Leadership as a creative act

There’s a moment in almost every painting where I have a quiet moment of despair.

I’ve sketched the rough shapes. I’ve laid down some colour. The energy is good and I feel like I’m making great progress. And then I step back and see that what I thought was going so well has transformed into something awkward, muddy and a long way from something that I’d be willing to put in a frame.

So a brief moment of despair, yes, but it’s also at exactly that point that curiosity, creativity, and problem-solving kick in. There’s no step-by-step manual to follow, just some brushes, palette knives, some paint and being prepared to work through the not-knowing. 

When I talk to senior leaders in the for‑purpose space, their days sound similar:

• juggling funding shifts, workforce gaps, compliance demands and rising expectations
• trying to keep people safe and services running, while the context keeps changing
• expected to make confident calls in situations where there is no clearly “right” answer.

In reality, all of this asks for leadership that is much closer to a creative practice than a technical one. Painting has been a good reminder of that for me.

Here are four practices from the studio that might be useful in your leadership this month.

 

1. Start before you feel ready

Sitting in front of a blank canvas, waiting for the perfect place to start, is the surest way to guarantee nothing happens.

What helps is simply starting: putting down a coloured ground, making a loose sketch, blocking in some key colours, making a few marks that feel interesting even if I know I’ll probably paint over them later. I don’t need the whole plan, but having something on the canvas gives me something to respond to.

Leadership is similar.

I imagine that many of the questions on your desk at the moment don’t have tidy answers:

• How do we redesign this service with less funding?
• What do we do about burnout in a team that’s already stretched?
• How do we meet new reporting requirements without drowning in admin? 

If you don’t know the answer, start anyway.

• Name one small experiment you can run in the next few weeks.
• Be explicit that it is an experiment (“we’re going to try this for six weeks and then review”).
• Involve your team in shaping and testing it, rather than carrying all the creativity alone. 

You don’t have to know the whole picture before you start. You just need a thoughtful next step.

Where are you waiting for more information, when a small, low‑risk experiment would be enough to get moving?

 

2. Step back and see the whole picture

If I stand too close to a painting for too long, I literally lose sight of the whole picture. 

The only way to see this is to put the brush down, step back, and look at the whole thing: what stands out, what jars, what’s missing, where does the eye keep returning to?

(In days gone by, artists used to use a mirror to look at the picture over their shoulder to give themselves a new perspective; nowadays, a photo on your phone creates the same effect.)

Leaders rarely get that kind of distance.

Most weeks, the leaders I work with are pulled into back‑to‑back meetings, crisis emails, rosters, board papers and reporting deadlines. It’s understandable - the work is urgent, and people rely on you - but without you noticing, you can lose perspective and increase your risk of burnout. 

Stepping back might look like:

• Protecting a block of ‘thinking time’ in your calendar that you deliberately don’t use to catch up on tasks. 
• Looking at patterns over time rather than single incidents (12‑month trends, not just this month’s dip). 
• Asking people closer to the work or the community what they’re seeing that you might have missed.

If you were to give yourself two ‘step back from the canvas’ hours in the next month, where would you put them?

 

3. Respond to what’s emerging, not just the original idea

I’ve never finished a painting that looked exactly the way I imagined at the start.

At some point, the painting begins to take on a life of its own. Colours interact in unexpected ways when they’re put next to each other. A ‘mistake’ pushes me in a different direction. Sometimes, I have to paint over the part I like most because it’s fighting the rest of the picture.

I see parallels with what leaders experience. 

You develop a strategy, or a program design, or a change plan. Halfway through, something shifts: a funding decision changes, a partner pulls out, demand spikes in one area and drops in another.

At that point, creative leadership means:

• Being willing to adapt the plan based on what you’re learning, rather than pushing on because ‘we said we would’.
• Letting go of sunk costs, even if it’s a program or approach you’ve personally championed.
• Being transparent with your Board and team about why you’re changing course, so it builds trust instead of confusion. 

Where in your current work might it be time to stop rescuing the original plan and respond to what’s emerging instead?

 

4. Use a bigger brush

I am in a constant fight with myself to use a bigger brush.

Smaller brushes feel safer. I can really get into the details and avoid the bolder moves that might ‘wreck’ the painting. So, when I notice things getting tight and lifeless, I deliberately pick up a much bigger brush or a palette knife. It makes for more honest marks, less control, and more commitment with intention.

In leadership, especially under pressure, it’s easy to default to the smallest possible moves:

• Tweaking rosters instead of rethinking the model of care.
• Sending another careful email instead of resetting expectations with a funder.
• Quietly picking up extra work yourself instead of naming a pattern in the team. 

‘Bigger brush’ leadership doesn’t mean sweeping, reckless change. It means more intentional actions, like:

• Redesigning key meetings so they are fewer, clearer and genuinely decision‑focused.
• Simplifying KPIs so they reflect what actually matters for mission and impact, not just compliance. 
• Naming unhelpful cultural norms (heroic overwork, conflict avoidance) and working with your team to shift them. 

You might feel more exposed making these moves - they ask you to lean into vulnerability and curiosity – but the upside is the space they can create for you and others.

What might a ‘bigger brush’ move look like in your context this quarter?

 

Why this matters

I don’t paint to produce masterpieces. Painting for me is a way of practising experimentation, perspective, responsiveness and courage in a low‑stakes environment. The same muscles that leadership demands every day.

I know, because I’ve been a leader in the for-purpose sector, the familiar pressures: volatility, scrutiny, complexity, and a constant pull between mission and sustainability. It’s no wonder leadership can feel isolating, overwhelming and strangely joyless at times.

If any of this resonates, you might like to treat this month as a quiet experiment in creative leadership:

• Pick one area where you’ll ‘just start’ with a small test.
• Book two short slots to step back from the canvas.
• Notice where the plan wants to change. and let yourself consider it.
• Choose one ‘bigger brush’ move and see what happens.

This is the kind of work I do with leaders and senior teams across the for‑purpose sector: creating a confidential space to step back, look at what’s emerging, what’s no longer working, and what bolder strokes might be possible.