Sandy Cormack, a personal and organizational consultant, continues with his installments of Unlocking Creative Potential. He uses a neuroscience-based approach to team building, leadership development, creativity and innovation, change management, and business strategy development.

As my regular readers know, I am a big fan of looking at various ways learning takes place, when and how training can be made most effective, and how we can unleash the best in all of us and those we train. Take a look again at Unlocking Creative Potential, this time from a group perspective.

Here’s Sandy Cormack with Part III:

Unlocking Creative Potential, Part III

by Sandy Cormack

In the final installment we extend the discussion of individual creativity and explore the neuroscience of team creativity. Please refer to the two previous articles for basic left brain-right brain information and the model for whole brain creativity.

Consider a team with a wide variety of brain preferences:

Between them, the team members share a “complete brain.” Each thinking preference is represented in at least one brain. Some have a preference for two attributes, some for three.

But without proper facilitation and training, they probably won’t be able to leverage their collective creativity. They won’t function as a complete brain.

This is mainly due to the fact that they likely don’t understand one another’s brains. Lacking this, they don’t understand one another’s strengths and weaknesses. Looking across the team, Fred has a weakness in an area that’s a strength for Peter (structural). Janet has a strength in an area that’s a weakness for Mary (social).

Without team training, this group will likely regard these differences in a negative fashion. I see your weakness in structural thinking as a liability to the team instead of your conceptual thinking strength as a team asset. So we end up wasting energy on the problem that lies between us, rather than focusing it on the problem at hand. And that means we don’t get the best solutions.

Team training is a natural progression from individual training. By participating in a team brain training workshop the individual first acquires self insight – a complete understanding of their brain preferences. From this they can move to self management – learning what they can do with this new understanding, acquiring new skills.

The next step in the progression is team awareness: what does my group’s ‘collective brain’ look like? The final step is team development: how can we exploit our brain diversity? This four-step process is a model for general organizational development.

Here is how we get a team to understand one another’s brains. This is an excerpt from a team profile – i.e. ‘the collective brain’ of a group of about 30 people:

Taken as a whole, this group is well-balanced and displays a preference in all four attributes. But looking at the group in another way reveals its true mental diversity:

This excerpt from a ‘dot graph’ depicts not only the group ‘averages’ in all four thinking attributes, but also the range across the group for each attribute. Each dot represents an individual’s percentile score in a particular attribute. The scores span the entire percentile spectrum. This is a dramatic depiction of the group’s mental diversity.

It’s important that a team experiences this revelation collectively. When depicted in this fashion the team experiences their ‘collective brain’ for the first time and gains immediate understanding of their innate strengths – strengths they never knew they had. I now see your strength in conceptual thinking as a team asset, and will consider you an internal consultant in that area.

Now that the team has moved through the four-step process they can exploit their collective creativity in a number of ways. Recall the four phase creative problem solving process from the first article:

1. Problem definition
2. Ideation
3. Solution selection
4. Implementation

Team members may naturally find themselves gravitating towards one of the four phases. Analytical thinkers may be attracted to problem definition or solution selection. Conceptual thinkers may be attracted to ideation.

But it’s important for all team members to learn how their preferences contribute to each phase.

• In problem definition, analytical thinkers research the problem and collect data to create a clear picture of the current situation. Structural thinkers consider processes and procedures as the likely source of the problem. Social thinkers define the problem after discussing it with others and gaining multiple perspectives. Conceptual thinkers create a clear vision for the future and contrast it with the current situation.
• In ideation, analytical thinkers take a systems approach and integrate the best aspects of multiple ideas. Structural thinkers draw upon what has worked well in the past and seek to improve. Social thinkers seek to understand best practices external to the organization. Conceptual thinkers intuitively proliferate transformational ideas.
• In solution selection, analytical thinkers use a cost-benefits approach, seeking to understand the pros and cons of each idea before selecting the best. Structural thinkers may tend to ‘short circuit’ this step and move immediately from ideation to implementation. Social thinkers consider the impact of the solutions upon people. Conceptual thinkers gravitate to the more strategic solutions that break structure.
• In implementation, analytical thinkers focus on performance measures so they can validate the solution. Structural thinkers take a leadership role and manage the process. Social thinkers ‘grease the skids’ by finding out how to mitigate the organizational impacts of the solution. Conceptual thinkers might not even get involved.

By leveraging each thinking preference in each phase, the odds of finding the ‘correct’ solution increases dramatically. The group can intelligently determine the ‘right’ amount of change the organization can withstand. It can decide whether the solution should be more strategic or more tactical. It can better obtain the internal support needed to achieve success.

And just by going through the process, the team members will develop skills in their areas of weakness as they learn from those for whom those areas are strengths. Conceptual thinkers will learn to appreciate the impact of their blue sky ideas on the people in the organization. Structural thinkers will learn the value of ‘slowing down’ to consider a wide range of alternatives. Social thinkers will learn the value of a cost-benefits approach. Analytical thinkers will learn to ask ‘what do you think about this’ when defining the problem.

As we conclude this three part series I want to summarize the key takeaways:

1. Everyone is creative, but in different ways
2. When we minimize the problems that lie between us, we can begin to leverage our mental diversity and collective creativity
3. Mutual understanding is the key to team development
4. We are smarter and more creative collectively than we are individually

The foundation to all of this is the left brain right brain test. Taking it is the first step in unlocking your organization’s vast creative potential.

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For more resources about training, see the Training library.

My thanks to Sandy Cormack as my guest expert blogger for providing his view for “unlocking your organization’s vast creative potential.” It certainly deserves consideration and further study. As we all know, I am about generating ideas from wherever they come–so keep them coming. I’m always available through this site through your comments and my own website, where I talk about a few other things besides training and development. In this case, I leave it to you to make the connections. The field of creativity and how we go about unleashing it in individuals and groups is a vital part of our profession.

Happy Training. By the way, you’ll all understand we have to make a living so I need to mention yet another approach to training and development. It begins–well, where it begins–with early man and how he learned to survive. My new ebook, The Cave Man Guide to Training and Development, takes a more basic look at our profession, along with a few related areas and looks at what we do (or don’t do) from various perspectives, sometimes the most basic: the trainee, the employer, the trainer or training manager.

From the publisher of the Free Management Library, Carter McNamara: “I have read each of Jack’s chapters in the ‘Cave Man’ book, and each provides a no-nonsense, set of practical tips to do many of the most important aspects of training. In this day and age when so many books dwell on the theoretical and the obvious, Jack’s book is a breath of fresh air. It should be in every trainer’s toolkit.”

As we close out the year soon, I too am closing this spirituality case study series with this last example of Gary Zukav’s work. You might recognize him as the author of the bestseller The Seat of the Soul. What I’m going to share with you comes from the book The Heart of the Soul: Emotional Awareness.

What I appreciate about his insights along with co-author Linda Francis are some different perspectives around becoming more emotionally aware. They describe emotional awareness as becoming aware of everything you feel at every moment. In order to do this we need to become aware of our inner landscape of emotions and feelings inside of us, our external landscape of how these emotions are manifesting to the world and then becoming a detached observer of it all.

Our greater goal to becoming more emotionally aware is our own spiritual health. According to the authors, the goal of spiritual growth calls us to create a new and deeper understanding of who we are and what our purposes are. One way that we can grow is to learn how to own and claim our authentic power, which is the alignment of our personality with our soul. We can only do this when we are fully engaged in the present moment. This is “the longest journey that we will make it life is from your head to your heart.”

How they describe our emotions in terms of our energy system was very interesting. They believe that our emotions tell us how our energy is being processed. As our energy leaves our body, it gives us messages or signals from our soul. “Every emotion offers you information about you that’s important.” If you ignore the emotion, you ignore essentially soulful information. The more important the message thus the stronger the emotion you will feel.

“Any painful emotion means you are acting, speaking and thinking in fear and doubt.” When you don’t have painful emotions you are acting, speaking and thinking in the opposite with love and trust.

Let me give you an example of what happened to me while I was reading this book in which applies what I was learning. I had a painful emotion, this headache right above my left eye that lasted for a week or so. The energy center is by the forehead, often referred to as the third eye or 6th energy center. This energy center allows you to see beyond the physical into the universal. “It allows you to know the intentions of others, even if they do not express them.” As I was reading this I wondered where this was coming from and whose intentions might this be from. A few days later I come to find out that my husband was having the worst week of his 15 year career at this company. We discussed and prayed about his situation. I noticed how the pain began to lessen as did his stressful situation.

A simple and profound way that they described the concept of stress I really liked. They said that all stress really is is resistance to your life. The more resistance we have for things in our lives, the more stress we feel. Ever notice how when things are good it’s like we are going with the flow? When we resist the flow of life is when we bring stress to our lives. I’ll be doing the same thing two different days, one day I’ll go with the flow and the other day I resist it. Both give me different outcomes. The first is based in good energy processed with love and trust, the later is when our energy is being processed in fear and doubt.

As you reflect on this past year, think about how emotionally aware you’ve been and how stressful of a year it’s been. I encourage you to use what our soul is communicating with us, our emotions through our energy systems, to make 2012 a year in which you don’t resist but persist in the flow of your life.

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For more resources, see our Library topic Spirituality in the Workplace.

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Janae Bower is an inspirational speaker, award-winning author and training consultant. She founded Finding IT, a company that specializes in personal and professional development getting to the heart of what matters most. She started Project GratOtude, a movement to increase gratitude in people’s lives.

A colleague of mine, Meredith Kimbell, shared a holiday greeting with this article she wrote for her executive coaching practice. I share it with you as a way to hone your leadership and bring more peace and joy to your work. This comes from her website – http://www.corporateadventure.com

Three themes caught my attention recently: A leader I work with told me that he loved gravity, the force. When I looked confused, he explained, “Gravity is a constant invitation to drop things rather than pick them up or carry them around for very long.” Hmmm…. Then, I was listening to NPR about ways to create a “greener” holiday season by simplifying and letting go of “stuff.” Finally, after shopping this weekend, I discovered “The 12 Days of Christmas” song recycling in my head.

In the spirit of all three themes, I offer you 12 ways leaders can create more joy (with the help of gravity and some practice.)

1. Drop your need to know. Increase your genuine sense of “wonder” and invite new relaxation, creativity, enthusiasm and possibilities you will never discover without it.
2. Drop your over-exaggerated sense of importance. If you think you are the only one who “gets it” or can do “it,” you’ve mis-stepped as a leader. Stop overburdening yourself, overlooking others who want to help and stressing everyone far more than needed. Use the time you find to develop and leverage others more effectively.
3. Let go of any hope of being perfect. Put it down. Your people won’t be perfect and neither will you. Dropping this impossible standard will release you to relax, laugh more, delegate more and use others’ input as developmental opportunities vs. “tests” of adequacy.
4. Put down your seriousness. Laugh at yourself and your mistakes as an awesome way to keep perspective, loosen up and invite others to see you as a person they can approach with ease.
5. Surrender your sense of being indispensible. Go home. Take breaks. Use all your vacation days, unplugged. Invest in your vitality to keep yourself at your best and set a great example for others.
6. Drop being the first and most dominant voice. Listen more. Shrink your airtime and you will connect with others, show that you care, and learn things you’ll never discover any other way.
7. Let go of pre-judging. Hold history like a swordsman holds a sword…not to tight and not too loose. If you hold on to history too tightly, your prejudices will only guarantee more history. If you relax and welcome a fresh start, for yourself and others, you will set the stage for creating an adventure worth living.
8. Release self criticism. Ok, let go of criticism of others too, but start with yourself. Substitute self reflection and learning for obsessively dumping on yourself. Contrary to what you may have learned, you really will be brilliant without keeping your foot on the back on your neck.
9. Drop the chatter. Whether the chatter is in your head, on TV, radio, or social media, turn it off. Art comes from a blank paper, music from silence and your most authentic knowing and creative ideas from a place of relaxed “flow.” Learn to relax deeply. It takes practice, but start with deep breathing during meetings and your commute.
10. Disengage from so much “how”. Getting consumed with “how will we ….,” puts you on the hamster wheel of urgency, overwhelm and stress. Get off by focusing yourself and others first on “why” something is worth doing and “what” you can contribute. Once you are clear on why and what, the how’s will flow far more easily.
11. Drop contracting. Anytime you feel tight, let it go. Move, exhale deeply, talk it out, and feel gravity pull down every cell. Your health, creativity and effectiveness will thank you for it.
12. Release boredom. Let go of the disengagement that causes boredom. Wake up to reconnecting with what is most important to you and contributing what fulfills you so you show up enthusiastically, at your best.

So, when you drop all of these, what’s left? What do you hold on to? My wish for you is that you hold on to the moment and stay attentive to the freshness of each breath, situation, and person. Hold on to hope. Like a puppy, it is an active thing that endlessly snoops around for something intriguing and delightful. Hold on to gratitude; it brings joy, fulfillment and rest from the struggle. Hold on to that which lives in your heart as your best source for what is most important and meaningful. Hold on to your amazing ability to make a positive difference. Enjoy your brilliance this season.

May your season be abundant with joy, freedom and flow. May gravity and your spirit be well fed by your choices.

All the best,

Meredith Kimbell
Executive Advisor,Strategy Consultant
Corporate Adventure

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For more resources, see our Library topic Spirituality in the Workplace.

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