Leadership as a creative act

We've learned to speak of leadership in the language of conquest. We "capture" market share, "crush" competitors, "dominate" industries. Leaders are measured by what they extract from workers, from communities, from the earth itself. This vocabulary of violence has obscured an older truth: what if leadership isn't extraction at all but creation?

© Lygia Pape "Divisor"

Picture an artist facing a blank canvas. Nothing to exploit, only possibilities to shape. No extraction of value from the canvas, but add on. A transformation into something that enriches everyone who sees it. The great artist makes us see differently, feel more deeply, understand more clearly. This is leadership in its purest form: expanding what's possible for others.

This is the paradox that corporate leadership has forgotten: true value creation doesn't come from taking more, but from giving more. Art teaches us that leadership requires vulnerability. The writer who shares the most honest story, the musician who performs despite trembling hands, the artist who paints something never seen before. They all risk failure publicly. They lead not by dominating but by daring to be human in front of others. This courage invites others to be courageous. It makes space for others to step into their own brave attempts. When was the last time you encouraged others, or a leader made you braver?

Contrast this with the CEO who slashes wages while awarding himself bonuses, who calls extraction "strategy". This CEO might be powerful. Leadership? Hardly. No expansion. No revelation. No creation. People are smaller than at the beginning.

The artist-leader knows that success comes through others, not from them. Think of leadership as attention, composition, and creation of conditions where human potential can flourish. What if we reimagined organizational leadership this way? Art shows us the way because art is fundamentally generous by giving more than taking. Success is measured by flourishing and surrounded by an environment where courage is possible, mistakes are useful, and every voice has texture. This isn't naïve idealism. It's the kind of practical wisdom that outlives empires. The influences that remain are movements, meanings, and new ways of being human together.

We need a new vocabulary for leadership, one drawn from studios and stages rather than battlefields and markets. One that speaks of composing rather than conquering, of cultivating rather than capturing, of harmonizing rather than dominating. Art gives us this language because art remembers what exploitation makes us forget: that we are here to add to the world, not substract from it.

The real question is: are you brave enough to create?

Yours truly,

Margot

MD'A sidenote: Lygia Pape, 1927-2004, was a pioneering Brazilian artist and founding member of the Neo-Concrete movement who explored the intersection of geometry, sensory experience, and collective participation. Her innovative work spanned sculpture, film, printmaking, and performance, challenging viewers to become active participants rather than passive observers. Pape's practice transformed minimalist forms into poetic, immersive experiences that broke down barriers between art and everyday life. The work "Divisor" from 1968 was initially just a large empty canvas on the ground, onto which the shadows of trees fell. Then the neighbourhood children came, and one discovered a slit in the fabric, stuck his head through, and the game could begin. They pulled down the slope, all with their little heads stuffed into the sheet of fabric: "a single stracciatella on legs". The passive became active, the motionless became something lively.