(Looking strong. http://www.flickr.com/photos/sheeshoo/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
As organizations continue to demand more creative output from their people, leaders will start to hear two requests a lot more:
"I want to feel empowered.""I want to feel trusted."
You can spend a lot of time and effort trying to answer these two requests directly, but I think the right answer is a bit more subtle.
Rather than trying to help people feel empowered, I believe a more worthwhile goal is to help people to feel powerful.
Rather than helping people to feel trusted, you'll do well to help them learn to trust themselves.
If you're hiring for a role that's going to demand a lot of creativity, finding people that feel powerful and trust themselves will go a long way.
As a leader, you can also help to cultivate an environment of safety, inspiration and clarity, though not all creative environments exhibit these qualities in equal measure.
These qualities will become ever more important as companies begin to evolve away from traditional hierarchical structures towards different models over the ensuing ten to fifteen years (you still have time).
Hierarchies are wonderful because they tell people what they can rely on. In the absence of these hierarchies, we'll have to find new things to rely on. Starting with ourselves.
