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Creatively Teaching Creative Leadership:
Course Design, Methodology, and Pedagogy
Detlef Reis1
Thinkergy Limited, 1001-2 Albion Plaza, 2-6 Granville Road
Tsimshatsui, Kowloon, Hong Kong
E-mail: dr.d@thinkergy.com
Abstract:
How can creative leaders effectively and creatively be developed using a structured training program? In
this paper, I attempt to answer this question by introducing the design and underlying methodology and
pedagogy of a creative leadership course taught to business professionals.
The paper is structured into five parts. Part 1 establishes the need for both effective and creative training
programs to develop authentic creative leaders for the innovation economy. Part 2 introduces the general
structure and underlying methodology of the creative leadership development program. The third part
describes in detail how the said course unfolds over time, thereby identifying its contents, special
activities and assignments. Part 4 elaborates on attributes of the inherent pedagogy of the course. The
concluding fifth part summarises the key benefits of the chosen course design, and draws up a future
research program to investigate the efficacy and long-term impact of the chosen approach.
Keywords: Creative Leadership, Innovation Education, Creative Leader Development, Innovation
Training, Individual Creativity Development.
This paper was presented at the 2017 ISPIM Innovation Forum, Toronto, Canada on 19-22 March 2017.
The publication is available to ISPIM members at www.ispim.org.
1
1 Dr Detlef Reis is the Founder and Chief Ideator of Thinkergy Limited, the Innovation and Ideation Company in Asia
(http://www.thinkergy.com). He is also an Assistant Professor at the Institute for Knowledge-Management and Innovation South-East Asia
(IKI-SEA), Bangkok University in Bangkok, Thailand, and an Adjunct Associate Professor at the Hong Kong Baptist University.
He is also the creator of four proprietary innovation methods used by Thinkergy: The innovation process method X-IDEA; the innovation
people profiling method TIPS; the innovation culture transformation method CooL - Creativity UnLimited; and the creative leadership
method Genius Journey. Dr Reis has written his first two creativity books titled “X-IDEA: The Structured Magic of Playful Innovation” and
"Genius Journey. Developing Authentic Creative Leaders for the Innovation Economy", both of which are currently under editorial review
(and targeted for publication in Q2.2017 and !4.2017).
1 Introduction: The need for a more creative business leaders
In their economic evolution, humanity has moved from the knowledge economy to the “creative economy”
(Howkins, 2001) or “innovation economy” (Canton, 2010), there is a growing need to develop creative leaders
to steer organisations through this new “age of creation intensification” (Murakami, 2000). In a recent “Global
CEO study” by IBM (2010), the surveyed CEOs of some of the world’s leading organisations named creativity
as the dominant leadership trait to successfully guide organisations through an economic environment
characterised by rising complexity, exponential change, increasing speed of economic activities, more, new and
higher risks, and regular surprises (Canton, 2007). In a follow-up study conducted one year later, IBM (2011)
surveyed the Chief Human Resources Officers of the same corporations, most of whom reported not having
been successful in their efforts to develop creative leaders.
Among other reasons, these difficulties are founded in the nature of the beast: an effective creative
leadership development method needs to be creative itself, or in other words: Run counter to traditional
leadership development programs. The authors of the IBM CHRO Study (2011) highlight this important notion:
“To instil the dexterity and flexibility necessary to seize elusive opportunity, companies must move
beyond traditional leadership development methods and find ways to inject within their leadership
candidates (...) the cognitive skills to drive creative solutions. The learning initiatives that enable this
objective must be at least as creative as the leaders they seek to foster.”
So, how might a creative leadership development program that is both creative and effective look like? In
this paper, I present a course in creative leadership that has successfully been used to effectively and creatively
develop authentic creative leaders. Part 2 of this paper introduces both the course and the underlying
methodology used to develop creative leaders.
Part 3 describes the course design by detailing out session-by-session the contents and activities that the
learners encounter as they get trained in the Genius Journey method. Part 4 discusses the underlying pedagogy
that is used to support the chosen course design and allows for a mind-expanding learning experience. The
concluding fifth part of this paper discusses implications for business practitioners and innovation trainers, and
also draw up a research agenda of empirical follow-up studies that build upon and expand on the present paper.
2 Course introduction and methodology
Creative leadership development course introduction and delivery formats
Below, we discuss a course in Creative Leadership that covers twelve contact sessions (36 hours) and various
out-of-class assignments and activities. The lead author of this paper developed both the course and the
underlying Genius Journey method over more than a decade for the innovation company Thinkergy
(www.thinkergy.com; www.thinkergyUS.com). Thinkergy offers Genius Journey training courses in 1-day (a
“day trip” of 8-10 hours), 3-day (a “travelshop” of 24 hours) and 5-day (an “escape” of 36 hours). Participants
of these training courses are typically corporate management teams as well as mixed cohorts of executives and
entrepreneurs from a variety of organisations.
Since September 2012, the course described here has also been taught on a master in management program
of a renowned Thai business school (College of Management Mahidol University, Bangkok). Purpose-designed,
the course is usually offered as an elective that learners can choose in the final two trimesters of a five-trimester
study program. Participants in the course in Creative Leadership are predominantly young business
professionals; by and large Thai nationals, with a smattering of participants from Japan, Singapore, China and
Europe, most hold managerial positions in multinational companies (MNCs), local corporations and family
business enterprises.
Methodology of the creative leadership development course
The creative leadership development program discussed in this paper is based on Genius Journey, a
comparatively new creative leadership development method created by the first author of this paper and that is
delivered and distributed by the innovation company Thinkergy.
This paper was presented at the 2017 ISPIM Innovation Forum, Toronto, Canada on 19-22 March 2017.
The publication is available to ISPIM members at www.ispim.org.
2
The Genius Journey method is grounded in four strands of literature:
•Psychological studies of individual creativity and genius that identify personality traits and cognitive
patterns that distinguish outstanding creative thinkers and geniuses from the less creative majority of people
(e.g., Sternberg & Lubart, 1999; Csikszentmihalyi, 1996; Feist; 1999; Collins and Amabile, 1999).
•Biographical accounts and autobiographies of creative leaders and geniuses such as da Vinci (Nicholl,
2004), Einstein (Isaacson, 2007), Edison (Dyer, 1910), Disney (Gabler, 2006), Jobs (Jobs, 2005; Kahney,
2008; Isaacson, 2011) and Branson (Branson, 1998, 2006 and 2011); the creator of the Genius Journey
method studied biographical accounts of famous creative top achievers to ‘get into the head’ and discern
cognitive patterns, mindsets and action programs shared by creative leaders (in adaptation of a modus
operandi of the approach of Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP, Andreas & Faulkner, 1994)). Dilts (1994)
used a similar approach to scrutinise and describe the cognitive strategies and action programs of creative
leaders like Mozart, Einstein, Disney, Freud, da Vinci and Tesla using methodological tools of NLP.
•Semi-biographical business books that blend biographical elements from the lives of selected famous
creative leaders and geniuses with a creativity-enhancing learning program for individuals (e.g., Gelb,
1998, 2003, 2004 and 2007; Thorpe, 2000; Capodagli & Jackson, 2007).
•Books describing other course programs designed to enhance individual creativity and develop creative
leaders (e.g., Ray & Myers, 1986; Cameron, 1992; Mukerjea, 2004; Pink, 2005).
While reviewing the literature for a suitable existing model and related course program to develop creative
leaders, the author of the present paper noted a number of shortcomings of earlier approaches (see Reis, 2015
for a detailed discussion of these). Among others, most approaches: (a) fall short on the call for a creative
leadership development method to be truly creative itself (IBM, 2011); (b) fail to use a systematic process
model on how to gradually acquire empowering mindsets and action routines of creative leaders, and don’t
consider the aspects of sequence and hierarchy in the process of acquiring creativity enhancing mindsets; (c)
only look at creativity-enhancing factors while neglecting creativity-limiting factors; (d) and importantly, almost
always disregard of the subconscious cognitive processes that lead to breakthrough thinking.
The design of the Genius method addresses each of these identified shortcomings as follows:
(a) Creative course format: Genius Journey employs the journey-metaphor to run the course in an original,
truly creative format: “Developing candidates into authentically creative leaders is like sending them
on a journey to reconnect to their inner genius.” This approach is in line with the “hero’s journey”, a
classic model of storytelling used to describe personal transformation and mastery that Campbell
(1949) extracted in his studies of comparative mythology.
(b) Sequence and hierarchy of creative mindset acquisition: Genius Journey uses a model of creative
mindset acquisition that considers both the aspect of sequence (focus on mastery of one creative
mindset at a time) and hierarchy (more advanced creative mindsets require a prior proficiency in more
foundational mindsets).
(c) Dualistic nature of mindset factors: The Genius Journey method considers both creativity-limiting and
-enhancing mindset factors. The model differentiates ten antagonistic pairs that either disempower
(stop factor) or empower individual creativity (start factor). These stop- / start-factors are linked to the
ten destination stops of Genius Journey and eight levels of gradually expanding consciousness. As the
learners progress through the ten destination stops of the Genius Journey they bit by bit develop the
mind of a creative leader and expand their creativity.
(d) Subconscious creativity: Genius Journey ends with a final 11th destination stop, which describes how
many standout advancements in the sciences, arts and technology go back on a Eureka moment of
breakthrough creativity. Hence, the Genius Journey model integrates and culminates in Gallas’ (1926)
creative process of subconscious peak creativity, and also considers Csikszentmihalyi’s (1990, 1997)
creativity- and peak-performance inducing state of flow.
Table 1 presents a synoptic overview of how the Genius Journey method introduces the different
creativity-limiting and -enhancing factors in a sequential and hierarchical way to gradually develop the creative
leadership candidates over the duration of the learning program.
This paper was presented at the 2017 ISPIM Innovation Forum, Toronto, Canada on 19-22 March 2017.
The publication is available to ISPIM members at www.ispim.org.
3
Table 1 Synopsis of key design elements and expressions of the Genius Journey method
Journey
Destination Stop
Creativity-limiting
factor
Creativity-empowering
factor
Consciousness Level
Focus
1
Doubts, worries & fears
Belief, courage, action
& persistence
I
(Willpower)
BE
(Define & live in
accordance to one’s
original
personal core Identity)
2
Ego
Self
II
(Self-awareness &
-insistence)
BE
(Define & live in
accordance to one’s
original
personal core Identity)
3
Judgment &
Closed-mindedness
Curiosity &
Open-mindedness
III
(Beginner's mind)
BE
(Define & live in
accordance to one’s
original
personal core Identity)
4
Seriousness, Negativity
& Pessimism
Playfulness, Positivity &
Optimism
III
(Beginner's mind)
BE
(Define & live in
accordance to one’s
original
personal core Identity)
5
Extrinsic Motivation
Intrinsic Motivation,
Passion, Purpose
IV
(Motivation)
DO
(Establish & cultivate
personal cognitive
strategies and action
routines)
6
Myopic Mind
Integrated Whole Mind
V
(Cognition)
DO
(Establish & cultivate
personal cognitive
strategies and action
routines)
7
Expert
Expert & Generalist
(T-Shaped Person)
V
(Cognition)
DO
(Establish & cultivate
personal cognitive
strategies and action
routines)
8
Inertia, Rigidity
& Habits
Movement, Flexibility
& Change
VI
(Perception of &
interaction with 4D-
environment)
DO
(Establish & cultivate
personal cognitive
strategies and action
routines)
9
Mindlessness & Mental
Preoccupation
Mindfulness & Present
Moment Awareness
VI
(Perception of &
interaction with 4D-
environment)
DO
(Establish & cultivate
personal cognitive
strategies and action
routines)
10
Mindless Doing
& Stress
Focused Doing,
Relaxed Being
(Balance, Rhythm &
Flow)
VII
(Execution)
HAVE
(Harvest and enjoy
creative mindsets,
creative ideas
creative outputs,
creative results,
creative breakthroughs)
11
Mindset blockages
preventing creative flow
Process of Subconscious
Creativity
(Preparation-Incubation-
Illumination-Verification
)
VIII
(Illumination)
HAVE
(Harvest and enjoy
creative mindsets,
creative ideas
creative outputs,
creative results,
creative breakthroughs)
Source: Reis, 2015.
3 Detailed description of the course design
The course in creative leadership is ideally delivered in 12 contact sessions in line with the journey metaphor
used by the underlying Genius Journey method, and is roughly structured into four parts: After an initial “check-
in” session, the creative leadership candidates’ undergo an experiential creative learning journey that takes them
through the ten plus one journey stops of Genius Journey (session 2 to 9). Sessions 10 and 11 give the
candidates an opportunity to apply their learnings by introducing a creative leader of their own choice to the
whole cohort. Finally, the learners jointly harvest their take-aways in a concluding check-out session.
Figure 1 illustrates the overall course structure. While the twelve contact sessions are often delivered as a
twelve week course, they may also be condensed to a 5-day “escape”, or extended to a half-yearly training
program (with bi-weekly sessions); busy executives may be best served with a one year program with monthly
sessions.
Below, I show more details of the course design, thereby progressing in chronological order following the
twelve contact sessions and the four-part course structure. I also describe locations that the learners visit on their
journey. For consistency reasons, I chose one city (Bangkok, Thailand) where the program has been delivered in
the described format. In another venue, the course instructor would chose corresponding sites and locations that
capture the intended spirit and contents of each session in comparable ways.
Part 1: Check-in for the creative leadership development journey (Session 1)
In the first session, the creative leader candidates check-in for their “Genius Journey”. The purpose of this
introductory session is to define key concepts related to the course, establish the relevance of the course topics
and the importance of developing more creative leaders, and to give an outlook of the upcoming experiential
learning journey. The learners also have to perform a “Check-in Test”, which highlights individual problem
areas that each learner should focus on while going through their creative leadership development journey. The
learners also become familiarised with the different assignment types and exercises that they need to complete
individually or together with a “travel buddy” to internalise and personalise the learned contents to their own
situation. At the end of the session, the learners get their first individual work assignment (an initial essay) and
also receive their first creative puzzle.
This paper was presented at the 2017 ISPIM Innovation Forum, Toronto, Canada on 19-22 March 2017.
The publication is available to ISPIM members at www.ispim.org.
4
Figure 1 Course structure of the course in creative leadership
Source: Own table based on: Reis, 2017a and 2017b.
Part 2: The creative leadership development journey (Sessions 2-9)
Part 2 of the creative leadership course is the actual “Genius Journey” that takes place in the contact sessions 2
to 9. Here, the learners encounter 1-2 journey stops per session, where they learn what limiting mindsets and
action routines they need to replace with corresponding empowering mindsets. Thereby, the learners not only
learn about the conceptual contents (what they need to change, and why), but also complete many exercises that
animate these theoretical concepts in practical, realistic terms. Moreover, in most classes, the learners also
“travel” to different locations outside of the classroom. What happens in each of these nine journey sessions?
•In session 2, the learners start their Genius Journey by traveling to destination stop 1. At this important
pivotal journey stop, they learn that they need to stop their doubts, worries and fears, and instead become
courageous, action-oriented and persistent believers. With the beginning of the Genius Journey, the creative
leader candidates also start to physically move out of the seminar room by traveling to two excursion
points: A Chinese temple, which sets the scene for talking about the importance of clarifying one’s beliefs at
the beginning of the creative leadership development journey; and a scary, but “simulated” haunted house
that the candidates have to tour in small groups to prove their courage and recognise that most fears aren’t
real but only take place in their anxious minds.
•Session 3 gives the learners the opportunity to meet their best friend and worst enemy. At destination stop 2,
they learn to appreciate why creative leaders need to be themselves in order to be able to produce original
creations, and gain an understanding on the critical importance —and difficulty— of stopping their worst
enemy: their ego (or false self). Among other activities, the learners visit a top end shopping mall. They
have to tour it with an artistic mask that each individual has created ahead of the session out of a brown
paper bag, and that symbolises the social mask behind which most people hide their true original selves.
The exercise forces the candidates again to fight a fear (here, the fear of losing face when someone they
know may recognise them behind the mask), and makes them realise that the majority of people don’t even
notice of a group of 20-30 masked people walking through a shopping mall because they are too absorbed
by their own little problems and fears (and their smartphones).
•In the fourth session, the learners visit two related destination stops of the Genius Journey. They learn to
stop being judgmental, critical and closed, and instead start cultivating an open, curious beginner’s mind
that allows them to learn, expand and create (Stop 3). They also find out that instead of being serious,
negative pessimists, they should transform into playful, positive optimists (Stop 4). In this session, the
learners encounter physical exercises (such as becoming aware how their body posture impacts their mood
and confidence), and play on both a playground and a sports ground to “relearn how to play”.
This paper was presented at the 2017 ISPIM Innovation Forum, Toronto, Canada on 19-22 March 2017.
The publication is available to ISPIM members at www.ispim.org.
5
•Session 5 brings the learners to the vital destination stop 5 of the Genius Journey. Here, the creative leader
candidates learn to stop working only for money, and to start doing what they love — and loving what they
do. The accompanying exercises guide the learners towards uncovering their passion (“What do I love
doing?”) and ideally even their purpose (“Why am I here?”). To support the session’s theme of gaining
clarity of one’s personal inner core and the big picture of one’s life, the learners travel to the Golden Mount,
a Buddhist temple built on the highest point of Bangkok’s ancient city. This striking location offers the
learners a magnificent top-down view while at the same time reconnecting them to their sacred inner core.
•In sessions 6, the learners learn of the importance of cultivating an integrated whole mind. Here, the focus
is on creative thinking exercises that allow the learners to train their creative thinking capabilities. Why?
Most managers and business executives command well-honed analytical minds, but possess an atrophied,
underdeveloped intuitive mind. At the corresponding destination stop 6 of the Genius Journey, the learners
don’t visit a physical location, but rather travel to various imaginary locations created in their minds as a
result of a series of creative visualisation exercises (see for example Gawain, 1978 and Michalko, 1991)
and imagination experiments in the tradition of Einstein (Isaacson, 2007; Dilts, 1994).
•Destination stop 7 (dealt with in session 7) informs the learners that they should strive to become a “T-
shaped leader”: a modern Renaissance man who combines deep expertise in at least one domain of one’s
passion with a broad general knowledge, skills and experience base. Being both deep and broad gives a
person lots of “dots” to creatively connect to challenges in one’s area of specialisation. In this session, the
candidates either visit a library or museum to emphasise the importance of seeking broad inspiration from
books and a variety of artistic or technological creations.
•Session 8 takes place in a park to allow the learners to develop an appreciation for the topics of the
destination stop 8 and 9: Start to move, change and flex yourself rather than being inert, static and inflexible
(Stop 8); and start to live and work mindfully now with all your senses (Stop 9). The exercises in nature
reconnect the creative leader candidates to their primal human core and help them to understand what made
humanity rise to the pinnacle of the evolutionary pyramid. Among other activities, the learners replay
evolution, walk and run barefoot, and get an introduction to mindfulness meditation and Vinyasa Yoga.
•Session 9 concludes the Genius Journey at destination stop 10. Here, the creative leader candidates are
reminded of the importance to stop their busyness (or in other words: being busy doing something all the
time), and to start alternating between focused doing with mindful being instead. Mixing focused
application with total relaxation establishes a harmonious rhythm that supports prolonged creative work that
may induce the state of flow (or “optimal experience”; Czikcentmihalyi, 1990 and 1996).
•In this ninth session, the creative leader candidates also learn that being in flow increases the odds of
experiencing a Eureka, a moment of peak creativity when —all of a sudden— they may get a breakthrough
idea from a subconscious source. This “secret” eleventh Genius Journey stop can only be experienced if all
creative mindsets are aligned — and if a candidate has already worked for a prolonged period of time on a
creative challenge of high importance and then has the courage to incubate on it and wait to be illuminated.
Here, the learners get introduced to Wallas’ (1926) process model of breakthrough creativity (with its four
stages preparation, incubation, illumination and verification), and become aware that many breakthroughs
in science, the arts and technology stem from a Eureka, a breakthrough moment of illumination. In this
ninth session, the creative leadership candidates are exposed to a number of techniques for creative time
and productivity management, and to tips to increase the likelihood of experiencing a Eureka themselves.
Part 3: Creative leader presentations (Sessions 10-11)
After the experiential Genius Journey, part 3 of the course is designed to underpin the acquired knowledge and
skills by relating them to the biographies of famous and less well-known creative leaders. During the course
program, the students are tasked to study (auto-)biographical books, recordings and videos, and creative outputs
of a creative leader of their own choice, and to relate their findings to the contents and exercises of the Genius
Journey method. In sessions 10-11, each student gets an allotted amount of time to introduce their creative
leader in an engaging presentation, and to relate their leader’s biography to the Genius Journey method.
In their presentation, the learners introduce their favourite creative leader with key life events and their main
creative achievements. They are also tasked to map out their leader’s Genius Journey: here, they critically
discuss to what extent their leader exhibits the creative mindsets taught in the Genius Journey model, thereby
also addressing gaps and the “shadow-side” that most creative leaders have to master in order to move towards
lasting greatness and creative standout performance. Finally, the learners also share what really surprised and
most inspired them about their chosen genius mentor, and discuss concrete actions on how they plan to integrate
the insights and lessons gained from their chosen role model into their own life and career.
This paper was presented at the 2017 ISPIM Innovation Forum, Toronto, Canada on 19-22 March 2017.
The publication is available to ISPIM members at www.ispim.org.
6
The creative leaders introduced by the learners typically cover a wide range of disciplines and time epochs,
from well-known creative business leaders (e.g., Walt Disney, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk) and inventors (Thomas
Edison, Nikola Tesla, James Dyson), artists (Pablo Picasso, Salvatore Dali), writers (J.K. Rowling, Mark Twain)
and movie directors (Stephen Spielberg, James Cameron) to sports legends (Bruce Lee, Muhammad Ali) and
philosophical, political and social creative leaders (e.g., Lao Tse, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King,
Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela).
Feedback from the learners on this part of the course indicates that they enjoyed both studying their creative
leader and being introduced to wide spectrum of creative leaders, many of whom they knew only at a superficial
level before (or not at all). The presentation also manifest the relevance of the Genius Journey model of creative
leadership development, as most mindset factors discussed in the model can be found in all leader presentations.
Part 4: Check-out from the creative leadership development journey (Session 12)
The fourth and final part of the course ensures that the creative leader candidates harness and internalise the key
learnings from the creative leadership development program, and develop strategies for firmly anchoring their
new creative ways of thinking and doing back at work and in their lives. In the final session 12, the learners
assess to what extent they have transformed thanks to undergoing training in the Genius Journey method,
thereby ideally also seeking feedback from peers and their study buddy.
Then, the cohort of learners collectively reviews the course by having 1-2 learners create an individual
review of the contents, activities and major learnings of one destination stop of the Genius Journey. Then, one
after another, each learner (pair) presents the major lessons from their journey stop, before the other learners and
the course instructor add other important learning points, exercises and experiences that have been omitted in
the review. After this engaging collective review of the course, the creative leadership candidates are introduced
to eight ways to make these learnings stick and firmly incorporate them into their daily work lives. At the end of
the last contact session, the course instructor hands out a gift to each learner to remind them of the creative
leadership course, and the learners and instructors ideally celebrate the successful program completion with a
festive dinner that concludes the official course program.
Yet, the course doesn’t end with session 12, but with a final individual reflective essay that each creative
leader candidate has to write to turn the course and their personal learnings over in their minds. The learners
reflect on the extent that they have transformed themselves into a more courageous, authentic, open, curious,
positive and playful, passionate and purpose-driven, creative and broadly interested, flexible and
forward-moving, mindful and sensory aware, focused and relaxed person. They also share how they plan to
make these positive changes permanent and count in a meaningful creative career and leadership role in future.
The course instructor reviews each essay and gives further individualised feedback to inspire each learner on
their way forward.
4 Special elements of the course pedagogy
Creative leadership development as an experiential action learning
The course pedagogy incorporates a blend of a variety of learning approaches. Staying true to the journey
metaphor employed by the Genius Journey method, most of the contact sessions contain excursions to other
locations. Thereby, the learners physically travel to special places relating to the corresponding destination stops
of the Genius Journey method, such as: temples, flower gardens and parks, a haunted house, a mountain peak, a
shopping mall, a library or museum, a playground and sports field, among others. Moreover, the learners also
travel in their imagination to their personal sanctuary and other guided imagination tours.
Throughout the course, traditional lecture sequences are used to explain the theoretical, philosophical,
spiritual and cognitive concepts behind the Genius Journey method of creative leadership development to the
learners. The lecture elements alternate with concrete, practical exercises true to the notion of action learning
(Kolb & Kolb, 2008).
During the contact sessions —be it in a seminar room or while being at one of the special locations— the
learners get exposed to a number of exercises that guide the development of the mindset and action routines of
an authentic creative leader. These “Genius Exercises” invite the learners to contemplate on their preferred ways
of thinking and doing, and show them alternative mental and physical tools to expand their minds and transform
themselves into creative leaders. Typically, the exercises are mental and/or physical, as one objective of the
exercises is to make the creative leader candidates become aware of the body-mind connection (i.e., our body
postures impact our thoughts, and vice versa; Carney, 2010; Driver, 2010; Cuddle, 2015). All exercises stem
This paper was presented at the 2017 ISPIM Innovation Forum, Toronto, Canada on 19-22 March 2017.
The publication is available to ISPIM members at www.ispim.org.
7
from the Genius Journey workbook (Reis, 2017b) and partially were already introduced during the detailed
description of the course in part 3 of this paper. In sum, the Genius Journey method uses a pedagogical approach
based on the three questions What? Why? How?: “What is it that you need to stop doing? What do you need to
start doing instead? Why is this transformational change good to boost your inner creativity and reconnect you
to your inner genius potential? How exactly can you achieve the desired mindset changes?”
Other pedagogical elements used in the creative leadership development program are out-of-class reading
assignments, the biographical study of one creative leader, buddy work, creative puzzles, and a personal
storytelling element called “Dare to Share”. In the following, I introduce each of these additional pedagogical
course elements and learning tools:
•At the start of the course, the learners get a comprehensive handout with articles and reading materials that
relate to the conceptual contents of each session. The learners are expected to deepen their understanding
gained in the lectures and exercises from the class sessions with additional reading of the corresponding
literature. Upon publication of the Genius Journey book (Reis, 2017a), the book will replace this handout.
•Within the first two sessions of the course, the learners also have to adopt and announce their personal
“Genius Journey mentor”: a creative leader of their own choice, dead or alive, world-famous or
not-so-well-known. The learners have to study biographical materials (books, recordings, videos, movies,
creations, etc.) relating to their mentor. The learners’ objective is to scrutinise the original sources as a way
to “get into the head” of their chosen creative leader and be able to discern successful thought and action
patterns of their mentor.
•Another pedagogical feature of the course is that every learner is paired with a “buddy”: another learner
with whom they regularly meet, discuss, and conduct and review homework exercises. The combined
buddy work and joint exercises is a key way to build up confidence to share personal challenges and
successes first eye-to-eye in a small circle before doing it in a wider group using the next pedagogical
course feature.
•“Dare to Share” is a course element to condition learners to openly share a personal story in front of the
whole cohort of learners and their course instructor. These stories ought to relate to a topic taught in the
course, or illustrate how the learners have applied learning points from the course in a meaningful way at
work or in their life. The format helps the creative leader candidates to emotionally open up and often
creates emotional moments when the course has helped a learner to overcome a major personal obstacle
and transform. This feature also encourages the notion that storytelling is a key attribute of transformational
leaders (see for example, Ready, 2002; Denning, 2005; Ann & Carr, 2011).
•A final, very important and highly popular pedagogical course element in the tradition of action learning
and problem-based learning (see for example, Hallinger & Bridges, 2007) are creative puzzles. In each of
the first nine sessions, the learners are introduced to a creative puzzle that they need to work on. Unlike
typical creative puzzles found in normal creativity books or creative puzzle books, which often have a finite
number of one or a few “standard solutions” (see for example Michalko, 2001 or Van Delft & Botermans,
1993), most creative puzzles in the Genius Journey program of creative leadership development are
designed to allow for an infinite number of “open-ended solutions”. At the end of each contact session, the
students show their solutions of the previous creative puzzle to the course instructor, who assesses the level
of creativity on a scale from 0 (Non-starter) to 5 (Wow) using predefined assessment criteria, and gives out
points that the learners collect over the course.
For example, one creative puzzle given to the learners at the end of session one is a piece of paper with four
dots with the instructions to use it to create more value. While some learners use it to create artistic sketches
(Good - 3 points) or an useful object (e.g., a die; Great - 4 points), one creative leader candidate who is a
composer measured the distances between the dots, translated it into musical notes, and used it to compose
an advertisement jingle (Wow - 5 points).
Assignments and assessment components for a creative leadership development course
The creative leadership development program introduced in this course was delivered both in the form of
training and coaching sessions to corporate executives and managers and as a study course integrated into a
master in management program. Assessing a learner’s performance in the course is a mandatory component in a
study course (to be able to assign a grade to each learner by the end of the course). The present author deems it
beneficial to also use some or —ideally— all assignments with creative leader candidates from the corporate
world or with an entrepreneurial background, particularly if they undergo the creative leadership program in an
extended format (as discussed in this paper) and not as part of only a short-term training of one to three days.
This paper was presented at the 2017 ISPIM Innovation Forum, Toronto, Canada on 19-22 March 2017.
The publication is available to ISPIM members at www.ispim.org.
8
So, what assignments do the learners in this creative leadership program need to perform? And what tools
does the course instructor use to assess the performance? I discuss the various assignment and related
assessment tools below:
•In the first contact session (check-in) that starts the creative leadership session, the learners get the
opportunity to do the Genius Journey Check-In Survey. Thereby, for a number of mindset factors related to
the Genius Journey method of creative leadership development, the learners assess their present and desired
future state on two bipolar Likert-scales. After mapping out the individual results of this entry survey on
chart called “Your Genius Journey Travel Map”, the learners gain an idea of those destination stops (and
related disempowering mindsets and action routines) that they need to particularly focus on in order to
transform into an authentic creative leader.
If the program is delivered to one or a group of “alpha” executives, it is beneficial to also seek external 360
degree feedback to contrast the internal self-perception of each executive with the external perception of
others (following the recommendation of Ludeman & Erlandson, 2004).
•At the end of the first contact session (check-in) that starts the creative leadership session, the learners are
handed their first assignment: An initial reflective essay that invites them to clarify their expectations,
investigate possible cognitive barriers that currently limit their creativity (thereby ideally considering the
results of their initial Genius Journey Check-In Survey), and specify the commitments they are willing to
make to ensure that they achieve their desired learning objective. The learners complete this reflective essay
before the beginning of session 2 and hand it in to their course instructor, who reviews and —when the
course is part of an official study program— assigns a score to it with the help of an assessment rubric.
•A crucial component of the creative leadership development program is the homework exercises. The
learners have to complete these between each session in order to internalise and personalise their learnings
and move towards personal transformation. The Genius Journey method of creative leadership development
has 88 Genius Exercises (eight exercises for each of the ten plus one destination stops) and 16 Journey
Exercises (8 exercises relating to the Journey Check-In and Check-Out sessions; Reis, 2017b).
The Genius Exercises help the learners to investigate their values and beliefs, to reconnect to their passions,
to familiarise themselves with advanced creative thinking techniques, to experience new cognitive and
physical activities, and to learn how to more creatively manage their time and energies, among others.
While many exercises are also discussed and practised in the contact session, they typically require a more
intensive application and reflection out-of-class to ensure deeper levels of insights.
In an ideal world, the learners would work through all eight Genius Exercises related to a destination stop.
To cater to the work demands and time constraints of the real world on the creative leader candidates,
however, the course instructor typically settles on 3-4 exercises per stop (that each learner can freely
choose). The learners complete the homework exercises in their personal Genius Journey notebook, and
meet after each session with their “journey buddy” (another learner) to exchange their homework and assess
each other’s performance with the help of an assessment rubric covering all homework exercises.
At the end of the program, the learners hand in their notebooks to the course instructor, who reviews both
the notebooks and the assessment sheets, and evens the performance assessments between different buddy
teams to ensure a fair consistent scoring across the whole cohort of learners.
•In the final contact session at the end of the program (Check-Out), the learners complete a Check-Out
Survey that uses the same format as the Check-In Survey. The survey (that may also be handed out to
external assessors) helps the learners to take note of how much they have evolved and transformed as a
result of the creative leadership development program.
•The course program is concluded with a final reflective essay that each learner has to complete. This last
assignment (that we already described earlier) is graded in case the course is part of a study program.
As already mentioned above, assessment rubrics have been developed for all course assignments. Rubrics
ensure a fair, consistent assessment of an assignments across varying cohorts of learners (Reddy & Andrade,
2010). While traditional assessment rubrics typically distinguish between four performance levels in the column
of the rubric (e.g., novice, apprentice, practitioner, expert), the Genius Journey assessment rubrics add a fifth
column (genius). Reserved for extraordinary creative performances, this standout column tends to intensify the
learners’ efforts and pushes them to go the extra-mile once they see other learners achieve this level.
One final important element of the chosen pedagogy is that neither course format nor contents is static, but
dynamic: The course creatively changes and adapts (e.g., to the environment if the course is delivered at
different cities and locations across the world) and evolves to incorporate emerging new concepts as well as the
feedback from learners. As such, we iterate and improve the course design following the notion of rapid
prototyping (e.g., Kelley and Littman, 2002).
This paper was presented at the 2017 ISPIM Innovation Forum, Toronto, Canada on 19-22 March 2017.
The publication is available to ISPIM members at www.ispim.org.
9
Table 2 summarises the design of course structure, methodology and pedagogy that the author of this paper
has created by using another innovation process method of Thinkergy (X-IDEA, see Reis, 2014, 2016b and
2018) and related design techniques like customer journey mapping (Richardson, 2010) and —as already noted
before— rapid prototyping, among others.
Table 2 Synopsis of key course design features and pedagogical elements
COURSE
STRUCTURE
COURSE
STRUCTURE
COURSE
METHODOLOGY
COURSE
METHODOLOGY
COURSE PEDAGOGY
COURSE PEDAGOGY
COURSE PEDAGOGY
COURSE PEDAGOGY
COURSE PEDAGOGY
Part
Session
Genius
Journey
Stops
Special
Excursions
& Places
Reflective
Essay
My Creative
Leader
Portraits
Genius
Journey
exercises
Creative
Puzzle
Dare to Share
I
Check-In for
the Journey
1
Initial essay
Explore on
decide on
favourite
Creative
Leader
Journey
exercises
1-8
✓
II
Traveling the
Genius
Journey
2
Stop 1
Temple
Flower field
Haunted H.
Explore on
decide on
favourite
Creative
Leader
Genius
exercises
1-8
✓
✓
II
Traveling the
Genius
Journey
3
Stop 2
Shopping
Mall
Study
creative
leader in
biographical
materials
(books,
articles,
videos,
recordings,
creations,
etc.)
Genius
exercises
9-16
✓
✓
II
Traveling the
Genius
Journey
4
Stops 3+4
Playground
Sports field
Study
creative
leader in
biographical
materials
(books,
articles,
videos,
recordings,
creations,
etc.)
Genius
exercises
17-32
✓
✓
II
Traveling the
Genius
Journey
5
Stop 5
Mountain
peak
Study
creative
leader in
biographical
materials
(books,
articles,
videos,
recordings,
creations,
etc.)
Genius
exercises
33-40
✓
✓
II
Traveling the
Genius
Journey
6
Stop 6
Imagination
trips
Study
creative
leader in
biographical
materials
(books,
articles,
videos,
recordings,
creations,
etc.)
Genius
exercises
41-48
✓
✓
II
Traveling the
Genius
Journey
7
Stops 6-7
Library
and/or
Museum
Study
creative
leader in
biographical
materials
(books,
articles,
videos,
recordings,
creations,
etc.)
Genius
exercises
49-56
✓
✓
II
Traveling the
Genius
Journey
8
Stops 8+9
Park with
a lake
Winery
Create report
and
presentation
on life of
creative
leader
Genius
exercises
57-72
✓
✓
II
Traveling the
Genius
Journey
9
Stops 10+11
Lounge Bar
or Pool
Create report
and
presentation
on life of
creative
leader
Genius
exercises
72-88
✓
✓
III
The Genius
Journey of
Our Creative
Leadership
Mentors
10
Delivery of
the Creative
Leader-
Presentations
by all
learners
✓
III
The Genius
Journey of
Our Creative
Leadership
Mentors
11
Delivery of
the Creative
Leader-
Presentations
by all
learners
✓
IV
Check-Out
from Journey
12
Restaurant
Final essay
Journey
exercises
9-16
✓
Source: Own table based on: Reis, 2017a and 2017b.
This paper was presented at the 2017 ISPIM Innovation Forum, Toronto, Canada on 19-22 March 2017.
The publication is available to ISPIM members at www.ispim.org.
10
5 Discussion
Conclusion: Implications and applications for business leaders and innovation professionals
In this paper, I discussed in great detail the design, methodology and pedagogy of an effective and creative
course in creative leadership. Based on the creative leadership method Genius Journey, the course breaks away
from traditional leadership development methods by using an effective and truly creative methodology and
pedagogy to open, inspire and expand the minds of prospective creative business leaders.
The underlying Genius Journey method is earmarked to be published in an upcoming business book and
accompanying workbook (Reis, 2017a and 2017b). In the coming years, Thinkergy intends to set-up a global
network of licensed Genius Journey trainers to make the courses widely available. The said creative leadership
courses of varying durations aim to empower current and prospective corporate leaders, entrepreneurs and
creative professionals, scientists and individuals interested in personal creative empowerment. To support the
predicted shift from a managerial into an entrepreneurial society (Naisbitt, 2006), creative leadership should be
offered in (executive) master programs to ensure the development of enough entrepreneurial creative leaders.
“When there’s magic in the music, it’s the singer not the song,” goes a line in the song of the US rock band
Survivor. So far, this paper has dealt with the song (i.e., the course design, methodology and pedagogy) in great
detail, but neglected the singer (or in other words: course instructor). The present author deems a suitable course
instructor to be a crucial success factor for the effective delivery of a creative leadership development program.
Ideally, creative leadership instructors are creative leaders themselves and live what they preach; at a minimum,
they should possess a genuinely creative personality that reflects most of the creative mindsets advocated in the
Genius Journey method. This is important because learners won’t buy into the taught creative concepts and
exercises if a course instructor cannot authentically represent and demonstrate them. Thinkergy uses the TIPS
Innovation Profiling Method (Reis, 2016a; www.thinkergy.com/tips/) to identify candidates who possess
compatible cognitive styles that enable them to succeed as a course instructor of a creative leadership
development program.
Moreover, the present author also suggests that creators of future creative leadership development methods
(or to stay true to the line above, new “song composers”) ought to be authentic creative leaders themselves2, and
ideally also have personally experienced a “Eureka” moment of breakthrough creativity themselves to talk about
Gallas’ creative model of subconscious creativity with authority (see Reis, 2017a).
Recommendations for future research
Given the largely descriptive nature of this paper, which focuses on introducing an effective and highly popular
course framework to teach the subject of creative leadership to prospective business leaders, a follow-up
research program will build on the present paper and investigate the efficacy and long-term impacts of the
current creative leadership development program in a series of empirical follow-up studies as follows:
• One empirical research study will use the final reflective essays of the learners (written immediately
after the end of the course) to investigate the learners’ perceptions on the effectiveness of both the
methodology and the creative and experiential pedagogy, thereby also tracking changes in the learners’
beliefs, attitudes and creative confidence.
• Another empirical research study will probe on the long-term impacts of the course on the learners by
analysing to what the extent the course in creative leadership has influenced and impacted their career.
• A final empirical research study will take a qualitative research approach by interviewing former
“Genius Journey” graduates who have already progressed into accomplished creative leaders. Here, the
objective is to gain deep-level insights into how the “Genius Journey” method of creative leadership
development and the chosen experiential learning formats and pedagogy short-circuited the creative
career progression and success of these former learners turned creative leader.
This paper was presented at the 2017 ISPIM Innovation Forum, Toronto, Canada on 19-22 March 2017.
The publication is available to ISPIM members at www.ispim.org.
11
2 The creative leadership development program discussed in this paper (and the underlying methodology, Genius Journey) was developed
by a creative leader: The first author of this paper is a creative entrepreneur (founder and leader of the innovation company Thinkergy),
inventor (of four innovation methods: Genius Journey, X-IDEA, TIPS, and CooL), professor (at universities in Thailand and Hong Kong),
book author (of three upcoming innovation books; Reis, 2017a, 2017b and 2018), regular blogger (www.thinkergy.com/blog) and columnist
(in national newspapers and international business magazines), keynote speaker, innovation facilitator and trainer of innovation trainers.
Formerly an accomplished track and field runner, a DJ and an army lieutenant, he worked for over 16 years for a leading multinational
bank in Germany and various Asian countries. In July 2004, he resigned from his former career in banking to start an innovation company
and to reconnect to his academic roots. His personal transformational journey (and two preceding Eureka moments that triggered it) inspired
the present author to create the Genius Journey method and to develop the present creative leadership development program to allow others
to reconnect to their inner genius and evolve into authentic creative leaders themselves.
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