Can you feel it? Can you sense the energy, the excitement, the amazing unfolding that is happening?
I did a burning bowl ceremony and gave thanks in advance for all the wonderful, beautiful blessings I was going to experience this year. You can read more about this on my website blog post last week (http://www.lindajferguson.com/2011/12/letting-go-and-getting-ready/ ). One of the biggest things I gave thanks for is my ability to share my work with you, for being able to write and speak on ideas to support you fulfilling your life purpose and heart’s desire- for facilitating you standing more powerfully in the truth of Who You Are, as a fully embodied spiritual presence of peace and love. It is such a pleasure to support your journey here through this blog.
I thoroughly enjoy working with my coaching clients to see how they are able to express and experience their Divine Essence, to watch them achieve their goals, to see the brilliant ways they share their gifts, to awaken them to more positive possibilities, to help them reach their greatest potential. God I love my job!
So what bold and beautiful ideas do you want to manifest this year? What goals will rock your world? What do you want to set your sights on this year that will make you jump out of bed each day and shout, “Haleluiah, I get to create today”? How do you want to express and experience the magnificent being that you are?
As you may recall from my blog post this time last year, I reminded you that you had a mission. That mission was to discover your strengths and practice them daily, to use your talents and gifts well, to prepare yourself to step into your greatness. How did that go for you last year? How do you want to share your greatness with the world?
Now is the time to step into your greatness, your power, your authentic self. The world is waiting for you to show up, fully alive and ready to offer your talents and energy. As Marianne Williamson reminds us, “Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.”
2012 is a year of major changes. I’ll write more on this in future blogs. For now, feel the energy, embrace the changes that will be laid in front of you. Tune in to the excitement that is building. Step into your passion for living as a fully awakened, inspired spiritual being.
Share this blog with others who are on this journey. Many of us have accepted this calling, to be a presence for Love, harmony, beauty, peace, compassion, prosperity, grace, unlimited positive potential. You will mirror this for others as you step fully into it yourself.
Welcome aboard. Enjoy the ride. What a year this will be!
Linda has a new Fan Page – https://www.facebook.com/LindaJFerguson “Like” her page if you want to get notices of these blog posts and other updates of Linda’s work. See also Linda’s webpage for more ideas for working and living in spiritual alignment- www.lindajferguson.com
Linda’s 10th Anniversary edition of “Path for Greatness: Work as Spiritual Service” is available by clicking on the title link. If you want to read more of Linda’s ideas for working spiritually or want to support a friend who desires to work with passion and purpose, buy Linda’s book today.
Do you sometimes feel your hard work is “invisible”? Do you dread the idea of tooting your own horn? Do you think self promotion smacks of showing off?
In a fast paced, changing workplace, it’s who sees you and knows your work that counts. Don’t assume people will notice the wonderful quality of your work or that of your department. Therefore self promotion, done the right way, is increasingly important for career success.
Here are 7 tips for getting visibility for you and your team’s efforts.
1. Be proactive.
If you see a new project or role that will help you expand your skills, take advantage of it. Do this, particularly if it’s one that has high visibility or has a significant impact on the bottom line.
2. Make yourself visible.
Spend a few minutes every day greeting and talking with your co-workers. Speak to colleagues face-to-face from time to time, instead of sending emails or instant messages. Go to some of the social events and after hour get togethers. Remember the saying, “Out of sight, out of mind.”
3. Build a network of allies.
If you help people out when they need assistance, then they will be grateful and will help you out too. This relates to the expression “you scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours”.
4. Focus on success not failure.
At meetings report on what is working well and what is on track. This brings attention to both you and your team’s achievements. Avoid focusing only on struggles or frustrations.
5. Show a little of your personal side.
It adds color and depth to your professional image. Personal interests help other people to identify and remember you an especially important advantage in large organizations or in the crowded marketplace.
6. Help others understand your value.
People are too busy to notice everything you and your team does and recognize the value to the company. It’s up to you to find ways to summarize and package the benefits of your work and that of your department. Don’t hog the glory – share it.
7. Get involved in company charity events.
Volunteer for community activities, represent the company at a telethon, be the person in charge collecting funds for disaster relief, etc. This expands your network and helps people see you in a different light – not just the IT person who makes sure the systems work or the HR rep who explains company policies and procedures.
Career Success Tip:
People can often overlook your efforts, even if you consistently work hard. It’s up to you to get noticed and stay in their thoughts, so you can keep moving toward your career goals. Build a network of allies, track your accomplishments, take on additional responsibilities whenever possible and work in areas that are important to your organization. Also see Build Your Reputation and Your Career
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.
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:
Problem definition
Ideation
Solution selection
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:
Everyone is creative, but in different ways
When we minimize the problems that lie between us, we can begin to leverage our mental diversity and collective creativity
Mutual understanding is the key to team development
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Do you let your failures or missteps derail your dreams or do you bounce back quickly?
In Part1, I examined resilience – what it is, why we need it, and how to develop it – to keep on moving forward towards your goals. The good news is that even if you’re not a naturally resilient person, you can develop a resilient mindset and attitude. To do so, incorporate these six guidelines into your daily life:
1. Maintain the right perspective. We all experience bad days and we all go through our share of crises. But we have a choice in how we respond; we can choose to react negatively or in a panic, or we can choose to remain calm and logical to find a solution. Avoid blowing events out of proportion. This is only one incident in your career. It’s time to move on.
2. Determine what went wrong. Your own role in the setback will vary from situation to situation. A company-wide layoff is probably beyond your control, whereas being terminated or reprimanded for performance issues is something for which you can take more responsibility. Regardless, it’s important that you make a thorough assessment of the situation to maximize your learning and correct any wrongs.
3. Identify what was and what was not in your control. Was (or is) the job a good fit for your skills? Do you have what it takes to be successful in the position – or do you need more training, experience, or other development? Did the organization’s leaders simply make a staffing decision based on economics?
4. Recalibrate to get back on track. Determine what you need to do to make sure that you learn from your mistakes and never repeat them. What would you do differently next time? What behaviors or decisions contributed to the setback you’re experiencing?
5. Create a strategy for your career future . You have a new perspective and a new set of circumstances and therefore may need a new career strategy. Brainstorm ideas with your network, assess your options and even consult a coach to decide what’s next for you.
6. Nurture your self confidence. Continue to set goals, make plans, get out of your comfort zone and keep moving forward. Resilient people are confident that they’re going to succeed eventually, despite the setbacks or stresses that they might be facing. A setback only sets you back if you allow it to do so.
Career Success Tip:
Resilient people understand that things change and that carefully-made plans may need to change. To maintain your career growth and satisfaction, resilience is essential. How have you been resilient? Share your experience with others.
This season give your enemy, forgiveness. To an opponent, tolerance. To a friend, your heart. To a customer, service. To every child, a good example. To all, charity. For Christmas is not a time or a season but a state of mind. To cherish peace and good will, to be plenteous in mercy, this is the real spirit of Christmas. ~ Oren Arnold
Our wish for you is that the spirit of the season carry on throughout
the year. Sharing, loving, giving, are not intended to be put away
and simply pulled out once a year like lights and ornaments. Rather
that they are prevalent and contagious in your daily life. We believe
that the greatest gift is not found in a store nor under a tree, but in
the kindness and love given to others year round.
Soon the new year will be here and with it the perfect time to share
our appreciation. As a song from the movie White Christmas shares
“If you’re worried and can’t sleep, count your blessings instead of
sheep.”
Thank you for reading our blog in 2011. May your blessings
be abundant in 2012.
As the year comes to a close and I begin to reflect on the previous twelve months, I realize as adults we are always learning and re-learning important lessons. Many of the lessons I learned this year were simply reminders of lessons learned years ago. Below is the beginning of my list and will serve as part one for the Twelve Lessons I Learned (or Re-Learned) This Year blog series. These lessons are universal in many areas of life.
Lesson One
It’s not about me. This is an important lesson that crosses many areas of my life. As a parent, teacher and HR professional in the trenches it is important to focus on the bigger picture. Parenting isn’t about the instant gratification of giving my child want they want in the moment, it is about giving them what they what they need to develop the skills and abilities that will carry them through life. That also applies to my students and those with whom I work daily. It is so much easier for me to just handle the situation or give them the answer. But it shouldn’t be about what is easier for me, It should be about what is best for them. It isn’t about me.
Lesson Two
Growth can be painful. This is another lesson that is applicable in many areas of my life. While doing many of my workouts this past year, I have heard a voice in my head, that keeps me moving. It’s the voice of some trainer from a workout DVD repeating something like this, “Don’t give up when it gets hard. That is when the body is changing.” It is the same in all other aspects as well. Use your internal dialogue keep yourself focused on what you need and want to accomplish especially when it hard. This is when you will grow. This is when change happens.
Lesson Three
Know where you want to go and make a plan to get there. I am sure many of you have heard the saying that the difference in a dream and goal, is that the goal is written down and an action plan is in place. Don’t dream it, do it. Decide what you what you want to accomplish and get a plan in place to get there. If you aren’t sure where to start, don’t be afraid to reach out and get some help from someone in the field.
Lesson Four
Surround yourself with others and put yourself in situations where you can be your best self. Again, this lesson is so applicable in all areas of life. Regardless of what you want to accomplish or where you want to go, you will need encouragement and will need to avoid discouragement. Unfortunately discouragement comes in all forms and can even be disguised as encouragement. Seek out situations that will keep you focused. Finding other with a similar goal or interest is a great way to start. If you want to run a marathon, find a training partner and use a gadget to track your progress. If you want to change the culture in your company, find a professional organization or a coach to help you focused.
Don’t forget to check back for the rest of lessons. What lessons can you share?
Sheri Mazurek is a training and human resource professional with over 16 years of management experience, and is skilled in all areas of employee management and human resource functions, with a specialty in learning and development. She is available to help you with your Human Resources and Training needs on a contract basis. For more information send an email to smazurek0615@gmail.com or visit www.sherimazurek.com. Follow me on twitter @Sherimaz.
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” – American inventor, Thomas Edison
Edison, despite struggling with failure throughout his work life, never let it get the best of him. He kept experimenting and learning. His resilience gave the world the light bulb as well as these amazing inventions phonograph, the telegraph, and the motion picture.
Do you have Edison’s resilience to overcome your challenges? Or do you let your failures or missteps derail your dreams? In this post and the next, I’ll examine resilience – what it is, why we need it, and how to develop it – so that you have the strength to keep on moving forward towards your goals.
The Importance of Resilience Resilience is our ability to adapt and bounce back when things don’t go as planned. Resilient people don’t wallow or dwell on failures; they acknowledge the situation, learn from their mistakes, and then move forward. According to the research of leading psychologist, Susan Kobasa, there are three elements that are essential to resilience:
1. Challenge Resilient people view a difficulty as a challenge, not as a paralyzing event. They look at their failures and mistakes as lessons to be learned from, and as opportunities for growth. They don’t view them as a negative reflection on their abilities or self-worth. 2. Commitment Resilient people are committed to their lives and their goals.. Commitment isn’t just restricted to their work – they commit to their relationships, their friendships, the causes they care about, and their religious or spiritual beliefs. 3. Personal Control Resilient people spend their time and energy focusing on situations and events that they have control over. Because they put their efforts where they can have the most impact, they feel empowered and confident. Those who spend time worrying about uncontrollable events can often feel lost, helpless, and powerless to take action.
In other words, resilient people:
Maintain a positive outlook, despite having just lost a promotion or getting turned down for a job. They don’t allow present circumstances to cloud their vision of themselves or their future.
Have solid goals in all parts of your life. This gives you a compelling reason to get out of bed in the morning.
Never think of yourself as a victim. – focus your time and energy on changing the things that they have control over.
It’s inevitable that at times we’re going to fail, make mistakes, have setbacks and occasionally fall flat on our faces. The only way to avoid this is to live a very sheltered life never trying anything new or taking a risk. Few of us want a life or career like that!
Career Success Tip:
Being resilient means that when we do fail, we bounce back, we have the strength to learn the lessons we need to learn and we can move on to bigger and better things. Next post will be on developing resilience. Also see Climbing the Career Walls.
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.
You could say the human brain is really the last frontier. We use only a small part of it, but increasing our understanding of how it works to learn, to adapt, to flourish is important to everyone. As trainers we can’t do our jobs without understanding how people think and learn, and if we can unlock that creative potential, we make the most of the resource we have. Here’s Sandy Cormack with Part II.
Unlocking Creative Potential, Part II
by Sandy Cormack
In this installment we explore the neuroscience of individual creativity and learn a few ways to develop our “creative brains.” First, let’s review the model for whole brain creativity using the left brain-right brain metaphor:
The ideal creative person would have a creatively balanced brain like the one depicted above. In theory, this person could fully explore every problem they encountered, generate a wide range of ideas and have a good chance at selecting the best solutions.
In reality, not many people possess a brain like this. Most of us have a preference for only two or three of the four thinking styles.
To achieve this creative balance we must 1) continue to develop our strengths while 2) developing additional skills which overcome our weaknesses.
Let’s take a look at someone who is truly left brained: she has preferences in both analytical and structural thinking. This excerpt from a profile report belongs to someone who’s taken the left brain right brain test I use:
In this metaphor, preferences are defined as any attribute measuring 23 percent or greater. Jane’s thinking preferences are analytical (40%) and structural (38%). She also has a relatively substantial social (20%) attribute, but not too much conceptual (2%).
Relative to creativity and problem solving, Jane’s strengths are in problem definition, systemic solutions and implementation. Her weaknesses are in imagination, visioning and novel ideation. Using her left-brain strengths, she may rapidly assess the situation, draw upon past experience to select a solution, and immediately go about implementing it. But by not using a conceptual approach, she may fail to consider better, more out-of-the-box alternatives. And if she relies on analytical and structural too much, she may fail to use her social to discuss the problem with others to gain a broader perspective, or learn the current best practices from others.
In a brain training workshop, a person like Jane would learn to develop skills to overcome weaknesses like these. She’d learn a series of “creative thinking techniques” – systematic methods of generating ideas that appeal to all four brain quadrants.
Jane would probably have little difficulty coming up with ideas to improve (structural) or refine (analytical), although she could easily learn additional techniques for those. She’d probably benefit most, though, from learning as many right-brain related techniques as she could.
Here’s a simple right-brain technique which appeals to left-brain thinkers due to its linear nature. It’s called Challenging Assumptions.
Write down your best definition of the problem at hand.
Write down every assumption you can think of about the current situation.
Next to each assumption, write the opposite (either the negative or the reverse).
Consider if any of the opposites spur ideas for novel solutions.
Consider the example of Jane’s church, which is trying to raise its membership. She might write down these assumptions:
Services are conducted on Sunday mornings
People come to services at the church
Services feature traditional music
Parishioners receive a newsletter in the mail once a month
The pastor primarily focuses on internal church matters and the congregation
The congregation has several fundraising events at the church every year
Now she reverses each of them one by one:
Services aren’t conducted on Sunday mornings – Is there another day that might serve the community better? Another time of day?
The church comes to the people – Is there a place in the community closer to homes, like a community center or park, that would be more appealing?
Services don’t feature traditional music – What kinds are music should we consider? Folk? Rock? Something purely modern?
Parishioners don’t receive a newsletter – What about email? A Facebook page? Twitter? Some that connects them not only with the church but with one another on a weekly or daily basis?
The pastor focuses on external matters – What does the community need? What services can the church offer to help the community with its most pressing problems?
The fundraising events aren’t at the church – How about field trips? Where can we go? What kind of activities would generate interest? What would be fun?
See what we did here? We forced Jane’s left brain to slow down and consider a more divergent approach to the problem. We made her look at the problem from a wide range of perspectives and redefine it. Now Jane might consider that her church’s membership problems are problems of convenience, involvement, interaction, community focus, and social opportunities. And she came up with solutions which might transform the very culture of her church.
A great resource for learning a multitude of creative thinking techniques is the book “Thinkertoys” by Michael Michalko. It’s chock full of both left-brain and right-brain techniques.
To summarize: to develop your whole brain creativity you must:
Determine your thinking preferences via a left brain right brain test
Learn creative thinking techniques to overcome your weaknesses
My final installment will show how teams and organizations can leverage their collective creativity to solve virtually any problem they encounter.
Sandy Cormack’s report (available for download at http://leftbrainrightbraintest.com/) addresses the essential elements of a left brain-right brain test and provides a general introduction to left brain-right brain theory and applications. He can be reached at interzon@comcast.net.
This is the second of three articles by Sandy for this Training and Development blog. Any aspect of how we learn and think affects how we train individuals and groups, and how we work with others. This may not be an obvious in the approach to training and development, but it definitely has its place. You have Sandy’s information.
Now mine: I can be reached through my website, by commenting here on this blog or any of my others. You’ll find more of my writings on a variety of topics from the perspective I like to call the Cave Man perspective, which basically means we learn from wherever we are most likely to learn the best information to do the job. I don’t believe in one way of doing things; I hope you don’t either. I welcome those who have differing opinions or new ideas. I certainly don’t know everything. Please check out my new e-book available through all major distributors, A Cave Man Guide to Training and Development, my attempt at making clear what I do know to be true from my perspective. I believe it offers a refreshing look at training and development, while keeping the “cave” open to new ideas. Happy Training.
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