The Creative Hero Effect

“Who’s your creative hero?”

That’s the question I asked in a workshop this week with several top European Executive Creative Directors.

It’s part of an exercise I do to help creative directors become better leaders.

The answers these ECDs offered were inspiring.

Daft Punk, Hunter S Thompson, Zaha Hadid, Peter Saville, Paul Arden, Louis Pasteur…even the city of New York!

The way I do the exercise is to have the workshop participants tell the group who their creative hero is and talk about the hero’s work and career.

Then I ask a key question: “What is it about your hero, beyond their work, that you admire?”

This is where you unearth the gold.

This is where people will tell you about a creative hero’s personality traits and process.

You’ll get a veritable store-house of great ways to create and lead. You’ll hear things like: fearlessness, they broke molds, enthusiasm, unpredictable, the power of naïveté, the power of simplicity, experimentation, failure as part of the process, criticism as nutrition, not destruction, etc.

And you’ll hear about process. Things like daily writing, volume thinking, lateral thinking, un-thinking, idea protection, collaboration, craft and flawed and flawless finished products.

I write down all that I hear and create a master list.

When everyone is finished, I ask them to stand back and take a look at the list. Indeed, it’s usually everything you need to be a remarkable creative leader. And the list does a fantastic job of confirming what you’re doing well. And giving you ideas on what you can work on.

Try it.

The effect of this exercise is astonishing.

I offer it up to you.

Who’s your creative hero?

What do you admire about them?

What can you take from them to improve your career?

Image: Slide from workshop deck