How Creativity Builds Sustainable Leadership Performance: A Summer Strategy for Reconnection
Prefer to listen? We’ve recorded an audio version of this blog for those who enjoy tuning in on the go or prefer listening to reading. Click play on the button below.
As the energy of summer rises to its peak, nature moves into full expression—blossoming, fruiting, expanding. And whether we consciously notice it or not, this same energy pulses through us.
It invites not more hustle, but more expression. And at the height of light, one of the most powerful things you can do is answer this seasonal call with one simple act:
Create.
That’s it, create something! Anything. It doesn’t matter what you create, it matters that you create.
Not because it’s billable. Not because it’s strategic. But because it’s yours.
Creativity Is Not a Luxury, It’s a Leadership Asset
In corporate environments, creativity is often framed as innovation or problem solving. But beneath that surface level lies a much deeper truth: creativity is one of the most essential, regenerative forces available to us. It fuels our inner vitality. It reconnects us with instinct. And it builds the kind of psychological resilience we need to lead in uncertain times.
You probably find that there are so many other priorities and responsibilities in our busy lives that means that creativity can often be side lined. But neglecting it has a cost, not just personally, but professionally too.
When you create, you reconnect. And when you reconnect, you lead from a place of integration, not depletion.
Why Summer is the Season to Create
Summer energy is expressive. It’s outward-facing, dynamic, and expansive. In nature, it’s the time of pollination and growth. It’s a window of high output—but only if there’s something inside to express.
That’s where creativity comes in. It’s how we give form to inner intelligence. It’s how we metabolize complexity. It’s how we remind ourselves that we’re more than deliverables and KPIs.
To create is not to escape your leadership. It is to fortify it.
You don't need a sabbatical or a new side hustle. You simply need to give yourself permission to make something for the sake of your own aliveness.
What Counts as Creative? Everything That Comes From You
Let go of the myth that creativity must be impressive. Or Instagram-worthy. Instead, ask yourself: what would feel joyful to make, just for me?
Bake something delicious or nourishing, because it brings you joy.
Pick flowers from your garden, and pop them in a vase, because beauty deserves a place in your home too.
Write something. A paragraph, a poem, a phrase you don’t fully understand yet. Just for you, something that no one else will ever read.
Paint. Journal. Sing. Move your body in rhythm to no one’s beat but your own.
Rearrange your space. Build something with your hands.
Plant something, simply to tend it.
None of this needs to be shared. In fact, it’s more powerful when it isn’t. Because that’s when it becomes yours.
“You’re not creating for approval. You’re creating to stay connected to the part of you that doesn’t need to perform.”
One of my clients recently sent me a photo of a flower arrangement she made. It wasn’t for an event. It wasn’t a commission. Just a moment of quiet beauty made visible. That act reset her nervous system more effectively than any productivity hack.
There are no rules here. There are no limitations, only the ones you place on yourself. The more you remove those limits, the more you’ll discover: you are creative.
You have always been creative. It’s just that perhaps no one told you it was safe to be. That it was enough to make something because you felt like it.
Creativity as a Practice of Embodied Leadership
In our coaching work, we often speak about integrated leadership. Leading with the mind, heart, and body aligned. Creativity is a portal to that integration. It grounds your thinking, softens emotional fatigue, and reconnects you to your physical self.
When a thought becomes form, something in you settles.
You step out of reactive mode and back into presence. And presence is one of the most under-leveraged executive skills in modern business.
So much of today’s performance culture is based on output. But truly impactful leadership comes from being fully in the moment. Creative practices bring you there, efficiently and sustainably.
Start Small, Start Now
There is something incredibly nurturing about making something with your own hands or heart. It feeds you in a way that no achievement or productivity measure can.
Your voice. Your instinct. Your touch. These are your signature assets. They don’t live in your CV or work experience. They live in your expression.
“You are definitely unique. There is only one of you. And there will only ever be one of you.”
So what you make will never exist again in quite the same way. That is its value.
Creating something that didn’t exist before, no matter how small, is an act of presence, power, and purpose. And it’s one of the most potent summer strategies you can practice. Not just for yourself, but for how you show up in the room, at the table, and in the world.
Here’s the beautiful secret: once you get a taste for this kind of creation, free, joyful, authentic, you’ll want more. Not for anyone else. Not for success or for praise. But because it connects you to yourself, and to the living, breathing rhythm of the world around you.
And what could be more worthwhile than that?