The Deliberate Creative

In this episode Amy Climer examines the research on how to build creative teams and provides six actions leaders can take to enhance their team’s creative output.

What You’ll Learn

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Two myths about creativity that are common in teams and business

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Six ways leaders can build creativity in any team

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Three ways to build trust amongst your team

The Weekly Challenge

Which of the six actions can you begin this week with your team? Talk with you team to see which areas they feel are most important. Make one step towards helping your team become more creative.

Upcoming Workshops by Amy Climer

From Conflict to Resolution: Managing and Mediating Conflict at Work – November 6, 2015, Milwaukee, WI

Transcript

Feel like reading instead of listening? Download the free PDF Transcript or read it below. Enjoy!

Transcript for Episode #019: Six Actions Leaders can take to build Creative Teams

Amy Climer:  Welcome to the Deliberate Creative Podcast episode #019.  On today’s episode, we’re talking about six actions leaders need to take in order to build a creative team.  Of course, you all know me, this is all researched based.  This came out of a research I did a couple of years ago exploring creativity and transformational leadership and what I found is that there are six things that leaders can do that can really make a big difference in helping their team become more creative.

To start, I want to talk actually about two myths I think are pretty prominent out there in regard to leadership and creativity.  The first myth is this idea that creativity is born not made.  People are just naturally creative or they are not.  It’s a total myth.  There have been all these studies about how creativity can be enhanced and built with practice, time, and training.  There’s one study based on twins that show that 78% of our creativity is not genetic.  I was sure a little bit of it is, we all have aptitudes for certain things, but 78% is a lot.  That’s one thing you should know if you’re leading a creative team, sometimes, I think we have the tendency to earmark certain people as creative or not, but actually everybody has incredible capacity to be creative.

The second myth is this idea that we should just leave creative people alone and let them be.  That’s how they are going to be most creative.  I think that comes from the image of the artist working alone in their studio or the scientist tinkering in their lab by themselves.  Actually what research has shown is that yes some of that alone time is important, but also so is the group time and so is that collaboration.  When we’ve looked at highly creative people, what we found is a lot of times they had collaborators all along.  Einstein and Edison are great examples.  Neither of them worked alone.  This idea of leaving Creatives alone and just let them do their thing is a myth, but actually the reality is support and engagement are very important to help creativity flourish.I’m going to provide a little more clarity to help with these myths and there are six things that leaders can do to help lead their teams to a higher state of creativity.  

#1 Build Diverse Teams and Create a Sense of Inclusion

The first of these is design diverse teams and build a sense of inclusion.  Sometimes, we don’t have the opportunity to pick who is on our team and who is not, but sometimes we do.  When you have that opportunity to develop the team from the ground up, diversity is huge and diversity in all sense of the word – this could be people’s background,

This episode is a conversation with Elaine Gale, a brilliant writer and writing teacher. She talks about creativity within both the research and writing process. We cover many topics including faith in the creative process, guilt, shame, building muscles around the creative process, resistance, surrendering to the beauty of the creative process, the connection between fear, love, and creativity, and tips to get past the creative blocks.

What You'll Learn

• Where guilt and shame stem from in creativity and writing
• How Michael Jackson can help you be more creative
• How to build muscles around the creative process
• The connection between fear, love, and creativity
• The importance of reconnecting what you love

About Elaine Gale

Dr. Elaine Gale is a California-based writer, professor, comedian, speaker, trainer and journalist who co-founded the nonfiction literary series TrueStory and loves artists, writers, community, humor, play, possibility, healing, exploring and learning. She is a former reporter for the Los Angeles Times, and worked for the Utne Reader, the Star Tribune, the Boston Phoenix and has published in many national mainstream and literary magazines. She is the writing center director for Antioch University's PhD Program in Leadership and Change and a tenured professor at California State University Sacramento in Communication and Journalism.

Resources and Links:

• Book: The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
• Michael Jackson's Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'
• Dr. Andrea Lambert South's dissertation
• Elaine's website: elainegale.com
• Send Elaine an email if you'd like to receive a list of her favorite quotes about creativity. Email her at elainegale at gmail dot com.
• International Podcast Day (Sept 30) and contest
• How to Write a Review in iTunes

The Weekly Challenge

This week Elaine Gale challenges us to explore how we can bring a sense of curiosity in our life and examine what can we approach with a beginner's mind. More details in the podcast.

Teams who work well together are able to be more creative. In this episode, learn how the Seven Norms of Collaboration can help your team work better together and be more innovative and creative.

What You'll Learn

• The Seven Norms of Collaboration
• How to help your team begin using the Seven Norms

Resources and Links:

• Seven Norms of Collaboration Cheat Sheet
• Thinking Collaborative - find Seven Norms of Collaboration Assessments and other tools
• International Podcast Day (Sept 30) and contest
• How to Write a Review in iTunes

The Weekly Challenge

Select one of the Seven Norms of Collaboration to focus on for the week. See how well you can do each day at your selected norm. What happens? What changes do you notice with your team and with other relationships?

In this interview Rosemary Rein, The Director of Learning and Evaluation at Wikimedia Foundation, talks about how she democratizes innovation to work towards Wikimedia's mission to share the sum of all human knowledge with the world. You'll hear how Wikipedia, and it's umbrella non-profit the Wikimedia Foundation, uses techniques and processes such as Creative Problem Solving, design thinking strategies, Fail Fests, Hackathons, the Pixar Process and the Friday Notes Sessions to unleash creativity, product and process innovation. Learn how to create a culture of openness to help use these strategies with your teams. End with an engaging weekly challenge and call to action to start leading your team to more innovation.

What You’ll Learn

• How Wikipedia uses Creative Problem Solving and other strategies to lead innovation
• Tips for creating a culture of openness and innovation
• The power of Fail Fests and Hackathons

Resources and Links:

• Hackathons, as explained on Wikipedia
• Book: Creativity, Inc. - learn aboutPixar's Design Process and the Friday Notes Sessions
• Climer Cards
• Fiverr.com
• Commons.wikimedia.org - source for free photos
• Creative Problem Solving on Wikipedia
• Learning Patterns and Evaluation Tools from Wikimedia
• Rosemary Rein's website
• International Podcast Day (Sept 30) and contest
• How to Write a Review in iTunes

The Weekly Challenge

This week Rosemary is challenging you to ask yourself or your team the question - what is the one top challenge if you could fix would make your life so much easier? Put that in the frame of "In what ways might I..." or "In what ways might we..." and fill in the blank with a challenge you are having. Share and post on the board at your next team meeting, then do a rapid brain writing process with Post-it notes. Aim for 25+ ideas. More details are on the podcast at [26:00]. Post reflections and/or results in the comments section below.

Upcoming Workshops by Amy Climer

Effective Speaking and Presentation Skills - Sept 23-24, 2015, Milwaukee, WI

From Conflict to Resolution: Managing and Mediating Conflict at Work - October 28, 2015, Milwaukee, WI

Creativity is all about implementing change. If you want to implement creative ideas, you should know how change works. In this episode we look at how we think change works and how it actually works, examine an important change model, and delve into eight important aspects of leading change.

What You'll Learn

• The difference between change and transition and why it matters
• How we think change will work and how it actually works
• The Bridges' Change Model
• The Change Formula and why you must know it to succeed
• Eight tips for leading and managing change and transition with any group

The Weekly Challenge

What is one thing you can do differently this week to help you implement your new project within your team or organization? How will you apply one of the eight tips shared in the episode? Share in the comments and let us know how it goes.

Upcoming Workshops with Amy Climer

Effective Speaking and Presentation Skills - Sept 23-24, 2015, Milwaukee, WI

From Conflict to Resolution: Managing and Mediating Conflict at Work - October 28, 2015, Milwaukee, WI

Polarities are opposites possibilities that exist in tension with each other. Dr. Liz Monroe-Cook explains polarity thinking and the importance of understanding polarities in order to engage in deliberate creative thinking.

What You’ll Learn

* What polarities are and their importance in our lives.

* Hear several examples of polarities that you’ll recognize in your own life.

* How one organization used polarity thinking and polarity mapping to develop a win-win solution to what would have been a win-lose or even lose-lose situation.

* How to create a polarity map to begin to examine polarities in your own life.

Polarities are opposites possibilities that exist in tension with each other. Dr. Liz Monroe-Cook explains polarity thinking and the importance of understanding polarities in order to engage in deliberate creative thinking.

What You'll Learn

• What polarities are and their importance in our lives.
• Hear several examples of polarities that you'll recognize in your own life.
• How one organization used polarity thinking and polarity mapping to develop a win-win solution to what would have been a win-lose or even lose-lose situation.
• How to create a polarity map to begin to examine polarities in your own life.

Resources and Links:

• Polaritypartnerships.com
• Polaritywisdom.com
• Episode 003 - an overview of Creative Problem Solving and a good review/exploration of divergent and convergent thinking
• How to Write a Review in iTunes

The Weekly Challenge

The weekly challenge is to create your own polarity map, as Liz explains in the episode [17:03]. After completing the map, share any insights or learning about yourself in the Comments. You can also use the Comments section to ask Liz Monroe-Cook questions about polarity thinking.

Vicky Cassidy of Grid Productive teaches us how teams can get more efficient and effective when trying to implement a creative project. She shares meeting techniques and tips, online tools, and a great story about how one team implemented a creative project with success.

What You’ll Learn

* Tools your team can use to stay on track and productive

* Tips to avoid those boring, time-wasting meetings and how to make them more efficient

* How to move forward when your team is stuck with one part of a project

Resources

* Slack – free communication tool for teams

* Asana – free project management tool for teams

* Todoist – free project management tool for teams and individuals

* Grid Productive – Vicky Cassidy’s productivity company

* How to Write a Review in iTunes

The Weekly Challenge

The weekly challenge is to try out one or more tools to help you and your team by more productive. Share in the show notes what you think and results you are seeing.

Transcript

Feel like reading instead of listening? Download the free PDF Transcript or read it below. Enjoy!

Transcript for Episode #013: Moving Creative Ideas

In today’s episode we’ll explore tools and tips to move your team’s creative ideas into reality.

Amy Climer:  Welcome to episode #013 of the Deliberate Creative Podcast.  Today’s episode we have a special guest, Vicky Cassidy of Grid Productive.  Vicky works with teams and individuals to help them be more productive in order to accomplish what they want to get done including creative projects.  I’ve known Vicky for a couple of years now and I’ve seen the results of her coaching in other people, and I’m actually just about to start working with her myself to help me be more productive and effective in my own business, which I’m super excited about.

Today Vicky is talking about where teams often get stuck when they are trying to implement a creative project and what to do about it.  She shares some tools that teams can use and then at the end, she tells a great story about how one team she worked with implemented a creative project.  Here’s Vicky.

Amy Climer:  Vicky welcome to the Deliberate Creative Podcast.  I’m so glad you’re here today.

Vicky Cassidy:  So excited to be on the podcast, Amy.

Amy Climer:  Thanks.  Tell us a little bit about your background, who you are and what you do.

Vicky Cassidy:  Sure.  I run a business called Grid Productive.  What I do is I help small businesses become more efficient and more productive.  This happens in a bunch of different ways but what I often find is that small businesses are being ineffective because maybe they don’t have the technology solutions that they need, or they have poor task management or project management skills so I help teach them how to be better in those areas.  Also, I take a look at what their business operations are like.  How they run things at the high level and then try to figure out where we can streamline things and where we can put in processes that will make things run more smoothly.

Amy Climer:  That’s great.  One of the things that is a trend throughout this whole podcast is the Creative Problem Solving Process and the fourth stage of the Creative Problem Solving is Implementation and I talked about that in

Vicky Cassidy of Grid Productive teaches us how teams can get more efficient and effective when trying to implement a creative project. She shares meeting techniques and tips, online tools, and a great story about how one team implemented a creative project with success.

What You’ll Learn

• Tools your team can use to stay on track and productive
• Tips to avoid those boring, time-wasting meetings and how to make them more efficient
• How to move forward when your team is stuck with one part of a project

Resources and Links:

• Slack - free communication tool for teams
• Asana - free project management tool for teams
• Todoist - free project management tool for teams and individuals
• Grid Productive - Vicky Cassidy's productivity company
• How to Write a Review in iTunes

The Weekly Challenge

The weekly challenge is to try out one or more tools to help you and your team by more productive. Share in the show notes what you think and results you are seeing.

Learn about team development from a group of educators who participated in an 8-day North Carolina Outward Bound course. Through backpacking, rock climbing, and challenging themselves they learned more about team development than they expected. Listen to their stories and how they will apply what they learned to their classrooms and schools.

What You’ll Learn

* How hiking together taught this group the power of having a common language

* The impact of a shared team vision

* Ways to build trust amongst teams