The effect of understanding key stakeholder mental models on leader creative performance

Abstract

Leaders are faced with increasingly complex, novel, ill-defined, and socially embedded problems that require effective creative problem-solving. Research has identified sensemaking as a primary process underlying leader problem-solving, where leaders gather, interpret, and integrate information to develop mental models representing optimal courses of future action. The socially embedded nature of the problems implies that leaders must adapt their sensemaking to consider the perspectives of organizational stakeholders. Despite these observations, research has failed to investigate how a leader’s ability to understand and incorporate stakeholder mental models during sensemaking influences creative problem-solving performance. The present effort aimed to address these gaps in the literature by investigating how social factors (i.e., the use of heuristics, the presence of risk, and the presence of critical others) influence a leader’s ability to understand stakeholder mental models, as well as the impact of stakeholder mental model accuracy on leader creative performance. Findings emphasize the importance of stakeholder mental model accuracy on leader creative performance, as well as reveal the differential impact of the social factors on mental model accuracy. Theoretical and practical implications, limitations, and future directions are discussed.