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Thomas Brucia

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Are creativity and leadership overrated?

Isn't the ability to follow instructions equally important as being creative? The world is dependent on millions who do things over and over again: accountants, repairmen, farmers, and so on. The wages of innovation can often be dismissal or disaster -- whereas the rewards of doing one's job are significant. So too with 'leadership': leaders must always be a tiny minority, because without followers, they are nothing...... Or am I missing something?

Topics: creativity followership independent innovation leadership mass psychology normality reliability social behavior
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  • Jonathan Tai

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    Nov 28 2011: I feel that leadership is definitely over rated but creativity less so and in fact could be viewed as underrated in certain cultures. My dad is constantly remarking on leadership skills and if a certain achievement is great leadership wise he will care even more and praise the idea or achievement with some excess. The term leadership is important but only on a high end level and of those who are willing to lead and wan't to become a future leader or those with the natural skill to do so ad shouldn't be imposed onto the children as of extremely high expectations of the parents. Which are usually imposed due to the culture or ideology of the parents. Being an asian kid of 15 the term of creativity is seemingly underrated as the way that asian culture teaches children, though it is slowly changing, is through "dead memorization" this way of learning makes it so that the child is only taking things in through the teacher and textbooks. Very few of these children are able to take this information and apply it in their own way through their own learning and make something cool. The children who can are then viewed as natural leaders who can accomplish much and through them their teachers, parents and organizations are receiving more praise and encouragement then the students who actually achieve and then they deserve. This leadership skill is, due to this, subsequently pushed into the minds of other parents to forcedly increase the leadership skills not realizing that this links greatly with creativity but they are ignoring creativity directly which is sometimes viewed as rebellious and is at most times discouraged as it may not meet the expectations of the parents future desires of the child's place in society. That is also why the arts in chinese schools, probably except of singing, are not taught. If parents view leadership as such an important thing to impose on children why not view creativity similarly as to be creative will give you an easy leg up to leadership.

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