Sarcasm leads to creativity.  Creativity is a needed trait in most leadership positions today.

From INC.com:

What did the researchers find? 

Sarcasm, it turns out, is a pretty good mental workout. “To create or decode sarcasm, both the

 expressers and recipients of sarcasm need to overcome the contradiction (i.e., psychological distance) between the literal and actual meanings of the sarcastic expressions. This is a process that activates and is facilitated by abstraction, which in turn promotes creative thinking.

The result was “those in the sarcasm conditions subsequently performed better on creativity tasks than those in the sincere conditions or the control condition.

I have had the opportunity to assess a myriad of leaders over the past two decades and have seen the value of creativity firsthand.  Creative leaders are consistently able to react to changing market conditions, develop new solutions and move with an easy freedom not often found in more rigid, analytical leaders.  This leadership agility is inspiring to teams and mission critical to guiding teams through modern day markets.

A study from Psychological Science confirmed the importance of creativity in leaders:

In the new study, Huang, Krasikova, and Liu hypothesized that leaders’ confidence in their creativity would be one way to inspire greater creativity within the broader organization. That is, managers confident in their own creative capabilities engage in more behaviors that encourage creativity in the people around them.

…The results confirmed that confident leaders were better at encouraging creativity in their followers, particularly when teams worked closely together. Confident leaders were more likely to encourage other people’s creative ideas by establishing a culture of receptive to creativity, listening to new ideas, trying new things, and offering praise.

Creative leaders foster creativity…seems more than logical.  The key to find the leaders with the right blend of motivations and aptitudes to support their creative bend.  These traits can include a leadership motivation, a drive for gaining knowledge, a supportive communication style and more.
I have one customer who asks each candidate to tell him a joke in the interview.  He said he doesn’t even care if it is funny, but that he values their ability to switch gears from the corporate interview and tell a joke.  There is a spark of creativity in what he is looking to qualify in candidates.  If the joke is sarcastically funny, it is more valuable than a dud.  Sarcasm, in an interview, is extremely difficult to pull off.  If you adopt this approach, and experience a sarcastically funny candidate, I would recommend you make note.  That candidate may have significant creative leadership potential.

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