Last week, Berlin School Alumn Lucia Tarbajovska presented her winning final thesis, "Fear Factor - Fear to Differentiate", at the Golden Drum Advertising Festival in Slovenia. During her stay in Slovenia she gave the following interview to Vesna Stanic at the Golden Drum Daily News:

What is creative leadership and who should learn how to implement creative leadership in his/her daily practice?

To me creative leadership is about creating environment, culture and spirit that enhances and nurtures creativity of others. Unlike leadership, creative leadership is more than finding solutions to existing problems - it is about finding new problems, even more so - it is about creating new problems - in order to achieve new standards of quality, in order to raise the bar, in order to find a new business model, create a new trend, in order to disrupt the current state... Creative leadership is about constant reinventing, re-vamping, reshaping, question the status quo.

Creative leadership is about closing the gap between being a great creative and a great creative leader, it is all about gaining the power back to lead the industry again, be at the top where the strategic decisions are being made, it is about unlocking the creative artsy conch that creatives have been rotting in and protecting themselves from the rest of the world. No one can expect business people to understand creativity and no one can expect creatives to understand numbers. Why? And why not? Why cannot we bridge this gap? Creatives have been replaced by consultants and CFO’s as the solely or main advisors to the CEOs, they have lost their power and the more they hide away from business the farther away they get from the role they had in the past. On the other hand, business people hide away from creativity because it is subjective, unsafe and risky. Creative leadership is about creating a new breed of leaders that will inspire by higher principles than purely creative art pieces on one side or numbers on the other side.

As a marketing department or advertising agency is becomes bigger, the feeling of creativity is lost. Why do many small advertising agencies loose a lot of long-term employees when merging with a world-wide group?

All companies, not only advertising agencies, when they grow bigger, they face similar challenges, they fall into the same trap. It is because success breads fear and fear prevents change. As companies succeed, they grow bigger, the stakes they put at risk are bigger, therefore there is more fear in decision-making, there is a desire to control and monitor, to measure and to streamline everything to prevent losses and failures. As they grow bigger they want things to adhere to certain principles, they want rules and processes to secure the smooth delivery of better results than in the previous period. These fears bring along lack of innovation and stagnation. And thus from once differentiated brand becomes a brand that can be imitated and challenged by others, finally to parity among competitors, no differentiation, commoditization and no preference among customers. It very much has to do with the topic that I will be talking about - the fear factor - becoming big to the extent that you cannot bend nor move, is what scares not only creative people at the agencies but other businesses too.

Why do people leave? Initially people joined because they could play, they could invent, they could try, they could bring their ideas to the table, to the market, they had the empowerment and trust. As the companies grow bigger this gets diluted, innovation and failure isn't allowed, management expects results and that leads (in advertising agencies) to safety in creativity as well. A big part of this has to do with culture. When we talk about mergers and acquisitions, many companies underestimate the cultural differences among the two companies or agencies.

One of the most frequent issues of leadership is probably how to excite people for change. Most of the people like to live a life as they are used to. Do you have a recipe for that? There is no single recipe. The magic of a great dish is in the unexpected ingredients that you add to it out of your gourmet instinct. But if you do not know how to design the food, how to serve it and how to entertain your guests, the dinner will not be the one to be remembered and talked about by your guests, nor something to be repeated or encouraged again. It is similar to exciting people for change. To me, the most important thing is the passion of the leader. Passion is contagious. It projects courage that caters for the fears of people. And most of people avoid change because of their own fears, uncertainty, potential failure, job loss, loss of image etc. Passion is about conviction and power to make something happen. People seek that and if they find it they join in. Some of them of course will remain passive or even very negative, trying to ruin ones efforts, but later on - when they see first results - they miss being part of the winning team - they convert from negative to supports, even passionate ambassadors, the passive remain usually passive.

How is leadership in creative industries different from leadership in other industries?I think every industry needs creative leadership. I do not think that creative leadership belongs to creative industries only, not at all. What is important in each industry, in the fast-changing environment as we are now - it is the ability to question status quo and be able to see into the future, plan for the unexpected and understanding the cultural differences - since we operate in a global market, we need to consider that there are stakeholders that have various reference points than we have at all times.

How do you implement elements of creative leadership at T-Mobile Czech?This is a tough one because I work for a company that has grown big by now. What I do is to set high standards for my team. I am trying to ignite their desire for doing new things that will improve our business. I think the most important thing is feeding their creative monster - allowing innovation, trying new things and most importantly allowing failure. I believe that you cannot really embrace innovation if you are not open to failures and not only open but if you do not really invite or promote failure, even remunerate for failure. When you train hard and you do not fall, it means you haven't tried hard enough. Of course, this needs support, therefore I always back them up, fight for those ideas, pre-sell new ideas, prepare the found so that they get approved or chance to get into the important discussion for management's consideration. And I am talking about support in good times as well as tensed times (more critical). This becomes all the more important because people are afraid that they get fired or get bad results for trying new things. Therefore I have to manage their worries. I never leave them swim alone when the sharks start attacking and trust me we are in those waters where they feel at home.

What can leaders from others industries learn from creative leaders? I think leaders and creative leaders can learn from each other.