Welcome to the Creative Leader, the third course in the specialization Leadership An Introduction. I'm the instructor, Chris Dreisbach. I've posted my biography if you want to learn more about me but now let's say more about the course. The first course in the specialization, The Ethical Leader sets a foundation for this course. So you might want to take that course first. If not certain parts of that course will be referred to in this one. The second course, in the specialization, The Persuasive Leader continues some elements of the first course and is best taken before The Creative Leader. Two elements of the first course are especially useful in making a link to the second and third course. First, The Ethical Leader proposed and explained the position that a leader must be ethical to be a leader. Thus, in a sense, ethical leader is redundant and a putative leader who is not ethical is no leader at all. At best such a person is a bully, a tyrant or simply ineffective as a leader. In that course, we identified several tools in the moral toolbox, each one representing a theory of the moral good. Consequentialism holds that an act is good if the consequences are good and bad, if the consequences are bad. Regularism holds that an act is morally good if it obeys the rule and morally bad if it breaks the rule. Deontology holds that an act is morally good if and only if it is done from duty. These three theories focus on conduct and we noted that it's possible for a morally bad person to achieve good consequences, obey the rules and act from duty. Thus, we considered fourth theory, virtue theory, which focuses on the character of the agent rather than the conduct. And gives us a tool for deciding when to focus on consequences, when to focus on rules and when to focus on duties. Relying on Aristotle, who explains this theory well, although it pre-existed him by many years, we saw that virtue is the ability habitually to know the good and do the good. The good at its best is perfect and perfect means there is neither too little of it nor too much of it. Thus the good is the mean between the extremes of deficiency and excess. To put a finer point on this, Aristotle invokes four cardinal virtues, that is virtues on which all other virtues hinge. These include courage, justice, temperance and prudence. Courage is the mean between cowardice and foolhardiness. Justice is the mean between giving somebody less than his due and giving someone more than his do. Temperance is the mean between deficient use of an available resource and excessive use of an available resource. And prudence or practical wisdom is the mean between acting on insufficient knowledge and having all of the knowledge sufficient for a prudent act, but failing to act anyway. Thus, we concluded that the ethical leader is a virtuous leader and that a leader who lacks virtue that is who is vicious is no leader at all. The link this forms to the next two courses is that we may say something similar about the persuasive leader and the creative leader. A leader's task is to move the followers and other stakeholders to a better position than they were before the leader led them. This requires persuasion and creativity. Thus the terms persuasive leader and creative leader are redundant in a sense, since a leader who does not persuade or is not creative is no leader at all. Note that our ethical requirements stands bullies and tyrants can persuade and be creative too, but absent virtue they are not leaders. Thus per the previous course and the next two, a leader who is not ethical, persuasive or creative is no leader at all. And if a leader lacks any of these, the leader is in effect no leader. The second link that the first course offers the subsequent courses is the work the first course did in tracing the history of scholarship on and theories about leadership. We began with theories that focused on individual leaders, including in succession, their traits, their skills and their behaviors. We switched to processes still focusing on the individual leader. Then we moved to theories that acknowledged the important role followers play in the leader-follower relationship. And finally, we ended with two complimentary theories of leadership, adaptive leadership and team leadership. These pointed us to agile leadership, which is the starting point of the persuasive leader. There we also review adaptive leadership and team leadership in more detail. With these foundations in place, we moved to the creative leader. In it we follow the lead of the 2019 book Creative Leadership: Contexts and Prospects edited by Charalampos Mainemelis, Olga Epitropaki and Ronit Kark Carl. Because the book is not freely accessible, it is only recommended for this course. But some of its chapters are freely accessible and related works that correspond to several other chapters are freely accessible. So we can get a great deal from the book as it stands. Key to the text is the editors distinguishing three contextualization for creative leadership facilitative leadership, directive leadership and integrative leadership. Thus after making the case for studying creative leadership, we will divide the course accordingly. As an example of where we are heading, consider Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, CEO of Tesla, founder of the Boring Company and co-founder of neuralink and Open AI. He's Chief Engineer at SpaceX and a Product Architect at Tesla and according to Forbes magazine, he is the richest person in the world. As Andrew Fayad writes in his blog 5 Leadership Lessons from Elon Musk, Musk is extremely successful, quote is endlessly innovative and acts as a case study for creative leadership end quote. Musk's five leadership lessons according to Fayad are stay open to new ideas, don't be afraid of failure, find a mentor, learn to say no and keep learning and stay curious. Do Musk's business successes and his philosophy make him a creative leader? Or is there more to creative leadership? In June 2022, for example, Musk told his Tesla employees that they must work on site at least 40 hours per week or lose their jobs. With remote work trending upward since the COVID-19 outbreak, Musk seem to be working against contemporary sentiment and innovation in the workplace. Was this creative leadership or was it short-sighted? Two years earlier, Musk have defied a government order and required employees to come to work at Tesla in spite of the COVID risks. Is this leadership in any form? With Musk as an off cited example of creative leadership, but with questions remaining about the extent to which he is a creative leader, as opposed to a creative autocrat, for example. Let's dive into the course, it has four modules. Module 1 considers Definitions and Foundations of Creative Leadership. Module 2 discusses Facilitated Creative Leadership. Module 3 discusses Directive Creative Leadership and module 4 examines Integrative Creative Leadership. Many consider Musk to be the epitome of creative leadership. Let's see whether what follows bears this out.
