The Dark Side of Leadership:

In today’s rapidly changing business environment, the ability to transform obstacles into opportunities can be a firm’s biggest advantage (Samašonok & Leškienė, 2015). As organizations recognize the need to be adaptable, creativity in the workplace has become one of the most important determinants of performance and success (Anderson, Potočnik & Zhou, 2014). To date, even though creativity has been linked to firm performance and survival (Nystrom, 1990), many managers admit that employees have “room to improve” in terms of creativity (Shalley, 2004).

Table 2 shows the variable map of key studies on psychological safety dimensions and creativity. This variable map summarises about the relationship between psychological

Jared, I enjoyed reading you post and ;earning about your military experience. You mentioned your experience with narcissistic leaders as well as respectable and immoral leaders. I would be interested in the differences between female and male leaders in the military. Kinicki, A., & Fugate, M., (2016) emphasized that research has found that “women used a more democratic or participatory style than men, and men used a more autocratic and directive style than women” (Kinicki, A., & Fugate, M., 2016, p. 445). As higher rank officers automatically have to be respected and followed. I wondered if women in the military automatically get the same respect. I would also be interested to see if the women in the military practice narcissistic leadership styles.

The emotions one holds may influence or hinder creativity in the workplace. Nass and Yen (2012) examined ways in which emotions either influence or hinder creativity. I work on a team of five colleagues. As a team, we encounter positive influences towards creativity, and roadblocks to creativity. As Nass and Yen (2012) showed, creativity is positively influenced by excited people. For example, we received a new grading system called Infinite Campus. The team felt excited that there were new ways we could input grades. The excitement was contagious. We fed of each other’s excitement. In effect, we collaboratively came up with new ideas on how to grade assignments. In a different instance, our creativity was hindered. As Nass and Yen (2012) discussed negativity breeds negativity. Our team was asked to realign the curriculum standards. This task often requires new ways of thinking. Two team members became negative and felt it was not a manageable task. Soon, the rest of the team began tumbling down the negativity road. The contagious effect of negative comments shared, hindered our ability to create innovative ways to realign the curriculum.

What makes a creative leader? Creativity, as an intangible quality, is difficult to describe in fundamental terms. Likewise, leadership is another virtue that cannot be easily qualified as the impacts of true leadership are far-ranging and difficult to measure. Couple these two qualities together and what you get is an exceptionally abstract concept that becomes even more challenging to qualify. However, in Leadership Without Easy Answers, Dr Ronald Heifetz of Harvard University manages to provide an in-depth analysis and description of creative leadership. Heifetz ultimately describes leadership as an activity that mobilises people and guides them towards adaptive change. What I hope to achieve

In chapter five we learned about the deadly sins for leadership. There are seven sins and they are gluttony, sloth, greed, anger, lust, envy, and pride. A sin is when a person does not do what is right. The first person we know we talked, discussed these sins is the monk Evagrius Pnticus. The next leader we know is John cassian. The ones he talked about did not contribute to the list we know of. These sins were introduced long ago and as one can see they are still as important as they were before. Many people follow the deadly sins and also a new list of the deadly sins. Pride is one of the main sins. Pride is where one wants to become and think they are more significant than the next person. It is known that leaders with pride are bound to fail. The next sin is envy. Envy is when a person has an excessive desire. The root of envy comes from not having a high self-esteem. When a person is envious they are doomed to be unhappy because they are too focused on other people and not on their happiness. Anger is another sin and it is where a person cannot control their feelings. Thus, resulting in wanting to bring hurt to others and become more revengeful. The leaders that lose control and become angry because they are envious of their workers and competitors, which they should not be. Being envious and jealous can trigger being angry, so everything is connected between these sins. Greed is one more sin and it is when a person wants more than they need or deserve. When a person is

However, those models in the article restrict the research outcomes as the factors which have effects on creativity are comprehensive. A creative idea is described to be original, novel and surprising, but also should be adaptive, functional and effective (Simonton, 2000). One former research has found that intrinsic motivation may be one of the most important factors that enhance creativity among employees (Amabile, 1983, 1996; Deci & Ryan, 1985). To this point, the intelligence, expertise and creative-thinking ability are also important in employee creativity. Moreover, Mumford and Gustafson (1988) demonstrated that the environment variables play vital roles in stimulating employee creativity as they provide various resources for employees to pursue innovative ideas. On the other hand, a leader is a group member who influences the entire group member in decision making and productivity (Simonton, 1995). Additionally, Leadership in organizations plays a significant role as an environmental variable(Redmond, 1993). As a matter of fact, research from Jung (2001) indicated that there are transformational and transactional leadership which have different effects on creativity among employees. Additionally, Amabile(1996) demonstrated that there are strong relations between some organizational environment variables, for example, organizational

An effective way for leaders to engage their employees in creative thought is to lead them through the “Cycle of Excellence” (Hallowell, 2011). The “Cycle of Excellence” (Hallowell, 2011) has five steps that allow employees to bring peak performance to their jobs. “Creativity, innovation, and ingenuity are essential to solving many of the challenges facing the world today” (Daniels & Peters, 2013, p. 4).

Employee empowerment has become an important strategic tool used by leaders of the 21st century. According to Ba (2015), a recent change in management style has led to the empowerment of employees in the workplace creating a situation where empowering followers is an assumed responsibility of all leaders and thought to be a motivational tactic. The relationship between leaders and employee has become more strategic than anytime in business due to globalization. Leaders must understand how to use employee empowerment. Ba suggest, a negative view of a leader can hinder performance; therefore, exploring the aspects that guide followers to develop a positive image of their leader establishes desirable outcomes, and can create a positive view of a leader. Employee empowerment is tested to see if it is the key in aligning organizations systems, processes, people, practices, encourages creativity, innovation, problem solving, and problem resolution within a control framework that is beneficial towards many important aspects (Ba).

Employees are said to depict positive behaviors like innovative behavior and OCB when the individuals feel the support of the organization, i.e., perceived organizational support (POS) and negative behaviors like CWB in a non-supportive organization (Scheuer, 2010). From this perspective the workplace deviance can be triggered with respect to the unfavorable or unsupportive working conditions. (Colbert, Mount, Harter, Barrick, & Witt, 2004). Thus this leads to the organizational context that has to be taken into account in deviance research (Bennett, Aquino, Reed & Thau, 2005). Even leader behaviors are said to influence the perception of the organizational climate (Lewin, Lippitt & White, 1939). Effectiveness within the organization builds up a trusting relationship between the leader and the sub-ordinates that will have positive consequences. When the employee perception of organization related factors are taken into account organizational injustice has been a frequently cited cause of misconduct.

Abstract This case study investigates how leadership and management support creativity and innovation in the operative work of a product development project team. The aim of the study was to

Amabile, T. M. & Khaire, M. 2008, “Creativity and the role of the leader”, Harvard business review, vol. 86, no. 10, pp. 100.

I read the article “Is There a Developmental Slump in Creativity in China? The Relationship Between Organizational Climate and Creativity Development in Chinese Adolescents.” Yi, Hu, Plucker, and McWilliams (2013) stated that “the aim of this study is to examine the relationship between the creative organizational climate of schools and the creativity development of children from 10 to 16 years old” (p. 27).

Increasing employee satisfaction can be as easy as changing the culture to empowerment in the workplace which begins with communication, encouraging feedback and giving team members the ability to make more decisions. This approach will have a direct relationship between employee satisfaction and overall performance. As the team member’s performance improves so does the individual’s confidence and commitment to the company. That confidence in empowered employees can also be andisadvantage for organizations. Leaders have concerns of increased arrogance in individuals because encouraging employee empowerment creates a sense of overconfidence in team members. They are making important decisions without supervision and taking more risks. Although this is all a part of the empowerment principles, taking risks can be successful and they can also be failures. “Employee empowerment requires a strong and lasting commitment from an organization’s management” (p. 2) and that may require changing the culture or management style of the organization (Emerson, 2012). Many older and long-term team members are also resistant to learning new things or accepting changes but in order to make this change a success, it will take the entire organization’s commitment.

When an employee of an organization feels their performance and achievements do not matter, that organization may ultimately suffer. Genuinely recognizing the value of your employees will help stop a leader from falling into the pitfalls of leadership, and having their employees enter into a dimension known as the ‘critter state”. An employee that falls into this state is known to have their ideas and skills fall short while they focus on a single question: “What will keep me safe?” (Comaford C., 2013). Below, I will explore the leadership pitfalls and how to possibly avoid them.