Enhancing Creativity Through Emotional Collaboration

Why do smart leaders use conflict as a competitive advantage? (When most people think conflict at work is bad.) Because conflict itself isn’t the problem... How you use it is. Here are 5 ways to turn conflict into your secret weapon: 1. 𝗦𝘁𝗼𝗽 𝗦𝗲𝗲𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗛𝗮𝗿𝗺𝗼𝗻𝘆, 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝗦𝗲𝗲𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗖𝗹𝗮𝗿𝗶𝘁𝘆 ↪ Conflict exposes what’s unclear. Say, “It seems like we’re not aligned on [specific point]. Let’s unpack that so we can move forward with clarity.” ↪ Don’t aim to smooth things over, aim to solve the real issue. Say, “I’d rather we have an uncomfortable conversation now than carry silent frustration for weeks.”   2. 𝗨𝘀𝗲 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝗳𝗹𝗶𝗰𝘁 𝗮𝘀 𝗮 𝗣𝗲𝗿𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗙𝗲𝗲𝗱𝗯𝗮𝗰𝗸 𝗟𝗼𝗼𝗽 ↪ Every disagreement reveals blind spots. Say, “This tension is highlighting a gap in how we’re approaching [specific project]. What are we missing?” ↪ Invite friction as a sign of growth. Say, “If we’re all agreeing too quickly, we’re probably missing something important. Let’s challenge this.”   3. 𝗠𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗣𝗼𝘄𝗲𝗿 𝗼𝗳 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗱 𝗗𝗶𝘀𝗿𝘂𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 ↪ Strategic conflict sparks innovation. Say, “What if we’re wrong about this assumption? Let’s stress-test it and see where it breaks.” ↪ Challenge ideas, not people. Say, “I’m pushing back because I believe there’s a stronger approach here, not because I’m dismissing your perspective.”   4. 𝗧𝘂𝗿𝗻 𝗘𝗺𝗼𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗛𝗲𝗮𝘁 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗼 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗘𝗻𝗲𝗿𝗴𝘆 ↪ Conflict isn’t bad, unmanaged conflict is. Say, “I can tell this is a charged topic, which means it matters. Let’s focus on the issue, not the emotion.” ↪ Label the tension to neutralise it. Say, “It feels like we’re hitting a wall here. Let’s pause and figure out what’s really driving this friction.”   5. 𝗥𝗲𝗱𝗲𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝗳𝗹𝗶𝗰𝘁 𝗮𝘀 𝗥𝗲𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗰𝘁 ↪ Healthy conflict shows people care enough to speak up. Say, “I’d rather you challenge me directly than stay silent and disengaged. Disagreement means we’re invested.” ↪ Silence isn’t peace, it’s disengagement. Say, “If no one’s pushing back, I get worried. Let’s make sure we’re not missing critical perspectives.”   The cost of avoiding conflict isn’t less stress... it’s less growth.   Conflict reveals what’s broken, sharpens ideas, and strengthens teams... (if you know how to handle it). 📣 What’s the biggest conflict lesson you’ve learned? ↳ Drop your thoughts in the comments.   🔔 Follow me (Mostyn Wilson) for more strategies to achieve your ambitions. __ Get my newsletter every fortnight to make you even more successful in your career: https://lnkd.in/eE287NTG

Your ability to respond well when challenged is one of the most visible ways you create (or destroy) team psychological safety. Because every challenge is a double test: of your idea, and of your leadership. If you shut it down, you protect your ego but weaken the team. If you welcome it, you strengthen both. But many leaders’ reflex is to defend, shut it down, or quietly think, “they don’t respect me.” 🔬 But research paints a different picture: ▪️ Amy Edmondson’s studies at Harvard show that the strongest predictor of high-performing teams is psychological safety and one of the clearest signs of it is people daring to challenge authority. ▪️ Francesca Gino’s work on constructive dissent finds that dissenting voices improve team decision quality by surfacing overlooked risks and alternatives. ▪️ Charlan Nemeth’s decades of research on dissent shows that even when dissenting views are “wrong,” they stimulate deeper, more creative thinking across the group. 🗣️ So, how to respond in practice: 1. Signal safety in the moment Instead of reacting defensively, anchor the moment: “Thanks for raising that.” That micro-response protects the climate for future challenges. 2. Ask for the reasoning, not just the opinion Instead of “why do you disagree?” (which sounds confrontational), try: “walk me through how you see it.” You shift the frame from judgment to joint exploration. 3. Separate identity from idea It’s easy to feel personally attacked. Train yourself to see the challenge as about the idea on the table, not about your worth as a leader. This is where intellectual humility comes in as a hallmark of inclusive and adaptive leadership. 4. Turn it into collective inquiry Shift from “me vs. you” to “us vs. the problem.” Ask: “What risk or angle are we missing if we only follow my path?” This reframes challenge as contribution. 👉 Your leadership isn’t measured by how often your team agrees with you. The actual measurement is what you do with their disagreement. That’s the work I do with leadership teams - helping them build psychological safety so that challenge becomes a fuel for sharper decisions, stronger trust, and higher performance. P.S.: How do you usually react when a team member challenges you? Do you lean in, or shut it down too quickly?

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗜'𝘃𝗲 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸𝗲𝗱 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝘄𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻'𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗺𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗲𝘀𝘁. 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝗵𝗮𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝘁𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗲. Let me explain. Early in my PhD at MPII, my mentor Thorsten Thormählen was reviewing #SIGGRAPH submissions. He pulled up two papers side by side. One had a brilliant solution to an obvious problem. The other had a decent solution to a 𝘧𝘢𝘴𝘤𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 problem. "Which one do you think will get in?" he asked. I picked the brilliant solution. I was wrong. Then he did it again. Different rounds, different years. Same pattern. The papers that made it - the ones people remembered, cited, argued about - weren't the ones with the best math or the cleanest results. They were the ones that chose the most 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 problem. The novelty wasn't in the answer. It was in the question. That lesson rewired me. The best researchers at NYU, at Apple - they weren't the fastest or the most technically gifted. They could look at a field full of open problems and 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭 which one was worth years of their life. We used this exact instinct recently with our paper 𝗢𝗱𝗼 - a diffusion-based method for human body reshaping. Underexplored. Slightly controversial. Genuinely fun. Not the safest bet. But we could feel it was the right question. It got in. 𝗛𝗲𝗿𝗲'𝘀 𝘄𝗵𝘆 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗺𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗻𝗼𝘄 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝗻 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿. AI can generate solutions at absurd pace. Code, images, text, designs — the bottleneck is no longer production. The bottleneck is 𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯. Which problem is worth solving? Which output is actually good? Which direction leads somewhere meaningful vs. a well-executed dead end? That's taste. That's judgment. And no model has it. Paul Graham wrote that taste is pattern recognition trained by exposure to excellence. I agree - but I'd add something. 𝗧𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗲 𝗶𝘀𝗻'𝘁 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗸𝗻𝗼𝘄𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗹𝗼𝗼𝗸𝘀 𝗿𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁. 𝗜𝘁'𝘀 𝗸𝗻𝗼𝘄𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁'𝘀 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗵 𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴. Thorsten didn't teach me how to solve problems better. He taught me how to 𝘱𝘪𝘤𝘬 them better. That turned out to be the more valuable skill by far. In the age of AI, everyone can execute. The question is: execute on 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵? That's the one thing you can't automate.

One of the things I love about my job is how creative I get to be. Whether it’s developing new career tools, thinking about how we bring our next book to life or designing career programmes for the companies we work with, creativity is a constant in my squiggly career. It definitely helps having Sarah Ellis as a creative partner to spark off and we’ve got better at creative collaboration over the last 10 years of working together (📸 photo of us in creating mode on Monday). I think some of the things we have learnt can be applied more broadly to support an environment where everyone can be more creative at work. So, here are 4 things we have learnt that might be useful for you and your team….. 😤 Disagreement is not a disaster! Taking a deep breath, pausing on the bit that is problematic and working on less contentious elements can create momentum and make it easier to come back to later. We’ve had to do this a lot with our new book, but we believe it’s much better because of it! 🗑️ Be prepared to be wasteful. Sometimes one of us puts words on paper for a book chapter or a podcast script, knowing the other one won’t like it! But it’s enough to get a conversation started and have something to build better together. Letting go of your ego here is important and positioning it as ‘first thoughts’ reduces any sensitivity. 🧌Don’t Frankenstein ideas. When an idea isn’t quite right, you can tweak and tweak and lose the essence of what you were trying to achieve in the first place. Better to put a not so great idea to one side and start from scratch. We’ve done this recently with our Squiggly Career Shorts that we created for the podcast. The insight is right (people have a limited time to listen and learn) but the execution of our idea wasn’t. Instead of tweaking and frankensteining, we’ve put it on pause until we find a new way forward. 🤫 Small moments of silence. When you’re in creative collaboration mode, there can be a lot of noise! Discussion, debate and ideas bouncing back and forth. We find it helpful to have small moments of silence in creative conversations where we just gather our thoughts individually. We call this brainwriting and do it all the time when we are pulling a presentation together or an outline for a new article. If you are looking for ways for your team to be more creative, I’d also recommend reading Sarah Stein Greenberg’s book ‘Creative Acts for Curious People’ All of your thoughts and ideas on creativity welcomed 👇

On Taste. And Why It’s So Rare. Taste is not an accident. It is a finely crafted judgment system - a synthesis of exposure, curiosity, reflection, and relentless refinement. That’s why so few truly have it. Because building taste takes time, humility, and an unreasonable commitment to excellence. People with high taste have a high bar. They don’t settle for mediocrity - not in themselves, and not in what they co-create. They are hard to please, often seen as difficult, sometimes feared by teams that are low on competence or care. But put them with high-agency, high-skill collaborators - and magic happens. They are catalysts. Taste amplifies. But taste isn’t born in isolation. It comes from wide exposure - books, products, architecture, visuals, craft, conversations. Exposure feeds learning. Learning requires openness. Openness flows from a beginner’s mind, which is only possible when curiosity is alive. See the thread? Taste is not a skill. It’s a system. And yet, it is not without shadow. Taste, without self-awareness, becomes ego. It creates brilliant jerks - people who have taste but lack the emotional grace to bring others along. They see flaws but not the fragility of the human behind the work. There is a fine line between being discerning and being destructive. Cognitive taste is resonance. We’re drawn to certain things - minimalism, boldness, texture, rhythm. That resonance shapes our identity. But if we are not careful, it becomes a bias. I love simplicity. A well-designed diagram that explains complexity with clarity wins my heart. But I know that’s my aesthetic preference, not the only path to insight. That self-awareness helps me work with visual designers who thrive in intricate storytelling. So, how does one build taste? • Expose yourself widely. See the world. See more of it. From brutalist buildings to baroque painting. From Apple’s UI to a Japanese tea ceremony. • Track what resonates. Note what stirs something in you. That’s your internal compass. But don’t make it your cage. • Stay curious. Ask. Listen. Look again. Taste without curiosity becomes arrogance. • Build a high bar for yourself. I push myself to 95%. But I stop at 60% when working with others. My math is unfair, by design. Because empathy matters. • Be respectful. Curiosity without respect becomes condescension. Listening is the antidote. Taste is powerful. It makes your work sharper. Your decisions tighter. Your impact deeper. It is a multiplier of efficacy. Our products don’t suffer from lack of talent or budget. They suffer from a lack of taste. You can’t hire taste. You can’t buy it. You have to build it. And that’s why taste in your culture matters. Because in the end— Taste is not about liking nice things. It’s about knowing what matters and insisting it shows.

If you’re a product leader hearing a lot of talk about “taste” but aren’t sure where to point your team, start here: 📘 The Timeless Way of Building by Christopher Alexander 📗 The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman They give you the foundations: systems that work and why. But real taste isn’t just about knowing what looks good. It’s knowing what should exist and having the conviction to build toward it. Taste is not aesthetic instinct. It’s judgment, trained through practice. It comes from four things: → Timeless foundations → Empathy for the user → A strong point of view → And the discipline to refine your work, over and over The Japanese call this mindset shokunin. Not just skill, but devotion to craft. A quiet pursuit of better. How do you start? Pick one feature. Compare it to the best product you’ve ever used. Ask: what’s missing? What’s confusing? Now step outside tech. Your favorite chair, tool, or watch: why does it feel considered? Apply that lens to your own work. What would you change? What gets in the way? What feels jammed in? What feels just right? Look for the friction. But also the excess. Sometimes the most tasteful choice isn’t what you add, it’s what you leave out. Restraint is a design decision. So is usability. It’s not a final layer. It’s the starting point. Make a change, refine the original idea. Prototype through this new lens. Refine the concept with a colleague. Show it to someone you trust. Watch their reaction. Tighten again. Taste doesn’t come from copying Apple’s UI. It comes from practicing with precision, until your work earns the right to feel truly considered. Start putting in the reps.

Six episodes into Prompted, the most important lessons aren’t about models or prompts. They’re about taste, leverage, and where humans still matter. A few insights that genuinely changed how I think about building and leading teams with AI: 🎨 Taste is the new bottleneck ( Pablo Stanley, Vercel) Taste is what tells you what’s worth asking for and what’s worth keeping, and it doesn’t develop by accident. You have to cultivate it through exposure to art, ideas, travel, reading, and time spent noticing what genuinely moves you. ✍️ Humans are the editors, not the brainstormers (Dharmesh Shah, HubSpot) AI is exceptional at generating ideas and connecting dots. Humans decide which dots matter and what story they actually tell. Editorial judgment is becoming a core leadership skill. 🚀 Scale has collapsed, ambition shouldn’t (Aaron Levie, Box) A single founder can now operate like a 20–30 person team. Small teams can have dramatically outsized impact. The biggest risk right now isn’t moving too fast, it’s aiming too small given the leverage available. 🧱 The boring wins compound fastest (Ashley Kramer, OpenAI) Some of the most meaningful AI breakthroughs happen in unglamorous back-office workflows. Evaluating a winning solution is simple: Is the tool being used? Is it changing decisions or just saving a few minutes? 🧠 Behavior beats features (Joel Lewenstein, Anthropic) Anthropic focuses on Claude’s character, not just its capabilities. Training it to be honest, curious, and transparent shapes every interaction. How AI behaves matters just as much as what it can do. 💡 The real talent gap is imagination (Nicole Scoble-Williams GAICD, Deloitte) Many organisations are racing to hire AI specialists. The bigger constraint is imagination. Curiosity, better questions, and the willingness to rethink how work gets done are in shorter supply. I’ve pulled these threads together more deeply here: https://lnkd.in/giwBfRFF What AI learnings are you taking away from 2025? 👇

It's a blessing and a curse to be biologically limited, my friends. But my biology gives me one competitive advantage over the sheer scale of AI and our robot friends: good taste. When you’re moving at 100 mph, and the pressure doesn’t let up, the easiest thing in the world is to reach for a shortcut. And we have a pretty powerful shortcut sitting right in front of our biologically limited fingers: our robot friends. AI can generate a blog post in thirty seconds. It can spin up a campaign concept, write the copy, and draft the creative brief before you’ve finished your coffee (or Celcius :) ). The temptation to just let it run is very real. And I'm always one to be tempted. And a lot of teams do exactly that. Most of the time, the output is sh*t. AI AI AI AI AI SLOP. It's everywhere right now, and it’s only going to get worse unless you cultivate good taste. B2B marketing is almost universally boring and the bar is so damn low. And yes, AI will lower it even more for teams that confuse speed with quality. Used the wrong way, AI gives people permission to ship work that’s underwhelming because at least it’s done. That’s what leaders have to fight against. You have to obsess over the experience. You have to stare at the thing a little longer than feels comfortable and ask whether it’s actually good. Because it’s probably not. Protecting taste is part of the job now. Maybe one of the biggest parts. It means giving your team explicit permission to spend a little more time in reflection before they ship something. A lot of people will default to done over good when the signal isn’t clear. So make the signal clear. Then model it yourself. Expose your team to great work outside your category. I usually ask the team to review DTC brands, consumer campaigns, the Ad Council, magazine covers, anything Nike, Liquid Death, and Notion throw out there. Anything that expands their sense of what good can look and feel like. Because when your only frame of reference is B2B SaaS, you end up making B2B SaaS work. And most of that work is forgettable. Boring is a choice. The right taste, the good taste, will show up when the timeline is short and everyone wants the fastest answer. That's when you either embrace good taste or you let it go. The robots can help you move faster, but they cannot tell you what's worth making (yet). That part is still on us and our biologically imperfect brains and fingers.

Transforming How We Think About Collaboration: The 'Collaborative Innovation' Approach 🪄 🎯 𝗕𝗲𝗴𝗶𝗻 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗔𝘂𝗱𝗮𝗰𝗶𝗼𝘂𝘀 𝗚𝗼𝗮𝗹𝘀 Instead of seeking lowest-common-denominator agreement, start with a powerful vision that attracts committed changemakers. 👥 𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗦𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺 𝗥𝗲𝗽𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 Rather than "open door" meetings, carefully select participants to ensure the whole system is in the room — from grassroots to grasstops. 🔄 𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗹-𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗲 𝗖𝗼-𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 Move away from "develop-then-present" to working together in real-time, leveraging collective intelligence. ⚡️ 𝗘𝗺𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗰𝗲 𝗖𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗧𝗲𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 Stop pushing for false harmony and start using differences as catalysts for innovation. ✨ 𝗘𝗮𝗿𝗹𝘆 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝘁𝗼𝘁𝘆𝗽𝗶𝗻𝗴 & 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 Build the strategy through action rather than endless planning sessions. What's powerful about this approach is how it transforms resistance and diversity into sources of innovation. It's not about getting everyone to agree — it's about weaving different perspectives into transformative interventions. Insights from Russ Gaskin, CoCreative and Ashoka's Leading Multi-stakeholder Collaborations course💡 🤔 How do you navigate the tension between inclusion and focused action in your collaborative work? #SystemicChange #Collaboration #Innovation #Leadership #CollectiveImpact

Most companies obsess over growth. The ones that actually break through obsess over taste. When distribution is democratized, AI can make anything, and every category is oversaturated with good-enough slop, the differentiator isn’t what you build . . . it’s how it feels. Taste is curation and restraint — the confidence to say no more often than yes. It’s the discipline to make choices that feel obvious in hindsight but invisible until you make them. It’s the product that knows what to leave out, the brand that knows which word not to say, the company that pulls the right thread from culture because it signals we see the world the same way you do. Bad taste can sink a well-run business, but cultural pull can carry a mediocre one farther than it ever deserved to go. Taste isn’t decoration, it’s strategy. It gives a product a point of view. It transforms a launch from an announcement into a moment. And it can turn a brand into a movement people choose to belong to. You can out-spend, out-engineer, and out-optimize — and still lose to someone with better taste. Everyone’s racing to be faster and cheaper. The winners will be more desirable. When everything is abundant and infinite, taste is the rarest thing left. And in the decade ahead, it’s going to be the most valuable moat you can build.