Leadership and Creative and Critical Thought

Miguel A. Tejada Malaspina

Bass (1985) postulated four dimensions for transformational leadership, one of them was
intellectual simulation that involves stimulating followers creativity by questioning assumptions
and challenging the status quo, leaders who challenge organizational norms, encourage divergent
thinking, and who push followers to develop innovative strategies.
Openness to experience, creativity, and transformational leadership.
Openness to experience represents the tendency to be creative, imaginative, perceptive,
and thoughtful; it has appreciable correlation with intelligence. Individuals with this trait are
emotionally responsive and intellectually curious, they have flexible attitudes and engage in
divergent thinking, score high in intellectual stimulation, exhibit inspirational leadership
behaviors, and due to their imagination and insights they are able to create an organizations
vision (McCrae, 1996; McCrae, 1994).
Openness to experience is strongly correlated with personality-based measures of
creativity (McCrae & Costa, 1997).
Bennis (1989) argued that vision comes from a process of creative introspection which is
more instinctive and less rational thought, so there is a link between creativity and openness to
experience and possibly an association between the later and transformational leadership.
Judge and Bono (2000) presented a hypothesis about openness to experience, indicating
that openness to experience is positively related to transformational leadership behavior, and in
this study emerged as significant correlates with transformational leadership.
After, Judge and Bono (2004) examined the association between Big Five personality
traits and each of the six dimensions identified by Avolio et al. (1999) as well as the association

between personality and an overall transformational leadership composite. The overall the results
of this study linking personality with ratings of transformational and transactional leadership
were weak. Big Five explained 12% of the variability in charisma and only 5% and 6% of the
variability in ratings about intellectual stimulation and individualized consideration respectively;
only extraversion may be an important trait in predicting and understanding transformational and
transactional leadership.
In his study, DAlessio (2008) found a relative weak positive association respect to
openness to experience and transformational leadership; and no significant statistical correlation
respect to openness to experience and transactional leadership.
Critical thinking and creativity.
The ideal critical thinker is habitually inquisitive, well-informed, trustful of reason, open
minded, flexible, fair minded in evaluation, honest in facing personal biases, prudent in making
judgments, willing to reconsider, clear about issues, orderly in complex matters, diligent in
seeking relevant information, reasonable in the selection of criteria, focused in inquiry, and
persistent in seeking results which are as precise as the subject and the circumstances of inquiry
permit (Facione, 1990, p.2).
Critical thinking is the ability and willingness to assess claims and make objectives
judgments on the basis of well supported reasons and evidence rather than emotion or anecdote.
It includes the ability to be creative and constructive- the ability to come up with alternative
explanations for events, think of implications of research findings, and apply new knowledge to
social and personal problems (Wade & Tavris, 2008, p.7).

Creativity plays an important role in thinking critically, critical thinking often requires
imagining possible consequences, generating original approaches and identifying alternative
perspectives (Bailin et al., 1999b).
What drives increased competence in thinking is greater mastery of the standards for
judging an appropriate direction to take in a particular context; skill in critical thinking cannot be
separated from understanding the nature and purpose of the task one is attempting to accomplish,
all aspects of critical thinking centrally involve judgment (Bailin et al., 1999a).
An adequate critical thinking must involve responsible assessment of reasons and
arguments, responsible deliberation of plausible alternatives, and responding constructively to
reasons and arguments given by others in the context of discussion (Bailin et al., 1999b).
Humans can give meaning by the power of their minds to create a conceptualization and
to make inferences on the basis of it; once conceptualized a thing is integrated by us in a network
of ideas. Only when people conceptualize a thing in some way, only then, they can think about it
(Elder & Paul, 2001).
Creativity and leadership.
The process of establishing structures that enhance creativity, characterized as an
energizing climate, one that upsets the status quo and impels organizations toward renewal is a
positive turbulence. Instead of considering any deviation from standard operating procedure to be
irrelevant, excessive or unnecessarily expensive, companies must begin to view such variances as
portals of the future (Gryskiewicz, 2000).
It is the responsibility of creative leaders to provide their organizations with opportunities
of exploring the periphery; it can be done on both the individual and organizational levels, and
can involve either internal or external resources. Internal sources for positive turbulence at the

individual level include foreign assignments, membership on cross-functional task forces, and
being present when a crisis occurs; at organizational level include developing cross-functional
teams or inviting outside experts whose specialty does not exist inside the company
(Gryskiewicz, 2000).
External structures for positive turbulence provide opportunities for both individual and
organizational innovation. On the individual level, such structures include conferences, training
experiences, travel, reading outside news, etc. On the organizational level, companies should look
to joint ventures, alliances, and networks to provide alternative method to competing today
(Gryskiewicz, 2000).
The paradox of positive turbulence is one business leaders today cannot afford to ignore:
the energizing, disparate, invigorating, unpredictable force that often feels like chaos is the same
creative energy that can provide continuous success and organizational renewal (Gryskiewicz,
2000).
Leaderly learning.
Learning must be an authentic way of living and being, thinking and learning in the world
of permanent truth and understanding. Learning happens through constant change, and will be
continuous, therefore a way of being. Being refers to the whole person: all the time, all areas of
life, all levels of awareness, interpersonal, and connected (Primary Goals, 2013).
Leaderly learning refers to learn leadership in an experiential way, and having the learner
as a center. It can be described through the lenses of the seven modes of learning as a way of
being; the leaders must be engaged in these qualities of continual learning for the rest of their life
(Primary Goals, 2013).

1. Self-directed learning, leadership is initiative before anything else. The person taking
initiative is thinking what is needed and why, thinking what kind of approach is likely to
work. As a result of this self-directed process, the content of the initiative is owned by the
initiator, but he or she acts the effects of the initiative on others. The leader helps
followers to experiment what they need to know; the leader needs to discover what acts of
leadership are needed through creativity.
2. Creative learning, find ways of doing things that have never been done before. New
actions for the organization or modifications in the way something has been done before;
it involves new attitudes, abilities and actions. In this frontier, the goals are difficult to set
because all is new. The leaders need to look at what is their own role in facilitating
creative learning.
3. Expressive learning. The combination of three qualities of managerial leadership make it
expressive learning: (a) the individuals responsibility to impart purpose and direction to
the system; (b) their inevitably partial knowledge of the nature of the system and its
environment where the purposes are pursued; and (c) the reactivity of others in the system
to the leaders initiatives. The leaders actions must take into account the values and
intentions of others.
4. Feeling learning. The learner must engage in sensing the organization as a whole and the
total situation related to it. This sensing transcends intellect and includes feeling, judging,
sense, proportion, balance and appropriateness. Feelings can be volatile and contradictory.
5. On line learning. Learner must begin right away and be active in real situations, switching
the roles of classroom and real world would be good. This would mean going to class to
process past on-line learning and plan new ones.
6. Continual learning. Looking at learning as being a life process is the key.

7. Reflexive learning. Learner must be reflexive, by improving on the first six modes and
moving back and forth between observation and improvement. Managerial leaders cannot
learn everything; they must pick and choose where their focus will be in a consciously
reflexive way.
Discussion.
The literature review gives some insights about the relationship between personality traits
specifically openness to experience, creativity, critical thinking and transformational leadership.
The early studies of Bass and McCrae indicated that intellectual stimulation involves stimulating
followers creativity, and that the openness to experience personality trait is necessary to be
imaginative, creative, and perceptive. So, the organization needs leaders and followers with
openness to experience in order to be creative, and the intellectual stimulation from leaders is one
important factor to encourage creativity within the organization.
Later studies about personality traits and transformational leadership determined
confusing results respect to the relationship between openness to experience and transformational
leadership, some of them indicated positive and significant correlation (Judge & Bono, 2000),
other studies a weak positive association (DAlessio, 2008), and other showed that linking
personality with ratings of transformational and transactional leadership was weak (Judge &
Bono, 2004).
In other words, it is necessary more research in order to fulfill the explanation of
variability between personality traits and transformational leadership, maybe new mediating
variables between these constructs.
Also, there is an insight about creativity is very important to transformational leadership,
this type of leadership is based in four dimensions (Bass, 1985), and two of them are inspirational

motivation and intellectual stimulation, both have to do with creativity because the first one
involves articulation of a clear, appealing, and inspiring vision to followers (needs creativity),
and the second one is more direct and involves stimulating followers creativity by questioning
assumptions and challenging the status quo, encouraging divergent thinking, and pushing
followers to develop innovative strategies.
Facione (1990) identified that the ideal critical thinker is habitually inquisitive, wellinformed, trustful of reason, open minded, flexible, fair minded in evaluation, honest in facing
personal biases, prudent in making judgments, willing to reconsider, clear about issues, orderly in
complex matters, diligent in seeking relevant information, reasonable in the selection of criteria,
focused in inquiry, and persistent in seeking results. So, those are all good characteristics which a
leader must have in order to be a successful transformational leader, in other words, a leader must
be a good critical thinker.
Critical thinking includes the ability to be creative and constructive, and there is a link
between creativity and openness to experience, and possibly an association between the later and
transformational leadership (Bennis, 1989). The creativity is part of critical thinking, and drives
to openness to experience and this construct is associated with transformational leadership.
Leaders must show greater mastery in judgment and have an appropriate understanding of
the nature and purpose of the tasks and goals to accomplish, so, the leaders must have
competence in critical thinking and conceptualizations, this is a requisite for leadership.
The leaders must wide eyes and an open mind to actively and systematically extend the
range of observation out of their companies. It is the responsibility of creative leaders to provide
their organizations with opportunities of exploring new things and perspectives, and distinguish
the energizing and creative forces that go with chaos and creativity (Gryskiewicz, 2000).

The learning of leadership should be as learning as a way of being, by this way is assured
the creativity and critical thinking (purposeful, reflexive, knowledge background, and habits of
mind) at the moment of performing transformational leadership, improving the ability to lead.
There are some insights to propose a relationship between the following constructs
Openness to experience Creativity Critical Thinking Transformational Leadership which
could be a theme of a future research.

References
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