It seems reasonable to state that the primary source of creativity within an organization is employees. This statement is supported by the findings of numerous reliable, relevant, and peer-reviewed publications (Son and Kim, 2015; Sung et al., 2020; Bin et al., 2016). Hence, it is important to maintain a working environment that is likely to contribute to the unhindered flow of ideas from staff. Such a state of affairs serves as a foundation for significant organizational performance, and leaders’ constructive feedback and openness to employees are important factors in this regard. Below, the ways in which the latter factors impact a company’s creativity will be discussed.
Constructive feedback is an important element of the interactions within teams of an organization. This approach contributes to the constant and smooth sharing of ideas and experience among personnel (He et al., 2016). Given the fact that the mentioned practice broadens the scope of employees’ vision and thinking, this maintains the atmosphere of creativity and productivity. For example, it is visible from the policy of Pixar. The corporation has “the dailies,” which means daily meetings of leaders and employees aimed at sharing opinions and providing feedback (Catmull, 2008). Such an approach enhances proper relationships within the teams, which advances Pixar’s practices at the strategic level.
Then, leaders’ openness to the staff results in the feeling of being heard and understood. Employees are sure that whatever thought or idea they express will be taken into account and – with an exact extent of possibility – implemented. It might be obvious that such conditions lead to an increased degree of creativity (Bin et al., 2016), given the opportunities to enrich the number of ideas both quantitatively and qualitatively.
Reference List
Bin, W. et al. (2016) ‘Transformational leadership and employees’ feedback seeking: The mediating role of trust in leader’, Social Behavior and Personality, 44(7), pp.1201–1208. Web.
Catmull, E. (2008) ‘How Pixar fosters collective creativity’, HBR, Web.
He, Y. et al. (2016) Linking failure feedback to individual creativity: The moderation role of goal orientation’, Creativity Research Journal, 28(1), pp. 52–59. Web.
Kim, Y. and Kim, J. (2020) ‘Does negative feedback benefit (or harm) recipient creativity? The role of the direction of feedback flow’, Academy of Management Journal, 63(2), pp. 1–61. Web.
Son, S. and Kim, D.-Y. (2015) ‘The role of perceived feedback sources’ learning-goal orientation on feedback acceptance and employees’ creativity’, Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, 23(1), pp. 82–95.
Sung, S. et al. (2020) ‘Dual pathways of emotional competence towards incremental and radical creativity: resource caravans through feedback-seeking frequency and breadth’, European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 29(3), pp. 421–433. Web.