Lessons on Creativity: Personal Creative Inventory
photo by Drew Beamer
Imagine walking along a busy urban sidewalk on your daily trek to work. Tall, shady office buildings surround you, and nearby car engines are humming. You turn a corner to head down a sizable pedestrian-only street, and your brisk pace grinds to a halt when a quarter-sized sparkling ball of air bursts a few inches from your face. Looking around, you’re surprised to see hundreds of iridescent bubbles floating around your usual path. People have circled the area to admire the glistening, magic air.
Enveloped in bubbles is my image of how I hope to experience my career after this course. Bubbles can instill wonder and awaken a childlike imagination. Magic and wonder are a part of how I understand creativity. The working definition of creativity described in Creativity Unbound is “novelty that is useful” (Miller et al., p14). Creativity, like magic, can spark from unexplained phenomena, float in unpredictable paths, and lead to unexpected destinations.
During my fall 2022 term at Pepperdine Graziadio Business School, I had the incredible experience of taking a course on creativity and innovation. Readings, lectures, and projects helped me identify areas of personal growth, strategies to instill creativity in myself and other, and meaningful ways to connect and engage. The valuable lessons include a personal creative profile, intrinsic and extrinsic barriers to creativity I need to overcome, and how the role of creativity fits within my future. I hope that by sharing these personal lessons, I might inspire you to conduct an inventory for yourself. I’ll begin by unpacking the first and most crucial ingredient for cultivating creativity, which is understanding my own contributions as a creative leader.
Personal Creative Analysis
The FourSight Thinking profile indicator is one of the most helpful team-building tools I’ve used throughout my career as a marketer and designer. The FourSight thinking model asks a series of questions to examine your preferences for roles within four stages of the Creative Problem-Solving Process (CPS), which are: clarify, ideate, develop, and implement. After seeing that my FourSight results were flat, I joked to my supervisor that “I took a creativity test and learned I don’t like any part of the creative process!”
He, a creative director, laughed and quipped, “Welcome to the club.” Although I was initially surprised to learn that my profile was an Integrator, after three team projects using the CPS model described in the FourSight tools, I’ve embraced my type. A core component of my BFA studies was developing the ability to demonstrate each phase of the CPS process for reaching design solutions. My undergrad training likely influenced my “even-handed approach” to the creative process as is characteristic of an integrator (Puccio, Integrator). I see the value in not having a preference for any stage because it allows me to step back when others are working well and step in where support is needed. The Integrator’s emphasis on collaboration felt suitable for me, especially after reading about the Collaborator in The Ten Faces of Innovation.
“Integrators plug the gaps.”
Author Tom Kelley writes that Collaborators are “willing to leap organizational boundaries to coax us out of our silos to work together in multidisciplinary efforts” and “often lead from the middle, using their diplomatic skills to hold the group together” (Ten Faces of Innovation, 2005, p114). One of my favorite aspects of being in the MBA program was the opportunity to build relationships with people who are experts in other areas and who do not think the way I do. The program has allowed me to build bridges with other departments across my company as each course requires at least one team project. Historically, I’ve been successful at diffusing tension and quickly finding mutual ground. This course pushed me to work on three different group assignments, each with their own creative challenge and team members. I found myself naturally emerging as a leader by looking for ways to support, improve, and encourage the contributions of my teammates. My collaborative spirit is not the only face of innovation I bring to my job.
Part of my role as a visual communicator also involves being what Kelley describes as an Experience Architect because I have to be conscious of how an audience will experience receiving, opening, and unpacking the boxes, brochures, posters, or interfaces I propose. When designing, I ask myself if many folds enhance or distract from the information, if the page size is manageable, if the colors are readable to people with visual impairments, or if the user will lose interest after three clicks on a screen. I go through the experience of an audience member nearly every time I design a high-impact project. I welcome these challenges as they push my designs from ordinary to extraordinary. As Kelley describes the Experience Architect, I’ve also wanted to “fend off the ordinary” in many work processes (2005, p168) but have been met with barriers outside my influence.
In the 14 weeks of the course, I gained a deeper understanding of my personal strengths and the potential influence I could have as a creative leader. I don’t necessarily think of myself as more innovative than anyone else. However, as an Integrator, I feel comfortable moving through all CPS stages and can respect where others are in their process. I hope to continue developing my leadership skills and patience for others who may not be as experienced or comfortable with the creative process as I am. Knowing that I have strengths as an Integrator, Collaborator, and Experience Architect provides me with tools and language to communicate where I can add value and advocate for myself and others. However, my ability to enact creative change can only go as far as my organization allows.
Creative Tools
Understanding one’s creative strengths is the first step. Next, we must lean into our strengths to produce innovations and improve creative thinking. Scheduling designated time for play and rest and reevaluating the design and function of your personal workspace can help inspire novel ideas. My most unique ideas and solutions often pop into my head when doing repetitive tasks like working on a puzzle, bouncing a ball, or even mating socks. Being intentional about creating an environment and space to play will be essential to continued creative development.
“The questions that will most provoke us . . . are the ones we’re avoiding”
To further growth, every effort must be made to reveal potential blind spots. Hal Gregersen mentioned in his TEDx talk, “The questions that will most provoke us, that will make us feel most uncomfortable in life, are the ones we’re avoiding, and the ones we work really hard to stay away from” (2014). We don’t know what we don’t know. Networking and soliciting diverse perspectives, particularly dissenting opinions, will help reveal pitfalls or even better solutions. Unpacking how others think through a problem is helpful to see the world through a different lens and opens the door to out-of-the-box thinking. Asking uncomfortable questions and clarifying misunderstandings can lead to better communication, greater collaboration, and more creative ideas.
Finally, balancing divergent and convergent thinking will help bring out the best solutions; creativity and constraint are not mutually exclusive. Applying blue-hat thinking at the beginning and end of collaborative meetings, as suggested in Six Thinking Hats, can help provide context and establish clear next steps for creative team development. In fact, each of the six thinking hats (Green—ideation, Yellow—optimism, Black—skepticism, White—fact-sharing, Red—emotion, and Blue—guidelines) has a role in creating innovations. Allowing space for each hat can help balance opposing ways of thinking and establish a path forward, which will improve work relationships and even save time.
A Way Forward
Wherever my path leads, I hope it leads to a road where the air is magic. When bubbles fill the landscape and glisten in the sun with a rainbow of colors, I feel uplifted, carefree, and unbound by the gravity of the world’s restrictions. Bubbles can transport me back to a time when no question was too uncomfortable and no idea was too silly. Looking ahead, I would love to work in a place that embraces imagination. When I have greater influence, I want to foster an environment for my teams where they can reconnect with their childhood imaginations. No matter where I work, I will always encounter extrinsic barriers. Still, I must remain vigilant to combat intrinsic obstacles and work with what I have to integrate the CPS process into work challenges, ask uncomfortable questions, and make unexpected connections.
References
Kelley, Tom. (2005). The Ten Faces of Innovation: IDEO’s Strategies for Beating the Devil’s Advocate and Driving Creativity Throughout Your Organization. Doubleday.
Miller, Blair et al. (2011). Creativity Unbound: An Introduction to the Creative Process (5th ed.). FourSight, LLC.
Puccio, Gerard. n.d. Integrator. FourSight. https://www.foursightonline.com/integrator?hsCtaTracking=9c8c0fa3-269e-43a7-9a0c-2939a7f8ec8f%7C148803b9-da45-4ca5-bf0d-25a371d361d1
TEDx Talks. (2014, April 29) What are you dead wrong about today?: Hal Gregersen at TEDxBYU [video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=os4AhKEzE6Y