ACCESSING CREATIVITY: THE HIDDEN LEVER FOR HIGH-PERFORMING LEADERS, TEAMS AND CULTURES.

In today’s high-pressure environments, creativity often gets sidelined in favor of speed, output, and execution. But what if the real strategic advantage isn’t in doing more — but in knowing how to access and shift states on demand to unlock deeper insight?

In this article, we’ll explore the neuroscience behind creative states, why most corporate systems accidentally suppress innovation, and how leaders can harness this hidden lever to enhance decision-making, creative problem-solving, and culture-wide performance through intentional state shifts.

To innovate consistently, leaders need to manage their states — not just their strategies.

Creativity Isn’t Forced.

It’s Accessed.

Most corporate environments are built around systems of control: timelines, KPIs, standardized processes, performance metrics. These are essential for consistency and scale, however they rarely create the conditions for breakthroughs.

“Most companies say they value innovation — yet reward behavior that shuts it down.”

The paradox?

Nearly every company lists innovation as a core value or goal.

But very few create the conditions that allow innovation to emerge.

According to a McKinsey study, while 94% of executives say innovation is critical to growth, only 6% are satisfied with their innovation performance.¹

That’s a massive gap between aspiration and execution.

Why?

Because innovation doesn’t come from just thinking harder.

It comes from accessing a different state of mind.

The Neuroscience of Creative Insight

Modern neuroscience reveals that creativity arises not from sheer effort, but from the interplay between two distinct brain networks:

Task-Positive Network (TPN) → Responsible for focus, logic, analysis, and decision-making. Think of this as your execution engine — driven by the prefrontal cortex.⁹

Default Mode Network (DMN) → This network activates during rest, daydreaming, and internal reflection. It’s where insight, intuition, and creative synthesis happen. It lights up when you're not trying.²

“The brain can’t be in execution and insight mode at the same time. Innovation demands toggling between both.”

These systems operate in opposition, like a sea-saw.

When one is online, the other is downregulated. That means the more time we spend in execution and constant stimulation, the less access we have to creative insight.³

The result? Over-reliance on linear thinking, and underutilization of intuition, divergent thinking, and novel problem-solving, especially under pressure.

Why This Matters for Leaders and Culture

The highest-performing leaders aren’t just masters of focus.

They’re skilled at managing state — both their own and that of their teams.

If creativity is state-dependent, then organizations must train people to access the right states at the right time. This is where culture becomes a lever. Not just through values, but through norms, systems, and processes.

“Culture is what your systems repeatedly allow, encourage, and reward.”

The authors of The Culture Code argue that high-performing cultures are not just psychologically safe, they also promote a sense of belonging and openness to risk, which is essential for creativity.⁴

But most corporate environments reward consistency over curiosity, speed over slowness, output over awareness. This creates a culture of reactivity...not creativity.

And here's the critical, often-missed layer: physiological safety precedes psychological safety.

If the nervous systems in a team are in threat mode — chronically stressed, overextended, or dysregulated — then collaboration suffers. Creativity shuts down. And collective intelligence cannot emerge.⁵

Trust isn’t just built through words.

It’s co-regulated through leadership presence, consistent signals of safety, and the ability to downshift from urgency to present awareness.

This is where embodied leadership becomes essential — not just to inspire performance, but to unlock shared insight.

As Deb Dana outlines, co-regulation is essential to the social engagement system — a biological state that supports communication, creativity, and collaboration. Without it, collective intelligence is neurobiologically out of reach.

Tools to Unlock Creativity in High-Pressure Environments

To build a culture of creativity —you need to create intentional toggling between execution and insight. Here’s how:

1. Engineer Cognitive Recovery into the Workday

→ Encourage screen-free transitions, movement, and low-stimulation moments (e.g., walks, breath breaks, light tasks). These activate the Default Mode Network.²

Example: Instead of defaulting to Zoom, experiment with walking meetings for check-ins or 1:1s. Even a 20-minute phone call while walking can support creative thinking, reduce cognitive load, and boost collaboration — especially when you're not staring at a screen.

2. Create Micro-Moments for Mind-Wandering

→ Insight often arrives when we’re not forcing it. Leave space and buffer time between meetings. Allow for mental drift. This isn’t wasted time or slacking off — it’s a vital integration phase of the creative cycle.⁶

Example: Try scheduling 5–10 minutes of non-task time between meetings — no emails, no Slack. Let your mind decompress. Many leaders find their best ideas surface during these liminal windows, not in the meetings themselves.

3. Use Breathwork to Shift State

→ Breath isn’t just for stress relief, it’s a tool to shift brain states. Slow breathing techniques (like coherent breathing or longer exhales) signal safety to the nervous system, enabling access to intuition and insight. *Reference: Slow breathing enhances cognitive flexibility and activates parasympathetic tone, which supports creative cognition.*⁷

Example: Before key meetings or creative sessions, try 60–90 seconds of slow, nasal breathing — in for 4, out for 6. It’s a powerful reset that drops the nervous system into parasympathetic tone, boosting presence and cognitive flexibility.

4. Redesign Team Rhythms for Insight

→ Build in reflection points after sprints or deadlines. Don’t just rush into the next thing...pause, debrief, and metabolize learning.

→ Protect open time in calendars for deep work or strategic thought — this signals that thinking space is performance space.⁸ Also consider blocking your calendar around key tasks based on your circadian rhythms. This optimizes cognitive performance, decision-making, and creative capacity by working with your physiology’s natural biology rather than against it.

Example: After project wrap-ups, instead of just asking “What’s next?”, run a 15-minute “pause & pattern” debrief to ask: What surprised us? What could we refine? What insight emerged? It trains teams to extract value from reflection — not just output.

5. Rethink What You Reward

→ Innovation doesn’t grow in urgency alone. Reward questions over quick answers, reflection over reactivity, and deep insight over superficial speed.

Example: Celebrate when someone slows down to think — not just when they act fast. This might look like spotlighting a team member who challenged an assumption or asked a question that changed the direction of a project. Small signals shape big norms.

Culture get's shaped by what gets repeated — and repetition is often driven by what gets rewarded.

Conclusion: The Strategic Shift That Unlocks Innovation

Creativity isn’t a trait — it’s a state.

And state is trainable.

The future of high performance isn't about choosing between awareness and execution. It's about realizing that awareness is what unlocks smarter, more strategic output.

Leaders who optimize for awareness — of brain states, system rhythms, and internal signals — are the ones who access deeper insight, make better decisions, and perform at a sustainably higher level.

Sometimes, doing less strategically is what unlocks more: More clarity. More originality. More impact.

If innovation is truly a strategic priority, then our systems, rhythms, and processes must be designed around how the brain actually innovates and not just how the business operates.

Strategy lives in the quality of our thinking. And that starts in the brain and its neurobiology.

The question isn’t whether your team is capable of innovation.

It’s whether your processes are making it possible.

This is the hidden lever.

Not just for the individual. Not just for the team. But for the organization itself.

---

Want to bring this into your team or leadership offsite?

Let’s explore how to build cultures that think, perform and execute better.

Get in touch here

If you are interested in further resources to dig deeper into this topic, you can sign up for the monthly mailing list here

---

1. McKinsey & Company (2021). How companies can improve their innovation performance

2. Raichle, M. E. (2015). The brain's default mode network. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 38, 433–447. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-neuro-071013-014030

3. Beaty, R. E., et al. (2015). Creativity and the default network: A functional connectivity analysis of the creative brain at rest. Neuropsychologia, 64, 92–98. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2014.09.019

4. Coyle, D. (2018). The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups. Bantam.

5. Dana, D. (2018). The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy: Engaging the Rhythm of Regulation. Norton.

6. Immordino-Yang, M. H., et al. (2012). Rest is not idleness: Implications of the brain’s default mode for human development and education. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7(4), 352–364. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691612447308

7. Zaccaro, A., et al. (2018). How breath-control can change your life: A systematic review on psychophysiological correlates of slow breathing. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 12, 353. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2018.00353/full

8. Newport, C. (2016). Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World. Grand Central Publishing.

9. Seeley, W. W., Menon, V., Schatzberg, A. F., et al. (2007). Dissociable Intrinsic Connectivity Networks for Salience Processing and Executive Control. Journal of Neuroscience, 27(9), 2349–2356. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.5587-06.2007