The creative class will rule the 21st century according to Richard Florida*. Creative class employees are the innovative knowledge workers creating the future. With innovation so vital today, Florida can't be far wrong. But we are only beginning to glimpse the full impact of this revolution. The fact is that a massive power shift is making creative class employees the new leaders.

Leadership, traditionally conceived, provides direction, but the power to do so is shifting to creative class employees with no positional authority. But what does it mean for creative class employees to show leadership? And, what does this imply for conventional leadership? Creative ideas are used to challenge the status quo, not to climb the ladder or to get work done through others. With little interest in managing people, creative class employees show leadership by promoting a better way, often taking no part in execution.

Reframing the contribution of front-line innovators as leadership can better engage, motivate and retain them. If asking employees for suggestions gets them thinking,  asking them to show some leadership can supercharge them.

Why current thinking about leadership is a mess

Conventional leadership is a mess because we insist on seeing leadership as a role. In fact, by virtue of being role occupants, executives are really managers. Hierarchy, with everyone in a fixed role, works well for efficient execution, but we also need innovation. Creativity drives innovation but it  is not a role. It is an occasional act that all employees can show. If creative thinking is the source of new directions and if leadership means providing direction, then we must wrench leadership away from its role association. Leadership that is not role-based is free-floating, occasional action. On this view, there are managers but only leadership, no leaders.

In our drive to save conventional leadership, we have lost our sense of leaders as providers of direction. Recognizing that the world is now too complex and fast changing for executives to offer direction, leadership has been recast as a facilitative activity. This is what it means to be a post-heroic leader. So fixated are we on the myth that being a leader means occupying an executive role that we have abandoned the older meaning of leadership as challenging the status quo and providing new directions.

To shed our obsession with leadership-as-role, we need to see how leadership can work when it is not a role. Here are some examples:
  • All employees occasionally influence their colleagues or boss to change direction by promoting or showing a better way of doing things. The developer of Playstation led his bosses to develop this product when their image of Sony did not allow toys.
  • Some of Jack Welch’s ideas, such as being first or second in a market, had a leadership impact on businesses where he was neither a formal nor informal leader.
  • A new customer service associate with higher service standards has a leadership impact on colleagues just by setting an example even if this person has no inclination or talent to be a team leader.
  • Non-positional, occasional acts of leadership also occur between competitors, as in sports and market leaders. Apple shows leadership to Microsoft, the music industry and now the cell phone business.
These instances of leadership share a core feature: they show the way either by actively promoting a new direction or by example. Employees who have a one-off leadership impact on colleagues may not have what it takes to be either an informal or formal leader in a role-based sense. They may be subject matter experts in an esoteric discipline where they have only rare opportunities to show leadership.

Martin Luther King, Jr. showed leadership in this role-independent fashion.  By protesting against segregation on buses in Alabama, he had a leadership impact on the general population and, crucially, on the U.S. Supreme Court. His leadership succeeded when the Supreme Court ruled segregation on buses unconstitutional.  Yes, he also occupied a leadership role for his followers on the street, but he was not in any such role within the U.S. government or Supreme Court. Thus his leadership on this issue had nothing to do with taking charge of a group to achieve a goal. His leadership, as a one-off act, ended once those with the authority bought his proposals.

How our thinking about leadership got confused

Prior to the late 1970s, executives were managers. But then came the crisis of Japan's business success in the West. This led to a vicious attack on managers for being bureaucratic and controlling which led to their replacement by leaders. Overnight leadership became a role that all executives took to heart. We had some ready-made language to separate leaders from managers. Where once we talked of management style as initiating structure versus showing consideration for people, being task oriented versus people oriented or theory X versus theory Y, we now granted all the good guy styles to leaders and saddled management with the bad guy styles. The new language of transformational leadership was also enlisted to portray leaders as transformational and managers as transactional. Who would want to be a manager after that?

Business's usurping of leadership and rubbishing of management has been a disaster. The notion that leaders must be transformational, or even considerate of people, rules out quiet leadership or the technical leader who leads by continually devising new products. And management has been painted into a corner where nobody wants to go.

A way out

If leadership really does provide direction, but only as an occasional act ­-- one that can be shown by employees in non-management roles as well as those in them, then we can redefine management as taking responsibility for an organization's prosperity. With no reference to style, managers can be as people focused, nurturing, empowering and transformational as they need to be. On this view, inspiring leadership moves us to change direction while inspiring managers move us to work harder or smarter. By putting managers in charge, leadership becomes a free-floating, occasional activity to champion new ideas. Why does this matter? Because, to account for the leadership of creative class employees, to see how leadership can be shown by people without positional authority, we need to tear leadership away from all association with roles. But, is this not what we already mean by informal leadership? No, because informal leadership conventionally conceived is just as much a role as formal leadership. Only the basis of their authority is different. Both entail being in charge of a group to achieve goals. Conventional formal and informal leadership are really management roles.

Power shift

Leadership has always been based on power. Once it was the power to get to the top. Where innovation rules, it is the power to convince people to change direction with a better idea. It is hard to dominate a group for long with creative ideas because they shift too quickly from one person to another. Creative class leadership is thus a one-off act of influence. Business is now a war of ideas, much like guerilla warfare, with fleeting episodes of leadership emerging thick and fast from all directions, including outsiders.

The creative class includes people with artistic temperaments, some with low emotional intelligence, short tempers, little interest in managing people, uncertain character and less than sterling integrity. Thus creative class leadership cannot be based on the conventional image of the leader as an ideal or heroic type of person with vision and admirable character traits. The power to show leadership is not based on position but pure influence, which can range from a charismatic appeal, through
dry facts, to an aggressive challenge to the status quo.

With creative class leadership, ideas matter more than personality or style. Content really is king! We can buy an idea without joining the advocate’s club. Increasingly popular “evidence based” decision making demands facts not charisma. In short, the charismatic leader exemplifies the triumph of style over substance (content) while creative class leadership is the reverse: the triumph of content over style.

If leadership is a one-off act, we also need a more dynamic concept of followership. Instead of being a follower, an ongoing member of someone’s camp, we switch to the act of following – the brief act of buying a proposed change of direction. When leadership is shown bottom-up by creative class employees, senior executives follow but are not their "followers" (subordinates).

The bottom line: When leadership is role-based, we look for types of persons suitable for such roles. When we switch to one-off acts of creative class leadership, the type of person promoting a new direction is of little consequence. It is all about content now.

Leadership as influence

Leadership is commonly viewed as an influence process, but this is a myth for senior executives. They may influence their immediate teams to make an acquisition but it is then presented as a decision to the rest of the organization. So, either executives don't show leadership to the rest of the organization or leadership is not in fact an influence process in their case. Prospective political leaders influence the electorate to get elected but once in power we judge them to be effective as long as they make sound decisions. In short, conventional leadership is really about making sound decisions by those we entrust with this responsibility.

Compare a chief executive to a tour guide. When you sign up for a bus tour, you might say to your guide, “We’re all on board, lead the way.” Here, we trust the “leader” to take us in the right direction, to get us there and back safely, but we are merely passengers depending on the tour guide to make sound decisions. When an executive makes an unpopular decision, the only option employees have if they don’t agree is to get off the bus. They are either along for the ride or they aren’t. Clearly, the everyday showing of such leadership has little to do with influence if it is only needed to get appointed and to maintain a hold on power.

What then becomes of our intuition that leadership really is an influence process? When Martin Luther King’s speeches led the U.S. Supreme Court to rule segregation on buses unconstitutional, he relied on pure influence. Of course he was also a certain type of person, but if leadership can be shown as a role-independent one-off act based on influence, then we need to see how all employees can show such leadership.

Leadership, like sales, is a form of influence. So are coercion and bribery, but selling and leading entail voluntary acceptance. A key feature of selling is that it can be done on a one-off basis. Anyone can sell something once on eBay. This also shows that selling can occur at a distance. The leadership impact of Jack Welch on businesses around the world and of Martin Luther King on the population at large are also one-off impacts shown from a distance, not ongoing roles. Leading and selling are not identical; selling is self-interested, leadership is not. The bottom line is that all forms of influence, including coercion, can take the form of one-off, role-independent acts. So, if leadership is genuinely a form of influence then there is no reason to limit it to role occupants.

The influencing skills required to lead people in a new direction depend on the quality of the content plus the receptivity of the audience, ranging from resistant to opportunistic. The more opportunistic and the better the content, the less need there is for charisma, making such leadership much easier than ascending to the top of a hierarchy. Not everyone has the desire or talent to climb the ladder but everyone can show some small scale, local leadership now and then. Creative class leadership is more democratic because it is open to all. Any employee with a good idea to improve even local, small scale effectiveness can show leadership, not in the sense of taking charge, but by promoting a better way.

What executives are doing when not showing leadership

By virtue of their roles, executives are managers, where management is suitably upgraded to a supportive, facilitative and nurturing function.

If leadership promotes a better way, then management executes existing directions. But management is not limited to keeping the status quo ticking over. It can manage complex tasks like putting the first man on the moon, even managing change. Once we free management from its theory X, controlling, task oriented connotations, it can be as empowering, nurturing and facilitative as it needs to be to get the best out of creative class knowledge workers. Using the journey metaphor, popular with Kouzes and Posner in The Leadership Challenge, we can say that leaders sell the tickets for the journey while management drives the bus to the destination. This means that leadership has nothing to do with managing people or getting things done through them.

Chief executives show leadership like creative class employees by promoting a new product, service or process. The difference is that executives are also managers charged with implementing their ideas through people. Chief executives of stable or non-competitive organizations can be effective as managers while only occasionally, or even never, showing leadership.

Managers need to be emotionally intelligent. For leadership, interpersonal skills are icing on the cake, not essential when compelling content can win people over. Leadership as challenging the status quo is based on youthful rebelliousness, the drive of young people to make their mark, challenge authority and change the world. Such leadership can be shown by lone technical geeks with no desire or ability to be managers. What could be more empowering and engaging for the talent that businesses are so desperate to retain?

If leadership is an influence process then all executive decision making is managerial, never leadership. This includes strategic decisions. Contrary to Warren Bennis, effective managers do the right things not just do things right. Thus management is more than mere execution. Management can be likened to investment where strategic allocations of resources are made for the best possible return. But managers are active investors because they intervene to maximize the efficiency of execution, foster innovation and develop human resources.

Benefits of leadership reinvented for the creative class
  • Wider sharing of ownership for determining new directions.
  • Fuller empowerment and engagement of front-line employees.
  • Employees striving to show leadership can mean more innovation.
  • Executives learning to promote change to show leadership.
  • Sharper executive focus with management upgraded.
Implementing leadership reinvented for the creative class

Reinventing leadership as a one-off act of influence is urgent for businesses that depend on constant innovation. Executives, like investors, need to get the best return out of all resources. Helping employees achieve their full potential improves the return on such resources. Facilitative and nurturing skills are key, as in so-called post-heroic leadership, which is really post-heroic management. The real challenge for senior executives is to move from being goal scorers (promoting their own great ideas) to being facilitators, thus drawing solutions out of others and encouraging leadership in them. Switching from being ego driven to relative selflessness requires exceptional emotional intelligence but the shift is critical for any business that wants to win the war of ideas.

The bottom line: Recognizing creative class employees as leaders is far more engaging than leaving them dependent on managers for leadership, something they are increasingly powerless to provide. This is not about giving creative class employees permission to show more leadership. The truth is that they are already the real source of leadership wherever innovation is essential for success. Reframing conventional leadership as facilitative is a failure to face reality, a head-in-the-sand tactic to maintain the myth of positional leadership.


*The Rise of the Creative Class, Richard Florida, Basic Books, 2002