Leadership development: the key to unlocking individual creativity in organizations

Purpose – This paper sets out to develop and test a hypothesized model of the role of adult leadership development and youth leadership development as possible moderators of the relationships between creative self‐efficacy, perceived support for creativity, and individual creativity. Design/methodology/approach – The study employs the multi‐group nested goodness‐of‐fit strategy in LISREL 8.53 to test the interaction effects of two qualitative moderator variables. Findings – Results suggest that adult leadership development may moderate the relationship between perceived organizational support for creativity and individual creativity, while youth leadership development may moderate the relationship between creative self‐efficacy and individual creativity. Research limitations/implications – Limitations include concerns regarding generalizability, possible social desirability and response set biases, self‐report data, and causality. The primary implication is that leadership development, targeted at adults as well as children, may represent one important key for unlocking idle creative potential and enhancing overall organizational effectiveness. Practical implications – Organizations may wish to consider youth leadership development experiences as potential behaviorally based predictors of future job success for jobs that require creativity. Organizational decision makers should also carefully consider making leadership development opportunities available to organizational members at all levels. Originality/value – The study is among the first to examine both adult and youth leadership development as potential facilitators of creativity in organizations and has value for practitioners as well as for future creativity and leadership development researchers.