The real role of leadership may be to create an environment where artistic and conventional personalities can do more than merely coexist. When Kate Jennings started working on Wall Street more than six years ago, many of her friends were shocked. In Jennings' circles, this kind of thing just wasn't done. Now a senior writer at J.P. Morgan, where her duties include helping senior executives with speeches, she praises her good luck in finding mentors to take a chance on her unconventional background and untrammeled love of adjective and metaphor. The job has made her more disciplined when it comes to working on her poetry and fiction.
Time becomes more precious.
What may be more surprising is how precious people like Kate Jennings can be to Wall Street. While the relationship between white-shoe conservatism and barefoot aestheticism is typically adversarial at best, that doesn't mean the two don't coexist. Dali at the Drawing Board Creative people typically relish intellectual challenges in whatever arena they find themselves. Yet creative people, because of their quixotic and unconventional qualities, are frequently unpopular around the water cooler. Imagine Salvador Dali telling ad sales to scrap its presentation in favor of something a little more outre, or a supervisor trying to make diva Kathleen Battle punch a time clock.