Creative Leadership Talents

Over time, and with earnest application, an aspiring creative leader will get to a point where the tools and techniques have become second nature. That is the point when one's focus must turn to developing the more subtle talents.

We've identified four such talents that are essential in establishing the values and practices of a sustainable innovation culture. We call them The Four Aces:

• Face signifies the desire and ability of the leader to provide personal support and cover for those who risk creative work, in recognition of the career and business dangers they will encounter.
• Grace signifies the desire and ability of the leader to foster an atmosphere of trust, empowerment, and mercy that gives participants the nerve to create.
• Pace signifies the desire and ability of the leader to sustain momentum so creative work can be viable as well as fulfilling.
• Place signifies the strategic instinct and effectiveness that permits a leader to choose the right opportunity to assert creative leadership.

At every moment, a leader chooses what to believe, what to think about, what to do, and what to decline doing. If the leader makes these single, personal choices with an innovation culture in mind, over the course of a career the sensibility of The Four Aces will develop. Once developed, it provides a stable emotional platform – a creative center – from which to act amidst the chaos and competing interests of creative work.