Dan Korus, Confidently Creative?

Chemistry, ultras, and the long way round to knowing yourself.

‘Confidently Creative?’ is a joint series with Sven Brodmerkel (PhD). Together we are talking to original thinkers across different fields about creative confidence: what it is, why so few people act on it, and what makes conditions either conducive or hostile to it.

This week’s guest is Dan Korus

Dan has a master’s degree in Chemistry from Western Washington University. He spent more than six years managing in fast-paced, high-consequence work environments, an experience that clarified, at close quarters, what leadership actually demands and what most leaders never get taught.

He co-founded Kestryl Edge to address that gap directly. The firm runs emotional intelligence workshops and retention programmes for small teams, using EQ assessment and in-person work to surface what usually stays unspoken. The premise is simple: you cannot build trust or creative confidence in a culture that has not yet learned to be honest with itself.

---

Q1. Is creativity something you do or is creative something you are?

Creativity is the self confidence that what you think, write, make, say is worth bringing into the world and sharing. I believe it’s both. It’s being willing to share yourself. Then the sharing.

It’s a willingness to feel something new and will it into existence.

I think we are all creative but we all have different barriers holding us back from sharing and honing that creativity.

---

Q2. Was there a moment when you first felt creatively confident or a moment when you realised you hadn’t been?

Growing up I loved story. Especially human stories. I would listen to This American Life on CDs, then my iPod classic.

As I’ve grown up, writing has felt wonderful to me. There is something so satisfying at conveying a thought or idea in just the right way. I love to write how I talk. And to read the words I write. To adjust their flow and cadence. Making them the perfect sentences for my neurodivergent brain.

I’ve had to work on the way I express ideas my whole life. I took remedial penmanship in grade school because my handwriting was so bad they IQ tested me to make sure I could keep up.

In college I wrote some experimental essays reflecting about my childhood experiences. My parents got pissed because they said the essays reflected poorly upon them and made me take them down. I was conflicted. I had older students and classmates saying they really liked my writing. But I felt like I had to choose between my parents’ acceptance and upholding their image with engaging in a form of expression. It soured writing for me and I stopped writing then. It had become inauthentic, gated. Measured.

I started writing again this year, more than a decade later, and it’s made my life feel better. Like I’m more myself. This is my moment of creative confidence. I’ve never felt so free in my expression. And to have people positively engage in my work?! What a wonderful feeling.

I write about my feelings, my thoughts, my observations, my ideas for the book I’m working on, the research I read, the books I finish. It’s something I get to do and something I HAVE to do. I’ve had days where all I can do is sit and work to get thoughts out of my head and onto paper until my reservoir is empty. Sometimes an idea just itches at me until I get it on paper. It feels great to get positive feedback but the act of polishing my thoughts and having fun with it is so nice I think I’d still write even if my whole audience vanished. Maybe my writing would be even better if I knew no one was watching…

---

Q3. How do you distinguish creative confidence from creative ability?

I have two answers. Short and long. :)

Short: Confidence is the self-trust you can do something. Ability is the physical requirements.

Long: I run ultra marathons. Trail only. And even when I’ve trained my ass off I still don’t feel confident going into them. So much can happen along the way. You’re balancing exertion, hydration, nutrition, and mental state for hours on end. Do I have the ability? Yes. I’ve finished. But the confidence has only come from being across the finish line. Until then it’s months of wondering if I can finish. And wondering the same question but louder while I pound out the miles during the race.

In this way ability is a physical checklist of whether or not the math is there to support the outcome. To me, confidence is an earned wisdom only granted through trial and error. Confidence is a question with a variety of answers that are earned and lost through experience.

---

Q4. Can you walk us through a specific moment when you had an idea and chose not to share it? What was the context? And what role did the environment play?

I was in a small company and the leadership was hell bent on doing things their way. New ideas were threats to the status quo. You had to fight tooth and nail or do it behind closed doors then show people it worked after the fact.

The environment actually made it harder to leave when I should have. I overstayed my welcome. I gained weight, became depressed, and put my personal health on the line for the dream I had. The initial environment was awesome. A true scientific start up. It was different every day. Rules were sparse. You could do what you wanted to. Do what you needed to do. Test. And learn.

I kept telling myself things would change. That this meeting was different. That the leaders would finally listen to how upset we were and would change something. That this time my 1:1 with the boss where he would write down my frustrations… he would do something about it. Anything.

Toxic leadership is a slow poison. The leaders would shut down creativity and ideas — they needed it to be done their way. Meetings to pitch ideas were met with “you don’t know what you’re doing.”

During a project where I had done meetings with the national head of safety regulation for the industry we were in I was presenting why we needed to complete a project a certain way and the CEO told me “You’re just trying to hide behind safety. You have no idea about any of this.”

Our lead engineer, a grown man with a family, cried in my arms in the parking lot that day and quit weeks later. He said he would stay if our management promised a way to reel in the CEO’s behavior. They couldn’t make that promise. He had made significant technical improvements to the product. He was creative. He was hard working. He was a genius. He showed up early and stayed late to get done what was on his plate because he cared. A handful of us left soon after.

That’s how I know the power of dreams and the power of toxicity in the workplace. Alas! I remember the fun times, the laughs, the feelings of accomplishment, and I really wish the leadership had listened a little more. Been willing to work on themselves a little more.

Just today I got two different messages from current employees who want my help getting out and moving onto something new.

Leadership is an art. It’s a collection of skills. The environments we build are a reflection of our progress in those skills and our awareness of ourselves and those around us. The creativity we’re able to foster is a by-product of having the skills in the art of leadership to create an environment where psychological safety can grow.

I am dismayed and feel sorrowful for the leaders who point the finger at everyone but themselves.

---

Q5. What are the signs that creative leadership is absent and what can get in its way?

Creative leadership is about being open minded and enabling others to do the same. It’s about supporting failures and lifting up those around you.

If creative leadership is absent there will be a big emphasis on rules, procedures, SOPs, rigorous adherence to norms and the status quo.

---

Q6. Think of someone you’ve helped become more creatively confident. What did you actually do and what did you deliberately not do?

I met them where they were at. I always found something I loved about their work and shared that with them. I edited with grace and wisdom and pushed them just the right amount between drafts.

In short, I watered the plant in front of me. Small plant? Just a bit of water. Wait. Letting them grow. Then more, over time. Never suffocating the roots.

---

Q7. To what extent is creative thinking domain-specific?

It’s not. Creativity belongs everywhere. It’s breathing life into everything around you. Even a dog walk can be creative. In fact, cross-domain creativity is where we get the biggest disruptive innovation cycles. Bringing people who’ve learned lessons and thoughts from particular industries and skills and bringing them to something new to think “how could this apply?”

---

Q8. What’s the relationship between creative thinking and being wrong in public? Can you have one without a tolerance for the other? If so, what can you do to become more tolerant/resilient?

Creative thinking is being willing to be wrong in public. You can think creatively and not ever take your thoughts, ideas, and expression into the wild… but that’s a suffocating life. Like a caged animal or a tree in a cramped greenhouse.

Trees in greenhouses tend to die. Researchers found that the wind that blows on them causes them to grow deeper roots than they would otherwise. This is the relationship of creative thinking, being wrong in public, and resilience.

Being wrong is wind. It can blow us over, or we can grow deeper roots. Deeper roots allow us to stay grounded and grow taller despite stronger wind. At some point the wind doesn’t even matter anymore. It just cleans the dust off our leaves.

---

Q9. What role does AI play in your creative endeavours? How does it affect your creative process and agency?

AI is a tool I use when researching, formatting, spell checking, and creating a bibliography. It does my tedious work.

I work in emotional intelligence. I ask my clients and people who read my work to think critically about their emotions. I ask them to think about their feelings. AI has no place in being apart of my critical thinking process or the words I put down on paper.

I could save hours a week if I let AI write my work for me… I have thought about how much time I could get back. But I would never respect myself or feel worthy of asking others to consider their emotions and write about why that’s important if I wasn’t genuine enough to do it from my own heart, mind, and soul.

---

Q10. What do you know now about building creative capability that you wish you’d understood years ago?

That it makes me happy, it helps me think, it grounds me, and in all these ways and more… it’s worth my time. When writing something new, I often make myself laugh and smile.

I wish I knew that writing makes me a better listener and emotional processor. I carry a notebook everywhere I go. I record ideas, thoughts, notes, things people say. I also write down emotions, reactions, triggers.

This process helps me become a more stable and grounded person.

I would tell myself that it doesn’t matter what the end result is. Where the writing ends up. How neat it is. Who likes it. I would encourage myself to do it for the sake of doing it.

---

Q11. Do you have a ‘creative hero’? If so, what makes this person special?

No. :) No creative hero for me. I think there are a number of people who I’m inspired by. I see them out there working at their craft and it makes me want to be out there with them, working hard at something we both care about side by side.

There are people I admire like the authors of book series I love. Matt Dinniman’s Dungeon Crawler Carl audiobooks are one of the best worlds I’ve ever gotten to escape into.

But there’s no one who I’d say irrevocably is my creative hero.

---

Q12. If you could recommend a book or another relevant source on creativity, which one would it be?

Read fantasy. Read Sci-Fi. Both are genres that ask “what if?” and take us on a journey as we learn the answer.

Read stories about real people living human experiences. Learn what it means to be human for someone else through their own words.

Before I was medicated, I didn’t have enough attention span to read more than short stories or listen to short books and podcasts on audiobook. Also, I couldn’t just do that — I HAD to be doing something else at the same time or I would get distracted.

I remember the feeling of being able to sit down and do nothing but read and actually retain the information. It was an amazing feeling. Like my mind which is usually a storm was now a focused stream.

In that way I consume media that serves me. Do I want to escape to a world? Dungeon Crawler Carl, Red Rising, The Stormlight Archives.

Do I need to learn about how to grow my business? Alex Hormozi. There are probably more names here but a lot of business advice I find to be snake oil. Check back in with me in 5 years and I’ll have more recommendations here.

Do I need to grow my inner self to show up in the ways I need to for my team, my job, my business, my family, and my friends? Brené Brown, Simon Sinek, Jocko Willink, Matthew Jones.

I don’t have any one recommendation. My recommendation is just to read, listen, watch, and let the things you find change you.

---

Our next guest is Jennifer Houle. A VP of people operations and an experienced HR professional, Jennifer writes Uncompliant on Substack: dispatches for anyone trying to do good work inside systems that were never built to support them. She put a question to us that we haven’t been able to shake: “Who benefits when people stop believing they’re creative? Once people stop trusting their own thinking, imagination, or instincts, they become far easier to contain.”

More next week!

---

---