Sharon, a corporate HR leader, spends her days managing her team and helping shape a culture that supports innovation and creative thinking. But when fall rolls around, her evenings are spent with foam wreath forms, mesh ribbon, and a glue gun.

She makes holiday wreaths. Bold ones. Glittery, whimsical, full of unexpected combinations. Sometimes they land, and sometimes they don’t. But always, the process is messy, iterative, and deeply creative.

It might sound like an odd crossover. But the parallels are powerful and important. Wreath-making is creative thinking in action. There’s a clear purpose, a loose set of tools, and a whole lot of unknowns in between. There are aesthetic choices, design constraints, customer needs, and constant course correction.

In many ways, it’s everything innovation in business should be but often isn’t. In corporate environments, creativity gets overengineered. There’s pressure to skip the messy middle... to justify every move in advance... to have the answer before asking the question.

But that’s not how creativity works. And it’s not how innovation thrives.

This kind of messy, iterative, hands-on thinking, the kind that mixes structure with improvisation, is exactly what organizations need more—especially in complex, high-stakes environments where creativity can too easily be dismissed as risky or indulgent.

Here are six leadership lessons from a wreath-making table that translate directly to the boardroom, the brainstorming session, and the strategy retreat.

Lesson 1: Creativity needs chaos before clarity

Most wreaths start ugly.

At some point in the design, the composition looks off. The ribbon is fighting the florals. The texture balance is wrong. The whole thing feels like a misfire.

But that’s part of the process. Keep going, keep layering, keep stepping back. Eventually, something clicks.

Creative thinking at work follows the same pattern. Early drafts are disjointed. Brainstorms feel chaotic. A new idea might solve one problem but create another. And it’s tempting to pull the plug.

Visionary leaders know that clarity follows chaos, not the other way around. The mistake most teams make is stopping too soon.

Lesson 2: Leaders compose; they don’t control

Wreath-making isn’t about wrangling every element into submission. It’s about noticing how different materials interact: where the eye travels, how the shapes and colors work together, and what needs to shift.

It’s not control. It’s composition.

The same applies to leading innovation. The role of the leader isn’t to dictate every move. It’s to shape conditions, arrange talent, provide structure and space, edit when it’s necessary, or step back when it’s not.

Too many leaders default to micromanaging creative work out of fear. But possibility can’t be coerced. It has to be composed.

Lesson 3: Reward the risk, not just the result

When a wreath is finished, it gets photographed, complimented, maybe sold.

But the real learning comes from the ones that didn’t work—the ones where the wire frame sagged or the colors clashed. Those failures sharpen instinct and improve judgment.

Innovation cultures that only reward the polished end product favor team members who play it safe. Especially in industries where risk aversion is built into the operating model, the instinct to avoid failure is understandable. But it’s also limiting.

Leaders who want to unlock creativity have to reward effort, curiosity, and experimentation before the outcome is clear. Celebrate learning. Normalize iteration. Make creative courage visible.

Lesson 4: Presence is a strategic skill

At a recent holiday market, Sharon noticed something.

Some wreaths drew people in immediately. Others were passed by. But unless you were paying close attention to body language, facial expressions, and where people paused, you’d miss it.

That’s a core skill of innovative leadership: attention.

The best leaders are present. They notice microsignals. They see when energy dips in a meeting. They pick up on which ideas generate buzz and which ones die on the table. They watch for friction, momentum, hesitancy, not just hard data.

Creativity is a perceptual skill. Leadership is, too.

Lesson 5: Perfectionism kills possibility

Ask a toddler to decorate something, and they’ll dive in with joyful abandon. Stickers go in odd places. Colors clash. There’s no blueprint; just curiosity and confidence.

Now watch adults in a meeting asked to “be creative.” They freeze. They overthink. They edit in real time.

Perfectionism has been trained into them.

Visionary leaders understand that innovation requires unlearning this habit. They create environments where teams can explore, test, even get a little weird. Without judgment, they separate idea generation from evaluation. They know that play isn’t childish; it’s strategic.

In high-stakes environments, this may feel radical. But it’s precisely what’s needed. The absence of risk-taking is not safety; it’s stagnation.

Lesson 6: Feedback beats forecasting

When Sharon set up her table at the night market, she wasn’t just hoping for sales. She was running an innovation lab.

She watched what caught attention. She listened to what sparked conversation. She noted what was ignored. It was real-world feedback in real time; fast, human, unfiltered.

Leaders often rely too much on sanitized data. But some of the richest insights come from interaction—like putting a prototype in the world and seeing what happens.

This might look like piloting a new workflow in one department, testing a communication tool with a focus group, or introducing a new service model with opt-in participation.

The point is to test, learn, refine, then scale.

Wreath-making may seem like a strange metaphor for business innovation. But that’s the point.

Innovation doesn’t come from more of the same. It comes from unexpected combinations and letting the messy middle exist. Effective leaders know that vision isn’t about having all the answers; it’s about clearing space for something new to emerge.

Possibility isn’t a process. It’s a posture. It starts with leaders willing to get glitter on their hands.