For many of us the things that influence the way we think and see the world are invisible to us. Just like the proverbial goldfish not seeing the water it is swimming in.
So how do we see what was previously unseen?
Do you remember the first time you went overseas and how bizarre it felt when people looked and behaved differently to those folks at home?
Or maybe you had started a new job and the way things got planned or meetings were convened made you feel like you were from another planet?
These experiences help us to identify what we perceive as ‘normal’ behaviour in our usual world.
I heard a wonderful story about socialisation when I was interviewing people for our book Creativity Cycling: Help your team solve complex problems with creative tools. My interviewee told a story about when he was an exchange student with an English family. He was French. He expressed his surprise at seeing how English people always have their hands under the table before a meal started. This was a small thing but bizarre for him and so different to his own cultural orientation. It wasn’t until he was confronted by a different type of behaviour that he could see his own more clearly. His English friends were equally confronted by a strange cultural experience when they came to stay at his house where they were equally overwhelmed by the amount of kissing going on.
I know that you would have many stories like these and they are important for reminding us of how our upbringing conditions us to a unique way of thinking and acting. Indeed, our unique socialisation gives us a mindset which influences what we think we can do and indeed who we are. I was really aware of this when I was listening to one of Joanna Penn’s wonderful podcasts. She always starts with Hello creatives. And for a while a voice in my head was saying, ‘What? Me?’
So to the present day where I’m staggered by the number of my friends who say to me, ‘Hey Tracy, great for you to write a book but I couldn’t do it. I’m not creative.’ I can relate to these comments because they’re something that I embraced myself when I was younger. I loved art, but perceived I wasn’t very good at it, so in effect gave up and wore the blanket of ‘I’m not a creative person.’ Don’t forget that it was Malcolm Gladwell who popularised the idea that many gifted people had spent at least 10,000 hours developing their craft.
Being creative is an important skill. Ken Robinson has said that it is now as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status, while the World Economic forum has listed creativity as one of the top three skills everyone will need by 2020.
Barbara Wilson and I know from our experience and research, that a willingness or cautiousness to engage in creative thinking can come from a person’s education, cultural background, and socialisation. As a result, some people need encouragement to engage in creative thinking. You may need to give your team members both permission and the opportunity to engage in thinking differently. These are all BIG influencers.
It’s hard to measure creativity. It’s not the same as measuring IQ; this may be the reason that there’s less emphasis in the system on developing it. We put a strong emphasis in our schools on thinking logically and rationally. As we don’t live in a rational and logical world, this must be causing a lot of cognitive dissonance with many people.
Creative thinking, and its outputs, are neither right nor wrong. If we’re being creative and produce what we see as a creative output, the world around us may not agree: that’s a barrier to being creative.
While anyone can be creative, whether or not it leads to recognition and innovation, depends upon external variables such as acceptance by the domain and marketplace. Think about the many examples in the commercial world of creative efforts turning into innovations that were not acceptable to the market. Sinclair’s electric car produced in the UK in the mid-1980s was just one such example. The design was not acceptable to the marketplace and the market was not ready for electric cars. However, that should not stop teams working creatively.
In order to work creatively, it’s important that the team is working collaboratively as a baseline from which to move to more radical ways of working. Always remember that you can fail at things – and still be creative and successful. Yes, I know that sounds ambiguous. And if you are a leader, some people in your team may need encouragement to engage in creative thinking. A way to do this is to encourage people to metaphorically step into someone else’s shoes and to live the day the way these people would experience it. You will likely receive new insights, experience greater empathy for that person and be challenged to think differently.
References
Gladwell, M (2008) Outliers: The Story of Success. Penguin Books Limited UK
Wilson B. & Stanley T. (2018) Creativity Cycling: Help your team solve complex problems with creative tools. Lightning Source.