Creative Leadership

One of the nation's leading psychologists asks why today's corporate leaders desire but reject creative solutions - and finds some surprising conclusions.

In this latest collection of real-life stories, Dave Trott provides lessons about problem solving and creative thinking that can be applied in advertising, business, and the wider world. With his trademark wit, wisdom, and critical eye, he shows how great problem solvers and creative thinkers are those who are not afraid to say “I don’t know."

What’s the big idea? Jaime Cabrera has been asking this question and leading creative teams to the answer for over 25 years. Inspired by and featuring conversations with dozens of top creative directors from around the world on his popular podcast Confessions of a Creative Director, What’s the Big Idea is a must-have resource for any ambitious creative looking to advance their career as a creative leader at an agency, brand, or organization of any kind.

In Creative Conflict, negotiation experts Bill Sanders and Frank Mobus use a dynamic, dialectical approach to show how negotiations are driven by competition and cooperation at the same time. They believe that when we tiptoe around conflict, we negotiate in a halfhearted way that limits our results. By contrast, creative negotiators probe and push until they hit a wall of disagreement, and then they figure out how to get past it.

Nancy Lyons started her career not fitting in anywhere. She was a loudmouth, shared her ideas too much, and brought big energy. But there wasn't room for that in a traditional office. Nowhere did she ever feel empowered as an employee and valued for what she brought to work. So when she became a CEO and business owner herself, she set out to cultivate a work culture unlike anything she'd experienced before, starting with her mindset. In Work Like a Boss, she teaches everyone boss or not how to do it, too.

This book is for every manager, leader, and entrepreneur who needs to rally a team, an organization, or themselves to think big and keep the flame of invention burning brightly while under suffocating pressure—which happens to be when you need creative problem-solving the most.

Traditional business structures love stability and predictability. Yet many organizations believe the two essential ingredients for long-term success are creativity and innovation. Kirsten May and Alex Varricchio, founders of the marketing agency UpHouse, call the relationship between these two opposing expectations the Proximity Paradox - the belief that those who are closest to a subject are best-qualified to innovate for it, when, in reality, intense proximity limits creativity.

Creativity is the key driver of innovation, but too many teams and projects are organized in ways that stifle new ideas. It's your job as a manager to create the right conditions for creativity to thrive—and to be part of the process yourself.

Are you ready to "make a dent in the universe"? As a creative, you no longer have to take a backseat. In fact, stepping up and embracing entrepreneurship is the fastest route to impact. But where do you start? And what sets the businesses that succeed apart? To find out, we asked the bright minds behind companies like Google X, Warby Parker, Facebook, O’Reilly Media, and more to share their startup wisdom.

This is audio summary of The War of Art, a book that helps identify the enemy that every one of us must face, outlines a battle plan to conquer this internal foe, then pinpoints just how to achieve the greatest success.

The Soul of the Deal effortlessly teaches unconventional transactional strategies that are radically changing the approach of business buyers and sellers, investors, CEOs, and entrepreneurs. Their origin? Selling encyclopedias door-to-door, following the Grateful Dead for a lifetime, and closing 400+ successful deals.

Art Thinking combines the mind-sets of art and the tools of business to protect space for open-ended exploration and manage risks on your way to success. Art Thinking takes you from "Wouldn't it be cool if...?" to realizing your highest aims, helping you build creative skills you can apply across all facets of business and life. Warm, honest, and unexpected, Art Thinking will help you reimagine your work and life-and even change the world-while enjoying the journey from point A.

Lethal Leadership is a collection of three books which will help you improve your leadership skills so you can better interact with people and create significant changes in your external environment. The world needs more leaders, and this collection will help you tackle the subject of persuasion and power from multiple angles. This bundle includes The Modern-Day Polymath, The Art and Science of Storytelling, and Street Smarts. The field of leadership is constantly changing; the upcoming leader should be dynamic and capable of adapting to the environment.

Creative confidence sounds like some type of a fancy term for something, but in reality, it is a reference to the level of confidence that a person has when it comes to their own creativity. For example, if you have a lot of confidence when it comes to your creative abilities, then you have a lot of creative confidence. On the other hand, if you are someone that believes that you have no artistic ability, no musical ability, and no ability to think outside the box, then your creative confidence is probably very low.

Work Smart Do More is the time management book for CEOs and leaders looking for proven, successful ways to increase productivity and create a winning culture.

The Innovative Team is an engaging business fable that reveals the impact our underlying work style preferences have on our teams and their results. The authors present a breakthrough thinking process for developing successful teams. They introduce a uniquely effective set of tools built on FourSight, a measure of problem-solving preferences field-tested by top consultants, which can help anyone from professionals to novices solve problems and achieve performance breakthroughs.

Many of our experiences are compounded and complicated by the challenges of our fast-paced modern world, which can tempt us to compromise what we value most. Have your challenges overwhelmed you with anger, fear, and doubt, such that you have somewhat lost your confidence? Is your drive and determination not enough? Do you find yourself focused on the trivial and invaluable, rather than focused on what matters?

Creativity and innovation are widely recognized as essential to success in business and in so many aspects of our lives. For over two decades, Cirque du Soleil has been a world-renowned laboratory of creativity, enthralling audiences around the world by fusing dazzling acrobatics, staging, choreography, and music, along with beautiful costumes and technical effects, to inspire and create magical, almost otherworldly theatrical experiences.

This is a leadership book. It provides a proven framework for developing practical leadership abilities by ordinary people. It offers competent advice on self-improvement, personal growth, and how to achieve your purpose in the context of living a Christian life.

Tackle your thorniest problems using the wise fool's savvy strategies! The wise fool is the archetypal contrarian known for his creativity, irreverence, and humor. He looks at life in unorthodox ways and pushes back against the status quo. Throughout history, powerful decision-makers (Egyptian pharaohs, Chinese emperors, Persian sultans, and European kings) consulted wise fools to question the assumptions that kept them mired in stale and obsolete solutions.