiar. Creative problem-solving, specifically the model forwarded by Roger von Oech, accommodates such an undertaking. Von Oech (1986) integrates the creative problem-solving process into four roles: (a) Explorer, whose role is the seek out new information, (b) Artist, whose role is to use that information to generate ideas, (c) Judge, whose role is to evaluate those ideas, and (d) Warrior, whose role is to successfully implement the chosen idea. Assuming these roles, with each of their single foci combining to comprise the full CPS process, establishes a conceptual framework that is practical, concrete, process-oriented, and fun. More importantly, each of the roles aligns with critical facets of leadership.

CPS Roles in the Classroom: An Example

The introduction to leadership course, Leadership, Integrity, and Change, at the University of Delaware (UD) provides one example of how this framework might be integrated into a college curriculum. During the initial weeks of the course, students explore the many different beliefs, ideas, and activities of leaders, much like any introductory leadership course, as a lead up to introducing the concept of creative problem-solving and the course assignment around which the process will focus.

Within those initial weeks, however, three major ideas are emphasized that align with the implicit lessons we seek to reinforce through the pedagogy (process, influence, and vision). These leadership ideas are commonly accepted as key understandings. These ideas seem to be foundational, however, for the purposes of teaching leadership with the intent of initially forming an identity as a leader and developing a broader systems view of the concept. First, a leader is a person, but leadership is a process. And, the leadership process is dynamic, integrated, and continuous. Second, leaders do certain things, and managers do certain things. All of these things are important. But, none of these activities are as important as how they are done and to what end. Third, everyone has beliefs, values, and ways of seeing and thinking about world. Leaders need to think about their own thinking (metacognition) and understand how others think in order to effectively influence others. The latter enables one to navigate the many lessons, rules, and ideas about leadership.

After a few weeks of initial exploration, the students are introduced to the Campus Change Project (CCP) as their major assignment for the semester. The CCP was developed by Dr. Audrey Helfman at UD as a means for involving first-year leadership students in a real-world experience with direct application to their organization, i.e., the University. The project is a group activity broken into numerous challenges that follow the creative problem-solving process. The actual practice of the CCP is to identify a problem, issue, or area for improvement at the University, explore the issue, generate solutions, create criteria for evaluating solutions, craft an implementation plan, and present it to both peers and campus administrators for assessment and potential adoption. Engagement in the project provides a frame for highlighting group processes, lessons in effective communication and management, and effective leadership at multiple levels.

Students engage the various challenges by adopting Von Oech's creative problem-solving roles (Explorer, Artist, Judge, and Warrior). For example, students' first challenge as an Explorer comprises turning inward first, i.e., explore yourself and your team, what do you need to know about yourself and those you are working with that will influence your success in the project? As students engage in the project task of Exploring issues for change, they are encouraged to apply numerous prompts to their task, such as exploring the history, seeing the big picture, or assuming the perspective of various stakeholders. As an Artist, students are encouraged to use divergent thinking to expand their initial ideas, again applying a variety of prompts to alter and enhance their generation of ideas. As a Judge one of their tasks besides creating criteria and evaluating comprises working with peers to find unexpected consequences. Lastly, as a Warrior, students see management and leadership fully integrated as they are tasked, for example, with strategizing who among stakeholders will support their idea and who will impede it.

Cognitive psychologists as early as Vygotsky (1986) assert that concepts are internalized through interaction with the sociocultural milieu, particularly via social interaction. Each role, and the sum of the roles, provides a framework such that the concrete activity of problem-solving and the conceptual activity of integrating that work into understanding leadership facilitate the internalization of key leadership ideas.

In addition to engaging in the actual process of the role-based challenges, students are asked to individually and collectively reflect on both product and process. Four Brief papers are required throughout the semester: Brief 1: With whom am I working, and how do we (individually and collectively) lead? Brief 2: What are the possible projects and why? Brief 3: What are the probable projects and their suggested solutions? Brief 4: What is the project, the proposed solution, and the plan for implementation? Three process questions are included within the requirements of each Brief: (a) How have you had to act as a leader? (b) Why would a leader need to do these things? (c) How will you be more effective? The questions are designed to encourage metacognitive analysis and implicitly reinforce the three key concepts (process, influence, and vision).

Conclusion

For all of its obvious practical and motivational qualities, perhaps the most important facet of utilizing creative problem-solving as a conceptual framework lies in the integration of explicit and implicit influence it brings to a student's developing construction of self as a leader. The constructive nature of the brain comprises both understanding and process. In other words, we construct our habits of processing information as well as our representation of that information. These habits of mind have often been termed an individual's disposition (Dickmann & Stanford-Blair, 2002; Perkins, 1995), i.e., a habitual and generalized manner of interpreting and processing information.

Developing a disposition requires the same things that building any mental construction requires--experience and interaction with that information. However, in the case of disposition the requisite experience lies in the process of that experience (versus the content). How does one acquire a creative disposition? Engage in the creative process again and again until it becomes the habitual manner in which information is perceived, represented, and processed. How does one acquire a leadership disposition? Go act as a leader again and again. But then, if you don't have that opportunity readily available, you might start with the dispositions that can be learned in the context of a classroom. And, you might start with dispositions that emulate important facets of leadership--like those found in creative problem-solving.

References

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Von Oech, R. (1992). A whack on the side of the head. Menlo Park, CA: Creative Think-Warner Books.

Vygotsky, L. (1986). Thought and Language (A. Kosulin Trans.). Cambridge: MIT Press (Original work published 1934).

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Anthony Middlebrooks, University of Delaware

Anthony Middlebrooks, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor of Leadership in the School of Urban Affairs and Public Policy.