Leading for Creativity and Innovation During Crisis

Although research has shown that leadership is a critical aspect of managing crises, little research has explored managing creativity and crisis simultaneously. Despite outperformance by companies that invest in creativity and innovation during a crisis, many leaders tend to divest and deprioritize innovation for the sake of maintaining stability and handling uncertainty. To address this contradiction and lack of research, this chapter integrates both streams of research to develop best practices for leaders looking to lead for creativity during crisis. We do this by framing the creativity and crisis management research through various leadership theories, including transformational leadership, the charismatic, ideological, and pragmatic (CIP) model of leadership, leader-member exchange, value-based (authentic and ethical) leadership, and shared leadership. Themes include the need for leaders to understand their values and leadership styles, developing high-quality exchanges with their subordinates, centralizing team-based and organizational leadership (when possible), emphasizing knowledge sharing through communication and role modeling, and promoting employee motivation. Gaps in the literature and suggestions for future research are also discussed.