I have signed up for a 12 week course about creativity. It focusses on the 25 year old work by Julia Cameron called The Artist’s Way. Many of you will know it. Some of you may have tried it yourselves or even completed it. If so, you will know that it is a deeply personal exploration of self. How could it be otherwise, when creativity itself is such an act of self-expression and involves such a willingness to expose oneself in some way, whatever the medium?
Tonight we were invited to share some of our past experiences of what were referred to as “the enemies” of our creativity, including any specific “horror stories” — incidents or events that had taken place at some point in our lives that had damaged or injured our creative selves and our confidence to put ourselves out there in the world.
The stories were so powerful. They moved me deeply in their simplicity and the degree of pain and long-term impact they had had. And it struck me that our stories had so much in common. So many of them involved a parent or a school or a boss. And it left me with such a palpable sense of the fragility of this thing called creativity and how much power we all have in our capacity as parents, partners, leaders, managers, colleagues, friends and fellow human beings, to do damage. Often (perhaps usually, I would like to believe) it is done unintentionally. But even so, damage is done. And it can last a very long time.
For me, leadership is an act of creativity. It is about bringing something new into being. It is about creating the space where others can be and bring of their best, bring their creativity and flair and their unique contribution. And we need to be so mindful of the impact we have.
So I have a call to action, a request, an encouragement to us all: tread carefully in the path through your day, for you know not where or on whom you tread and the damage you may be causing. We are fragile creatures at heart underneath all that tough exterior. And my goodness do we need all the humanity and the creativity we can collectively muster to create a better world and a better experience for ourselves, our communities and our planet.