The Hidden Conditions Leaders Overlook: Unlocking Creativity
Professional Development
In this article, Melissa Sumnauth invites us to rethink how workplaces approach growth and learning, challenging the contradiction between a desire for innovation and cultures marked by stress, fear, or emotional rigidity. With over a decade of leadership development experience, and certifications in Adult Learning & Development and Transformative Mediation, Melissa merges her professional expertise with her lived experience as an Indo-Guyanese-Canadian settler woman to offer an intersectional perspective on what it truly takes for people and organizations to thrive. She argues that learning and creativity cannot simply be demanded; they are cultivated through psychological safety, trust, and inclusive design that values every voice.
Organizations we partner with
Bata Shoe Museum, Canadian Council for the Arts, CEE Centre for Young Black Professionals, City of Toronto, David Suzuki Foundation, Fasken, Genome Canada, George Brown College, GTAA, Humber, IMCO, Kids Help Phone, Luminato, McMaster University, MLSE, OICR, Ontario Presents, ROM, Sankofa Square, Sick Kids, TD Bank, TTC, UHN Foundation, United Way Greater Toronto, University of Toronto, University of Waterloo, University Pension Plan Ontario, York University
Clients Served Include
Organizations love the language of growth. Of course, this makes so much sense especially given the pace of change in today’s world. In order to stay competitive in this environment, workplaces are increasingly needing agile teams, creative solutions, and bold innovation. Many talk about fostering a ‘growth mindset’ and becoming ‘learning organizations.’ But too often, these aspirations are layered on top of workplaces that are stressed, distrustful, and emotionally rigid.
In my work as a certified practitioner and coach, I’ve seen this contradiction up close: teams are told to think differently while being stretched too thin to think clearly. They're asked to ‘be creative’ while navigating tight timelines, emotional fatigue, or leadership styles that prioritize control over curiosity.
Creativity and learning don’t disappear in these environments, but often times they do shrink. And what grows in their place isn’t innovation. It tends to be cultures of fear, resentment, and disengagement.
What We Get Wrong About Growth Mindset
You can’t mandate a mindset. You can model it, encourage it, support it, but you can’t demand it and expect people to respond with openness.
Yet this is often what we see: calls for innovation delivered through performance pressure. Demands for collaboration delivered through top-down mandates. Invitations to ‘bring your full self’ sent into environments where trust has not been developed.
Psychologists and learning experts like Jim Kwik remind us that before we learn anything—before we retain content or experiment with ideas—we have to know how to learn. And that begins with feeling safe enough to stretch, ask questions, or even fail (Kwik, 2023). Learning, creativity, and growth are not default settings; they’re responses to the environment. If people don’t feel respected, supported, or seen, their cognitive energy goes toward self-protection rather than exploration.
As Amy Edmondson explains in The Fearless Organization, “the workplace must be one where people feel able to share their knowledge! This means sharing concerns, questions, mistakes, and half-formed ideas” (Edmondson, 2018). For this to occur, safety and trust are the fertile soil from which genuine learning and creativity grow.
The Role of Trust in Unlocking Creativity
This is especially important in organizations going through change, whether that’s hybrid re-integration, restructuring, or cultural transformation. Trust is the currency that unlocks creativity. Without it, people don’t take risks—they comply. Or worse, they opt out. And when creativity becomes associated with risk, only the most secure or senior team members feel safe enough to try.
Let me offer a simple analogy. Imagine enrolling your child in a local sports league. One coach focuses solely on pointing out mistakes, leaving little room for encouragement or confidence-building. Will your child feel inspired to take risks on the field or look forward to coming back next season? The chances are, probably not.
Now imagine a coach who fosters growth by guiding with care, celebrating small wins, and creating a sense of belonging. In that environment, even the most hesitant players are more willing to step outside their comfort zone and try something new.
The same is true for professional teams. People thrive when they know their efforts will be supported, their mistakes treated as learning opportunities, and their successes acknowledged. Growth happens naturally when the environment is designed to nurture it.
As Priya Parker writes in The Art of Gathering: “The way we gather matters” (Parker, 2018). This simple truth underscores how the environments we create—from meetings to workshops—set the tone for whether people feel safe, included, and open to learning.
Designing for Psychological Safety
Designing for psychological safety applies not only to day-to-day operations, but also to training and learning environments. Take anti-racism or equity workshops, for example. These are important learning spaces. But when they are designed without attention to trust and safety, when they are mandatory, impersonal, or delivered in tones of shame/blame, they risk creating resistance rather than reflection and integration of knowledge into practice.
If someone walks into a room already defensive,
the conditions for learning have not been met.
We’ve set the stage for survival, not for transformation.
This is where inclusive design becomes crucial. It’s not about making things ‘comfortable’ in the superficial sense. It’s about creating conditions where people are most likely to stay open, to hear one another, and to galvanize around new ideas. Sometimes, this means making workshops voluntary. Sometimes, it means beginning with storytelling before data. Sometimes, it means spending more time building the container than delivering the content.
Organizations often overlook this because they’re focused on outcomes, which of course are paramount. But the missed revenue, missed creativity, and missed engagement are real. Stress closes doors. Trust opens them.
The Call for Curated Conditions
None of this means that challenge is bad. On the contrary, learning and creativity often emerge from friction. But it’s the difference between challenges that stretch and challenges that shame. The right conditions are not soft. They’re strategic. They’re what make growth possible, not just aspirational.
When we talk about innovation, inclusion, or leadership development, it’s important to ask:
Have we designed for safety, not just scale?
Are we making space for emotion, not just performance?
Do our expectations match the reality of our culture?
Because when people are drawing from the best parts of themselves, the results are different. Clients notice it. Colleagues feel it. Leaders benefit from it. And the organization grows as a whole from it.
Conclusion: Growth Requires More Than Intention
The truth is, creativity, learning, and growth aren’t checkboxes—they’re signals of a culture designed with intention, safety, and trust.
The most forward-thinking organizations don’t just
talk about innovation; they create the conditions where
it becomes inevitable.
For leaders, the real question isn’t ‘How do we demand more?’ but ‘How do we design environments where our people can thrive?’ The future belongs to those willing to build that foundation now. And then they build from there.
Ready to build a culture where creativity and trust drive results?At BES Executive Search, we partner with leaders who want more than just talent—we help shape the environments where innovation thrives, teams engage, and organizations grow sustainably. If you’re curious about building a leadership culture that attracts top talent, nurtures potential, and supports thoughtful succession planning, we’d be pleased to explore what’s possible with you.
Bibliography
Edmondson, A. C. (2018). The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth. New York: Wiley.
Kwik, J. (2023). Limitless. Retrieved from https://www.jimkwik.com/
Parker, P. (2018). The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters: Riverhead Books.
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