The Neurological Case for Creative Leadership: Why Your "Distraction" Might Be Your Greatest Asset
I’ve watched it happen countless times. A leader sits across from me, eyes tired, shoulders tense, and admits that they used to paint. Or write poetry. Or play the piano. “I just don’t have time anymore,” they say, with a shrug that tries to mask something more profound - a quiet resignation that creativity belongs to a version of themselves that they’ve outgrown. They won’t say it out loud, but the subtext is clear: creativity feels like a luxury they can’t afford.
But here’s what neuroscience actually tells us: they’ve got it backwards. Somewhere along the way, we’ve collectively absorbed a damaging narrative about creativity and leadership. We’ve bought into the idea that they occupy different spheres - that one is frivolous while the other is substantial, that one is for evenings and weekends while the other demands our daylight hours and sharpest thinking.
This bifurcation isn’t just wrong. It’s costing us. High-performing leaders, in particular, seem especially susceptible to this myth. They’ve been rewarded for analytical thinking, for decisiveness, for cutting through noise to reach clarity. And in that reward structure, creativity gets coded as indulgent - something that might be nice for other people but gets in the way of “serious” decision-making. I understand the logic.
But what if I told you that your creative practice isn’t separate from your leadership capacity - it’s central to it? The neuroscience here is remarkably clear, and it should fundamentally reshape how we think about creativity in professional contexts. When we engage in creative activities - whether that’s writing, painting, singing, playing an instrument, dancing, or any other form of artistic expression - we’re not activating some separate, cordoned-off “creativity center” in our brains. Instead, we’re lighting up the same neural networks that underpin our most critical leadership capabilities:
Problem Solving. Creative activities strengthen our capacity to see patterns, make novel connections, and generate multiple solutions to complex challenges. They train our brains to move fluidly between different ways of understanding a problem.
Emotional Regulation. Engaging with creative work requires us to navigate uncertainty, manage frustration, and metabolize feedback - all of which build emotional resilience and self-regulation. These are the same capacities we need when facing high-stakes decisions of interpersonal complexity.
Perspective Shifting. Creative practice demands that we inhabit different viewpoints, whether we’re developing a character, considering how light falls on a subject, or finding the emotional truth in a piece of music. This cognitive flexibility is precisely what allows us to understand diverse stakeholder perspectives and anticipate second-order effects.
Long-Term Strategic Thinking. Most creative endeavors require sustained attention over extended periods, the ability to hold multiple threads simultaneously, and the patience to develop something through many iterations. Sound familiar? These are the hallmarks of strategic leadership.
Put simply: creativity doesn’t compete with executive function. It enhances it. And I should know, as I recently closed a production of Sweeney Todd, playing Mrs. Lovett at a theatre here in Greensboro, North Carolina. For those unfamiliar with Stephen Sondheim’s masterwork, Mrs. Lovett is a marathon role - over 300 pages of intricate, patter-heavy music that demands absolute precision while appearing effortlessly natural. Learning that role was grueling. There were evenings I would sit with my music, the same sixteen bars fighting me for the twentieth time, wondering if my brain had reached capacity. There were rehearsals where I had to navigate literally running from one end of the stage to the other, up and down a flight of stairs, and in heels, while maintaining character and nailing Sondheim’s notoriously unforgiving intervals. There were moments of deep frustration, of wanting to quit, of being told I could be replaced, of questioning whether I had the capacity to pull it off. And through all of it, something fascinating was happening in my brain. I was building new neural pathways. Strengthening my working memory. Training my ability to perform under pressure while managing multiple streams of information simultaneously. Developing greater frustration tolerance and emotional regulation.
Every single one of those capacities shows up in my client work. Doing theatre makes me more patient with complexity, more creative in my problem-solving, and more capable of holding nuance. I am better at reading rooms because of it, at modulating my approach based on subtle cues, at maintaining presence even when facing uncertainty. This isn’t coincidental. And this doesn’t happen despite demanding creative work - it is because of it.
The Executive Function Connection
Here’s what makes this particularly relevant for leaders: the prefrontal cortex - the part of our brain responsible for executive function - doesn’t distinguish between “creative” challenges and “professional” ones.
Research in cognitive neuroscience has demonstrated that creative engagement:
Increases cognitive flexibility and divergent thinking
Strengthens neural connections between disparate brain regions, enabling more integrated processing
Enhances our capacity for complex pattern recognition
Improves our ability to tolerate ambiguity and uncertainty
Build resilience in the face of setbacks
Develops our capacity for sustained attention and focus
These aren’t peripheral benefits. They’re core leadership competencies. Moreover, creative practice offers something that most professional development can’t: a low-stakes environment for high-stakes skill development.
Reframing the Equation
So what if we stopped thinking of creativity as something we do when we have time and started thinking of it as something that creates capacity for everything else we need to do? What if, instead of creativity being the thing we sacrifice for leadership, we recognized it as one of the most powerful tools for developing leadership capacity?
This isn’t about adding one more thing to an already overwhelming plate. It’s about recognizing that the creative practices we’ve been deferring might actually be the key to showing up more effectively in all the other domains of our lives. For me, theatre isn’t a break from my work as an executive coach - it’s integral to my capacity to do that work well. The discipline of learning complex material, the vulnerability of performance, the collaboration required in a theatrical production, the emotional intelligence demanded by character work - all of it makes me better at helping leaders navigate their own complex challenges.
Making Space for What Makes Us Better
I understand that time is genuinely scarce. That competing demands are genuine. That suggesting “just add creative practice” can feel like one more overwhelming expectation. But here’s what I’ve observed, both in my own experience and in working with leaders who’ve reintegrated creative practices into their lives: creativity doesn’t deplete in the way other demands do.
The question isn’t whether you can afford to engage in creative work. It’s whether you can afford not to. Your brain is waiting to be rewired. Your leadership capacity is ready to expand. So how about that creative practice you’ve been deferring?
The most effective leaders I know aren’t the ones who’ve eliminated all distractions. They‘re the ones who’ve recognized that what looks like a detour is often the most direct path to where they need to go. Creativity isn’t indulgent. It’s essential. And the time to start isn’t when your calendar clears - because that time will never come. The time to start is now, understanding that the creative work you do today is building the leadership capacity you’ll need tomorrow.
