Creative Leadership

During this six-week Creative Leadership course, you’ll deconstruct the myths about ‘creativity’ and ‘leadership’ that can get in the way of you mastering these disciplines, look at how you may be limiting yourself as a creative leader and find a new source of confidence to unlock your own approach to creative leadership.

During the course you’ll develop a creative and interdisciplinary approach to problem solving, have space to reflect on your learning with your peers and capture simple insights about your unique approach to becoming a Creative Leader.

You'll be asked to undertake independent research with action and enquiry and experience peer to peer feedback, as well as mentoring from the course leaders.

By the end of this course, you’ll be equipped with tools and models that de-mystify the idea of creative leadership and allow you to transform your organisation. You’ll also build your confidence in your ability to creatively lead others and gain a richer understanding of Creative Leadership as a concept in practice.

This Creative Leadership short course is designed for anyone looking to make a meaningful impact, including those who hold, have held or looking to hold leadership positions. The course is suited to leaders looking to explore the role of creativity, evolve their practice and   capacity for empathy and compassion, and grow their capability to create the conditions for innovation.

Meet the team

Lee Sears (Course Leader)

Lee has set up two global consulting business, built the world's largest coaching business and set up numerous social enterprises, charities and chains of schools over the last 30 years. He is an author, a speaker and a coach. He continues to work with some of the worlds most senior corporate leaders, as they grapple with systemic challenges and also helps young leaders embrace the power of creativity as they advance their careers and take on the issues that matter to them.

One of Lee’s biggest lessons from these multiple contexts, is that at the heart of becoming a creative leader lies our ability to get out of our own way and change how we view risk and failure.

Steve Fuller (Course Leader)

Steve helps businesses and brand to be a force for good by inspiring leaders to imagine a brighter, more purposeful future for their organisations.

He is co-founder of The House, a game changing business, culture and brand consultancy that helps enlightened business leaders do well by doing good. It’s what he calls “purposeful advantage”. By focusing on the triple bottom line and tackling the big social and environmental issues, companies like Unilever, Ella’s Kitchen and Interface are creating value, reaping vast commercial rewards and building genuine movements for positive change.
 
Steve works with businesses of all sizes and sectors to unearth, define, implement and communicate a clear “purpose beyond profit”, creating an inspiring story that attracts and activates customers, employees and partners alike.

Mike Bond (Specialist Contributor)

Mike Bond is a founding partner of Bond & Coyne, the mission-led brand agency which provides creative, strategic and digital services to education, tech, youth and media and science-based clients in the UK, US and Middle East.
 
Mike lectures in design and creative thinking at institutions such as the Royal College of Art and has contributed to respected periodicals and books including The Designer’s Research Manual published in the US. He is also a member of the international education thought leadership community Oppi Global.
 
He passionately believes in the power that creativity has to empower people in forging purposeful careers and has developed tools including the Periodic Table for Creative Confidence to support and personal staff development programmes.

Penny Hay (Academic Leader and Lead on Imagination and Creative Education)

Dr Penny Hay is an artist, educator and researcher, Professor of Imagination at Bath Spa University, UK and Founding Director of House of Imagination. Signature projects include School Without Walls and Forest of Imagination. Penny’s doctoral research focused on children’s learning identity as artists.

Penny is strand leader for Creative Pedagogy in the Policy, Pedagogy and Practice Research Centre, and co-chair of the eARTh research group. Penny was awarded an Honorary Fellowship at Arts University Plymouth and a Fellowship in Imagination at the Centre for Future Thinking; she is a National Teaching Fellow and Fellow of the Chartered College of Teaching.

Dr Margaret Heffernan (Specialist Contributor)

The former CEO of five businesses, Margaret Heffernan explores the all-too-human thought patterns cause organisations and leaders to go astray. She produced programmes for the BBC for 13 years. She produced dramas and documentaries in radio and television and was the first producer to put Simon Schama on TV.

Margaret then moved to the US where she spearheaded multimedia productions for Intuit, The Learning Company and Standard&Poors. She was Chief Executive of InfoMation Corporation, ZineZone Corporation and then iCast Corporation, was named one of the "Top 25" by Streaming Media magazine and one of the "Top 100 Media Executives" by The Hollywood Reporter.

The author of six books, Margaret’s third book, Willful Blindness : Why We Ignore the Obvious at our Peril was named one of the most important business books of the decade by the Financial Times. In 2015, she was awarded the Transmission Prize for A Bigger Prize: Why Competition isn’t Everything and How We Do Better, described as "meticulously researched... engagingly written... universally relevant and hard to fault."

Her TED talks have been seen by over fifteen million people and in 2015 TED published Beyond Measure: The Big Impact of Small Changes. Her most recent book, Uncharted: How to Map the Future Together was published in 2020. It quickly became a bestseller and was nominated for the Financial Times Best Business Book award, was one of Bloomberg’s Best Books of 2021 and was chosen as the "Medium Best of the Best" business book. Her new book, Embracing Uncertainty was published in March 2025.

She is a Professor of Practice at the University of Bath and, through Merryck & Co., mentors CEOs and senior executives of major global organizations. She speaks at major corporate and non-profit conferences around the world.

Terms and conditions

Read the terms and conditions for taking part in this short course.

Contact us

For more information about the course please email your enquiries to shortcourses@bathspa.ac.uk .