Kalam’s Creative Leadership

“Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” Steve Jobs, Co-founder, Apple Corp, USA.

There are several leadership styles and theories and, of which, the creative leadership is catching where the leaders have to be creative and unconventional with ‘out of the box thinking’ approach, attitude and aptitude. With the rapid growth of technology, the leaders are under test of fire with several challenges ahead. The days of conventional thinking are over. Now, it is the time for leaders to look at the challenges from a totally different perspective. Therefore, there is a need for creative leadership to find out solutions to several problems being faced by the world today.

Abdul Kalam defined “creative leadership is about exercising the vision to change the traditional role from the commander to the coach, manager to mentor, from director to delegator and from one who demands respect to one who facilitates self-respect.”

To put it succinctly, creative leadership is the ability to inspire and influence the individuals to accomplish desired goals and objectively innovatively. It aligns the ideas, information and thoughts creatively and effectively for realizing the organizational excellence and for all-round productivity.

Creative leadership is essential not only at the organizational level but also in all spheres. It is especially required in the educational institutions where students need to develop creative leadership to solve several problems in the society.

Creative leadership helps in thinking out of the box and helps in facing several challenges squarely. It is the ability to find new ways and means to get the things done. It requires enormous energy and ability to lead from the front. It demands the leaders to go by the road less traveled. It demands extraordinary edge and courage on the part of the creative leaders. It focuses on unconventional methods. It stresses on getting the things differently rather than doing different things.

The End