Nurturing Your Creativity!

Last week me and some of my fellow trainers were ask to come up with a team building exercise incorporating Belbin's Team Roles, and I think it fair to say we embraced the opportunity to put it together especially since we don’t often get the chance to work so closely together on something.  We quickly set about getting a meeting room to generate lots of ideas on how we were going to do this.  However, excitement quickly turned to frustration and 2 hours later we had only managed to talk every good idea we had off the table and we all left the meeting pretty dejected!
 
And there were a few for reasons for this:
 
It’s really difficult for ideas to flourish when the people are being creative, realistic and critical all at the same time. Which is one of the things Walt Disney worked out and as result set up 3 storyboarding rooms for his artists and writers the first being the Dreamer Room, where all ideas can flourish and no criticising is allowed, the Realist Room, how those ideas can be made possible again no criticising and the Critical Room where Walt himself would constructively criticise what had been created and they would move round all 3 of these rooms until a finished product was produced. 
 
If you spend long enough, you can talk even the best ideas off the table.  There was an Oscar nominated behind the scenes documentary released in 1993 called The War Room  which was about the Bill Clinton for President campaign.  There was one bit in the movie where all the spin doctors and Clinton himself would get together to discuss how they were going to run their campaign to get Clinton into the White House and then by the end of the meeting they would have rubbished every idea they came up with no matter how good.  What they did to get around this was to have a rule, and that was if an idea was still on the table an hour into the meeting then just go with it.  Knowing that sometimes the idea itself isn’t that important because whatever the idea is you’ll just find a way of making it work.
 
On the subject of being overly critical of good ideas I was reminded of some advice I was once given, sometimes it’s better to ask for forgiveness instead of permission.  I was talking to a Team Manager a few months ago who was telling me her frustration at manager meetings when she came up with what she thought were innovative and great ideas around improving her teams performance, only to be met with replies of ‘that won’t work’, ‘we tried that before and it didn’t work’ and ‘that’s not possible because of xyz’.  Which would result people doing exactly what had been done before whist expecting the result to change, which was also Einstein’s definition of insanity btw. My answer to this was unless you’re like one wage slip away from the sack and it’s not going to hurt anyone, then sometimes it’s better to ask for forgiveness instead of permission because results trump permission any day of the week.  Also, how would the meeting go if you said would you like me to show you how I improved my team’s performance?
 
 
Challenge
 
Put one of the following into practice:
 
Make your next creative project painless and productive by moving through the Dreamer, Realist and Critic roles individually until you have a finished product.
 
Implement one idea you have had but for some reason talked yourself into thinking it would never work, knowing that you’ll just find away of making it work.
 
Instead of telling deaf ears how your great idea would work for them, think about how you could get them to want to find out how you are getting your great results

Lenny


For more information about Lenny Deverill-West and making changes with Cognitive Hypnotherapy & NLP check out www.startlivingtoday.co.uk
 
 

Making a Difference

One thing that has always struck me is the way different people describe their jobs and to be more specific the way people who are passionate and love their work verses those who are not. Now some might say ‘well of course I’d be passionate or love what I do for a living if did what they do for a living’, would they? Really? Or if they had that job would they find some other of making it sound like they do the most unimportant thing in the world?

Here’s the thing it’s not the job or what’s on the outside that makes someone passionate or love what they do, it’s how you create passion on the inside and has nothing to do with the job that you do. I have met teachers, senior managers, trainers and charity workers who are passionate about what they do and you’d probably expect that given their line of work, however I have also met cleaners, waitresses, estates agents and insurance sales man who are equally if not more passionate about what they do.

So what’s the difference?

People who really enjoy their work and are passionate about what they do, no matter what it is, tend know the difference that they make in the world. For example a cleaner doesn’t ‘just’ clean the loos at work, they ensure the hygiene of 100s of people on a daily basis so those people can just go about their jobs and an insurance sales man doesn’t just sell insurance for a living they get the opportunity to let people know about something that could potentially take care of their families for the rest of their lives if something unforeseen should happen to them.

If you have never read The Starfish Story, it really sums up how anyone can make a difference to someone or something

One day a man was walking along the beach

when he noticed a boy picking something up and gently throwing it into the ocean.

Approaching the boy, he asked, “What are you doing?”

The youth replied, “Throwing starfish back into the ocean.
The surf is up and the tide is going out. If I don’t throw them back, they’ll die.”

“Son,” the man said, “don’t you realize there are miles and miles of beach and hundreds of starfish?
You can’t make a difference!”

After listening politely, the boy bent down, picked up another starfish,
and threw it back into the surf. Then, smiling at the man, he said…”
I made a difference for that one.”

Homework

Write down what is that you do for a job

Now write down difference you make to your customers, colleagues, your business, the world and notice the energy that creates on the inside

Lenny

For more information about Lenny Deverill-West and making changes with Cognitive Hypnotherapy & NLP check out www.startlivingtoday.co.uk