Innovative Leadership: A CEO’s Approach to Creative Thinking
Join Kassi Kincaid and Dr. Don Christian for an in-depth conversation about the definition of creativity, its workplace manifestations, and practical advice for cultivating a creative lifestyle for meaningful work.
Transcript:
Kassi (00:00):
Welcome to The Edge of Creativity Podcast. I'm your host, Kassi Kincaid, and joining me today is President and CEO of Concordia University Texas. Dr. Don Christian. Dr. Christian, thank you so much for being here today.
Dr. Christian (00:19):
It is great to join you, Kassi, watching you as a student and now what you're doing in the world is just so exciting and to share some information with you and your listeners is great.
Kassi (00:29):
I am so excited to not only pick your brain for our listeners today, but kind of go down memory lane a little bit with you. So to start out, can you share with our listeners where your presidential journey began and how it's progressed to where you are today? When we're talking about creativity, I always find that you can't just jump in and ask people about creativity immediately where they are today because it really goes back to their journey and where they began.
Dr. Christian (00:58):
I have always been in a place where I have either been invited into leadership roles or took leadership roles, and in those roles early on was rewarded for doing them. So kind of sought more and more, and this has kind of been a journey to be invited into something. I will say that probably, what about 15 years ago or so after I got to Concordia, the itch, so to speak, of leading a university got into my head and I thought, "You know what?" I think this looks interesting. So I read a lot. I actually interviewed at another school and after I left that going, oh, I really want to do this. So it was just kind of biting my time until our predecessor, Tom Cedal left, and then the board elected me to serve in this role. But it really is that itch and desire to create something.
(01:58):
Whether it be for you as you watch the classroom or student experience, whether it be a College of Business that we did together, whether it be a university, how do we create an institution that lives out, its vocation, its mission in a way that serves the world well?
Kassi (02:16):
That is so interesting that you got a itch for that specific niche. I feel like sometimes people will look to other leadership roles, maybe not like the top one. What was it about the top one that really intrigued you?
Dr. Christian (02:30):
So there have been, oftentimes in my life, I've sat in middle leadership and I've also sat as head of institutions.
(02:37):
It was the head of a Lutheran high school in Houston, and then moving into middle management here at Concordia before becoming president. There's just this need, I'll say need, I don't know if that's the right word or not, to create something for the entire organization. When I see problems, I want to fix 'em.
(03:01):
The best way to fix problems for an organization is to sit in the lead role. You have the final say in whatever small organization, large organization, family, church, community, organization, you name it, right? The CEO role, the buck stops there, and that is the place you get to make the most long lasting change.
Kassi (03:24):
Oh, that's a great point.
Dr. Christian (03:27):
One of the things I said to this point of creativity is that in middle management, so when I was dean,
(03:33):
I could actually be more creative in a middle management role than I can be in this role.
(03:39):
You have a limited scope and it's not the same, it's similar, but different types of experiences. Think about this, A teacher in a classroom can be incredibly creative in their classroom.
Kassi (03:52):
That's true.
Dr. Christian (03:52):
That's where their sphere of influence stops. As dean of business, I could be incredibly creative within the College of Business. That sphere got a little bit bigger, but not as creative as I could have been in a classroom as you experienced with me, right?
Kassi (04:05):
Yes.
Dr. Christian (04:06):
And then as a head of an organization, especially a larger organization, 200, some employees, 2000, some students, your creativity takes on a different role of dreaming big dreams.
(04:19):
Might take years to actually impact.
Kassi (04:23):
I really like that the creativity is more on a bigger scale. When you are sitting at the top role.
Dr. Christian (04:32):
One of the things you and I talk a lot about is being creative in the classroom. Whether it was the piece of art that with crayons on the very first day or having that competition to create a ad for Volvo or whatever we did, I could come up with those the day before and just do them
Kassi (04:57):
Really ?
Dr. Christian (04:58):
Well. Yeah, I mean you think about it. Literally, the competition with Volvo, I had a conversation 10 minutes before class and we said, let's do this. Creativity in certain areas can be spontaneous.
Kassi (05:12):
Yes.
Dr. Christian (05:13):
Creativity in a leadership role of a larger organization where more people have to actually enact, it takes out a form of dreaming bigger and having to take longer time to implement those changes for the organization as a whole, you have to bring people aboard with it. You can't just look, I don't believe a good leader wakes up one morning and goes, I think I'm going to change this in the organization.
(05:42):
Change. It's probably not a good idea.
Kassi (05:44):
It'll be chaos.
Dr. Christian (05:45):
That's right. I don't know if you know the name Patrick Lencioni, who does a lot of writing for organizations, and his newest book is called Working Genius, and there's six working geniuses he's describes, and we went through them with our team yesterday, and I came out as a person who likes to galvanize people around an idea and also as an idea type person. In fact, the word he uses is people like this create useful havoc, and I love that word. I think that, again, think about the havoc of our classroom that was very different than other classrooms.
Kassi (06:23):
It was!
Dr. Christian (06:24):
But I could create it in that space by myself. If I'm going to create useful havoc for the organization, it's just going to take time and to bring lots of other people on board with me.
Kassi (06:34):
I love that because when we think about creativity, a lot of the times I feel like sometimes it's very individual and on the smaller scale, and I love that, that you can be creative when it's on a smaller scale more spontaneously than you can on a larger scale. And so I want you mentioned the classroom, Dr. Christian, I want to take our listeners down a memory lane a little bit to our first day in the intro to business class that you were dean at the time. That was I think the only class you were teaching all semester, and one of the reasons I took that class was because you were dean, and so I could tell it in my own words what happened on that first day, that very first 15 minutes of class, but I'd love to hear your thoughts and your creative thinking how you implemented that day.
Dr. Christian (07:28):
So I spent a lot of time again, interesting talk about how creative this can happen quickly, but really I think you set up your creativity through the questions you ask and the outcomes you want. So what I wanted for our class on that very first day was to get them thinking differently and to get them engaged in a different conversation than they were expecting, and for them to walk in and be jarred just a little bit from expectations, right?
Kassi (07:58):
Oh, we were jarred alright!
Dr. Christian (08:00):
How can I do this? What does this do? So I actually think it was my wife and I were having this discussion together long before we implemented this that I copied coloring pages of famous artwork, one on the front and one on the back. I think it was Van Gogh's Starry Night, right? Starry Night and Monal Lisa on the two sides. And I put that and everybody had a name tent. Remember that? You knew where to sit. There were like 40 people in the classroom. You knew where to sit. There was this coloring sheet in front of that name tent and a box of crayons.
Kassi (08:36):
That's right.
Dr. Christian (08:38):
I think we started at 9:30 and I was nowhere to be found.
Kassi (08:42):
I clearly remember that we!
Dr. Christian (08:44):
You all had to walk in with no faculty member present, and I literally stayed out for about five to eight minutes and then walked through the back of the classroom and you all were sitting there duly noted as new freshmen students not having moved an inch and nobody's even talking with one another. I walk in and say, hello, coloring sheets, crayons. What do you think you're supposed to do? And promptly walk back out of the room again and you all had to figure out what do you do? I'm sure somebody finally said, I guess we can color. And so people started coloring and I came back in about five minutes later and walked around and you all were coloring it again, not asking anything, not doing anything. And then we stopped and I began asking questions, right? Questions like, why did you choose this picture rather than one on the other side? And the fact is most of you said, oh, I didn't even know there was one on the other side because nobody bothered to turn the paper over. So there's a lesson there, right?
Kassi (09:50):
Yeah.
Dr. Christian (09:51):
To look at everything that's in front of you. One of my favorite ones was, "How come nobody colored outside the lines?" Everybody stayed within the lines. That's what you're taught to do .
(10:02):
Why did you choose certain colors? What attracted you to this side or the other? Why did you wait to start coloring? Why did you need permission when obviously coloring sheets and crayons means you color? So all these questions of business and
Kassi (10:19):
Life
Dr. Christian (10:20):
Came up very quickly and people's minds and actions were jarred toward a thinking process of I could be creative without being told how to be creative. And that's really what I wanted for you as students, is to enact your own creativity, especially in a school setting without being told this is the way you have to do it.
Kassi (10:45):
That lesson that day has been forever seared into my memory. That painting Starry Night has been, man, I took that painting. I have it sitting right here at my desk. I had it on my lanyard at work.
Dr. Christian (11:00):
Oh, wow.
(11:02):
So let me ask you a question. What was it about that experience that seared itself into your mind and how has that experience shaped you?
Kassi (11:13):
It has helped me really realize how to, you hit the nail on the head, what you were trying to get across that day of how to think creatively don't do things just the way that they've always been done. And really, when I started pairing books with activities for kids, that was really the seed of Book Days, and I always kind of refer back to that first day of business class, and it's carried the program to where I'm like, well, why can't I contact this business and this corporation? And you can connect with really anybody over children and children's books I found in my life. And so that's just scaled to a global program.
Dr. Christian (12:00):
Kassi, one of the things we talked about yesterday as we were talking about these working geniuses is that people who are creative are disruptors.
Kassi (12:08):
That's true.
Dr. Christian (12:08):
They think of ideas of how to do things differently than others, and they have to be able to take the risk to do them because you are disrupting something. Oftentimes we think of creativity and artwork, right?
Kassi (12:25):
Yes.
Dr. Christian (12:25):
Those who were most creative disrupt it as people knew it, right?
Kassi (12:32):
That's right.
Dr. Christian (12:32):
The first impressionists, the first modern arts, the first modern music, the first, no matter what music style change, those who are most creative are on the edge disrupting the status quo. And one of the things I would say to people who have that creativity to them is you need to have a backbone to move into a space that nobody's gone before and know that it might fail, right?
Kassi (12:58):
Yeah.
Dr. Christian (12:59):
Know that people might not like it at first. You will be pushed back because you're quote out of bounds. You're coloring outside the lines.
(13:08):
And we've been taught that if you color outside the lines, you get a bad grade.
Kassi (13:11):
That's right.
Dr. Christian (13:12):
That's what school has taught many of us. That's what life has taught, many of us. And what creative people have to do is be comfortable with facing that pushback when they color outside the lines.
Kassi (13:26):
That's one of the things I've had to learn too about Book Days, is that I was really implementing something nobody else had done. I didn't reinvent the wheel. It was just I took the wheel to a different place, and that somehow was just revolutionary.
Dr. Christian (13:42):
I love that concept that creativity is not always about something new. Excuse me. It's sometimes just about changing how it's done or adding on.
Kassi (13:51):
And so I had to have a backbone. I had to learn to get a backbone because sometimes people just politely declined or it didn't work out or I didn't get my funding. But you're absolutely right. It does take a backbone.
Dr. Christian (14:07):
I think go I'll go one other place since both of us are people of faith. I think sometimes in our formation there's a little voice in our head that says, don't go against the grain too much to kind of stay within the bounds of how you don't want to make people angry. You don't want to go too far outside the bounds, and I don't know why that is, but there is something there, at least in my background that has its voice in my head that I've had to kind of remove, especially when that happens within a faith setting, right?
Kassi (14:43):
Yes.
Dr. Christian (14:43):
Think of those who early on introduced contemporary music into churches.
(14:48):
Think of those who are creative in how they present the gospel, they give those who are creative in how they move into communities to be evangelists or whatever. They are often creatives within the church and take on a different burden at risk.
Kassi (15:04):
I love that. I love how you see creativity in that way as well, because that's also not just in business, but in life and in the spiritual realm, and it's just so important. Creativity just really leaks into every facet of life and every occupation,
Dr. Christian (15:21):
And really, I know we probably didn't plan to go this way, but I really believe creatives need other creatives alongside them. I think creatives also need to seek out people who will have their back, who will run interference for them.
Kassi (15:39):
Absolutely.
Dr. Christian (15:40):
When they get pushed back against by others. And so those supporters, whether they are just patting on the back, people praying for you, people providing resources for you, it really takes that because creatives are often lonely because they're forging a path and creatives will lose. Sometimes our mistakes are wrong, not our trials are trying to do things new. Just don't work out. It's going to happen.
Kassi (16:12):
No, that's a hundred percent. And Dr. Christian, you have been one of those people for me. One of the things I've really cherished about our friendship and you mentoring me ever since that first day of business class, essentially, that you have always believed in me and believed in my creativity and how it moved forward that you were never about not just me, but all the students there at Concordia. I feel sometimes in the college of business is very easy to think you need to get this business degree because you're going to make bank, you're going to go into big corporation, just the whole vibe when you think of business and there's nothing wrong with that, a good living and a good corporation or things like that, but you were never one to have that portrayal to any student and you were always about us following our God-given paths and just being a blessing wherever we were and that meant so much.
Dr. Christian (17:09):
That's good. One of the phrases we use to use here at Concordia is engaging in meaningful work. And I think those of us who are creative have to find an outlet for that in our work. If we're in a place where we don't get to do that, we won't find meaning. And so I would encourage your listeners to find that space. It doesn't have to be across the whole organization. It might just be in a very small part, it might be the bubble you work in to exercise your creativity and find that person who will support you in it.
Kassi (17:42):
And I love that too because sometimes when we think about creativity, we're like, oh, well, we're not a CEO of a corporation or we're not leading this program, but it's really about your sphere of influence
Dr. Christian (17:51):
Absolutely. How can you be creative in creating relationships with your coworkers? How can you be creative in doing your work in a manner that is more efficient, more effective? How can you be creative to add value to your organization in a way that you don't even need permission to because you just do it better and different?
Kassi (18:13):
I love that. That is just so life-giving that you don't have to be in leadership to really do that. Be creative.
Dr. Christian (18:20):
Not at all.
Kassi (18:21):
So wrapping up, just a few more questions. Can you describe maybe one or two of the ways that your creativity comes out as in your role as president?
Dr. Christian (18:33):
I think it happens most by the questions I ask.
Kassi (18:37):
I can see that.
Dr. Christian (18:39):
It is sitting with people, whether it's in a group or one-on-one, and determining and thinking deeply about how can I ask a question that draws out of that person something they might not even be thinking of right now, which leads to a discussion about things that might be, which leads to creative action.
Kassi (19:02):
I'm sure all those questions have really led to really impactful
Dr. Christian (19:07):
Conversations
Kassi (19:08):
And outcomes.
Dr. Christian (19:10):
Oftentimes with the right question
(19:14):
Lead to emotion, tears sometimes can lead to laughter and can lead to, as your point, kind of this freeing, I can now act because someone has allowed me to say something out loud that's maybe been in my brain or my soul. And once I say it out loud, it can become reality.
Kassi (19:32):
Wow, that's so impactful. And that has been really one of the other lessons that I've taken away from our time together in class. As a freshman, you were always about asking good questions. I will remember that till my dying day, asking good questions. And you gave us ample opportunities to ask good questions to you, our classmates, people, speakers that came into our class. You were always about speak up and ask good questions. And I love seeing that on the reciprocal end in your very high role at Concordia, and really that just can be applied for us all in our own lives.
Dr. Christian (20:13):
One of the ways to think people can be creative, whether they think they're creative or not, is to go to the next question, the next question, the next question. Remember, we always ask, well, tell me why.
Kassi (20:23):
Yes.
Dr. Christian (20:24):
And I think when people look at issues or come up with answers to questions, then the next question is, well, why did I come up with that answer and what else might there be? And just taking the time to think deeper and longer leads to creative action.
Kassi (20:41):
It is not so much about a certain outcome that sometimes I think we think of creatively and like you said, when we think of creativity, we think generally our first thought is an artist, a musician, a teacher, but it's more about the thought process and not at a final to getting at a final solution or a final thing like that.
Dr. Christian (21:02):
I really like that a lot. Creativity begins with the thought process. It ends in action. Right.
Kassi (21:10):
I love that! And I think that is such a great place to end our conversation today, Dr. Christian, that it begins with a thought process and ends with a solution. If we can all just remember that. And I hope this has just been so inspiring for our listeners today, hearing you and all your experience, some of our time in the classroom, and I know this has just been a big blessing and just great experience for them. Thank you so much for being here today.
Dr. Christian (21:43):
It's great to be with you. God's blessings to you and the work you do, and thanks for having me on.
Kassi (21:48):
Thanks for joining us for this episode on The Edge of Creativity Podcast. Be sure to like and subscribe so you don't miss any of our upcoming conversations. We'll see you next time.
