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The Creative Executive in Action - Part 5

Much has been said in this book about the necessity of a questioning or challenging attitude as a requisite for creativity. Therefore, the creative leader will keep firmly in mind that he must not only set the example in this, but must encourage others to follow his example. It is all too easy for an executive to fall into the habit or the trap of feeling that he or his contem­poraries on the same level are the only persons capable of creative or progressive thinking. But the executive who rebuffs questions himself, or who discourages questions on the part of subordinates, runs a grave risk of shutting himself off from either a new idea or what would ultimately be a profitable line of investigation. Therefore, the executive leader himself must be open to questions and should, in fact, respect and encourage them if he is interested in developing and releasing creativity in his subordinates.

Perhaps, in our generalizing, we can sum up the personal at­tributes necessary to be a creative leader with these observations:

He must be receptive to other people's ideas; he must, in fact, actively seek other people's ideas and help to supplement his own imaginative resources.

He must, at the same time, be able to plant his own ideas in the minds of others, and to compliment them on their ingenuity and resourcefulness.

He must be sufficiently placid to see a subordinate make a mistake, and to charge it off as an investment in the development of his most valuable resource: a creative, progressive worker.

He must forever forego the luxury of that most satisfying of experiences, "blowing his top" over the mistakes or shortcomings of his assistants. He must never, under any circumstances, berate or criticize a subordinate or worker in front of others.

He must be able to restrain himself from telling the sales manager how to sell or the comptroller how to keep accounts, no matter how much knowledge or experience he, the boss, has had in these fields. He will, rather, content himself with exercising broad direct and indirect control over obtaining results.

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