The Deliberate Creative

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

The Weekly Challenge

In this episode participants talked about shared vision, goals, building trust, and scaffolding the team development. Pick one of those to focus on this week with your team and do one thing to help your team move forward. Share in the comments what you did to help your team grow. Feel free to also use the comments section to ask Amy questions.

Being creative requires taking some risks. Sometimes it's the risks that hold us back from moving forward and being creative. Learn about two types of risks, what it really means to step out of your comfort zone, and how to test assumptions you might have about your fears.

What You’ll Learn

• Learn the difference between inherent risk and perceived risk
• What is really means when you hear "step out of your comfort zone"
• How to test your assumptions about your fears

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Resources and Links:

• Climer Cards Kickstarter project from 2012

Transcript

Feel like reading instead of listening? Download the PDF Transcript. Enjoy! (will be uploaded in a couple of days)

The Weekly Challenge

Take a risk! Test your assumptions by taking a risk to help you be more creative. Share in the comments what happened when you took the risk, no matter how small or big it was. Feel free to also use the comments section to ask Amy questions.

While there are no specific traits that all creative people possess, there are some dimensions found in many highly creative people. These dimensions are like spectrums or paradoxes and creative people often manage to move along these dimensions with ease. Listen and see which of these dimensions you exhibit in your life and work.

What You’ll Learn

* The 10 dimensions found in highly creative people

* The many paradoxes that creative people are able to manage

* The difference between big “C” and little “c” creativity

Resources

* Csikszentmihalyi’s book Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention

The Weekly Challenge

Share in the comments which of these dimension you feel you possess. How do they show up in your life? Feel free to also use the comments section to ask Amy questions.

Transcript

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

Transcript for Episode #010: The 10 Dimensions of Creative People

Amy Climer:  Welcome to the Deliberate Creative Podcast episode #010.  I’m so excited.  We’re at episode #010.  This is awesome.  When you start a project like this, you just hope you can keep going and I feel like 10 is a big number.  Thanks for listening.

Today, we’re talking about 10 dimensions of the creative personality.  Specifically, I’m going to share some research by one of my favorite researchers.  His name is Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.  He is most well known for his book, Flow, and the research that he did on that concept of flow.  Flow is that idea where you just get into the zone, we get into this flow.  Time slips away and we’re so focused and so engrossed in what we’re doing that we just get really energized and excited.  He discovered this concept of flow because he was researching creativity.

He is really a creativity researcher and then more recently, maybe 15 years ago, co-founded the field of Positive Psychology with Dr. Martin Seligman.  That field has just exploded now and it’s really cool to see his impact on that.  I had the opportunity to interview him in 2011 and he’s such a nice guy.  It’s always great when your heroes turned out to be nice people – so really excited that I had the opportunity to interview him.

Today, I’m going to share with you some research that he did and published in a book called Creativity.  It was published in 1996 and it was based on research that he did from 1990-1995.  I’ll explain that research in more depth in a moment.  I want to talk first about this idea of a creative personality and what does that mean.

In 1950, there was a significant event that year that really kicked off creativity research.  The president of the American Psychological Association, Dr. Guilford, gave a keynote speech at their annual meeting and he really pushed the psychologists to start studying creativity.  People listened and after that speech, there was this huge surge in creativity research – huge compared to what there had been before.

That first 20 to 30 years of creativity research was really trying to figure out what are the traits that creative people possess.  And really what we figured out is there aren’t any.  There aren’t very many specific traits that all creative people possess.  The reality is we’re much more diverse than that.  But Dr. Csikszentmihalyi had done this study where he interviewed 97 people who were highly creative and what he did find was there were some dimensions that they all possessed.

While there are no specific traits that all creative people possess, there are some dimensions found in many highly creative people. These dimensions are like spectrums or paradoxes and creative people often manage to move along these dimensions with ease. Listen and see which of these dimensions you exhibit in your life and work.

What You’ll Learn

• The 10 dimensions found in highly creative people
• The many paradoxes that creative people are able to manage
• The difference between big "C" and little "c" creativity

Resources and Links:

• Csikszentmihalyi's book Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention

The Weekly Challenge

Share in the comments which of these dimension you feel you possess. How do they show up in your life? Feel free to also use the comments section to ask Amy questions.

Learn how your team's stage of development impacts their creative performance. We explore the five stages of group development, how creativity is impacted by each stage, and how to adjust your leadership style based on the team's stage.

What You’ll Learn

• The five stages of team development
• How your team's stage will impact their creative performance
• How to adjust your leadership style based on your team's stage of development and help them achieve higher performance

Resources and Links:

• Free Stages of Team Development Assessment Tool
• Don Clark's Performance Juxtaposition website (author of the stages of group development assessment)
• The research study explaining the five stages of group development - Tuckman, B., & Jensen, M. A. (1977). Stages of small-group development revisited. Group & Organization Studies, 2(4), 419-427.
• North Carolina Outward Bound School

Transcript

Feel like reading instead of listening? Download the PDF Transcript. Enjoy! (will be uploaded in a couple of days)

The Weekly Challenge

Your challenge for the week is have your team take the assessment survey and then discuss the results. Tell us about your team in the comments: What stage are they in? How does their stage impact their creative performance? Feel free to also use the comments section to ask Amy questions.

Learn about the FourSight Thinking Profile and how teams can benefit from understanding their own creative preferences. In this interview with Blair Miller, one of the developers of FourSight, he shares stories and information about how to enhance your team. The last story he shares will help you see how to move your team from so-so to amazing.

What You’ll Learn

* How to use your natural creative preference to enhance your own and your teams’s creativity.

* How team members can build on each other’s strengths to become creative collaborators

Resources

* FourSight Thinking Profile

Transcript

Feel like reading instead of listening? Download the PDF Transcript. Enjoy!

The Weekly Challenge

Your challenge for the week is take the FourSight Thinking Profile.  Share in the comments your profile and how it impacts your work. Listen to the episode for a 20% discount too!

 

Note: The links on this page may be affiliate links. That means I get a small commission of your sale, at no cost to you. However, I only share links to products that I or my guests believe in. Enjoy them! 

Learn about the FourSight Thinking Profile and how teams can benefit from understanding their own creative preferences. In this interview with Blair Miller, one of the developers of FourSight, he shares stories and information about how to enhance your team. The last story he shares will help you see how to move your team from so-so to amazing.

What You’ll Learn

• How to use your natural creative preference to enhance your own and your teams's creativity.
• How team members can build on each other's strengths to become creative collaborators

Resources and Links:

• FourSight Thinking Profile

The Weekly Challenge

Your challenge for the week is take the FourSight Thinking Profile. Share in the comments your profile and how it impacts your work. Listen to the episode for a 20% discount too!

In this episode you will learn tools to use for stage four of the Creative Problem Solving process – Implement.

What You’ll Learn

* How to create a comprehensive action plan

* The importance of identifying Assisters and Resistors

* The power of the Jump Start Action

Resources

* The Progress Principle by Teresa Amabile & Steven Kramer

* Project Management Apps: Asana and Basecamp

Write a Review and Win!

Enter the Podcast Review Contest! Write a review by July 12, 2015 and you’ll be entered to win a free deck of Climer Cards or a series of three creativity coaching sessions with Amy Climer. Details here.

The Weekly Challenge

Your challenge for the week is to design your action plan and do one thing toward reaching your action plan.  Share in the comments one step you did towards your plan!

Transcript

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

Transcript for Episode #007: Creative Problem Solving Stage 4 – Implement

Amy Climer:  Welcome to The Deliberate Creative Podcast, episode #007.  On today’s episode, we are going to talk about the fourth stage in the Creative Problem Solving Process – The Implement Stage.

Before we begin, I want to remind you that this is the last week of the podcast review contest and here is how it works.  Everyone who submits a review on iTunes is entered to win one of two prizes – two people will be randomly selected to win a free deck of Climer Cards which I talked about in episode 5 and I’ll probably talk about it again.  I’ll mail those cards to you and then one person and then one person who writes the best review will get free one-on-one coaching sessions with me.

The best review doesn’t necessarily mean a 5-star review because fortunately, there are a lot of those up there, but it means the review with the most depth and meaning.  At the end of this episode, I’ll share a review with you one that is a great example.  If you’re listening on your phone or if you’re on your computer while this episode is playing, go write a review.  It means a lot to me and I really appreciate them.

This is the fourth episode in a four-part series covering each stage of the Creative Problem Solving process. If you are following along, then in the last episode you developed one or more ideas with the PPCO technique and you have a specific goal you want to move forward with.  In this episode, you will be designing an action plan to help you implement your selected solution.  To help you through the entire CPS process, I have created a free workbook for you.  It has all the exercises from episodes 004-007 plus a couple bonus exercises in there for you.  You can download the free workbook at ClimerConsulting.com/007.  Go download that workbook and you could follow along with the episode.

What is the Implement Stage of the CPS?  This is the stage where you put your ideas into action.  For those of you who are do-ers, you will love this stage.  As in the previous three stages, you will start with Diverging then move to Converging.  As my friend, Mike Ford says, “you are going to make lists and then make choices. Then you’ll rinse and repeat.

In this episode you will learn tools to use for stage four of the Creative Problem Solving process - Implement.

What You’ll Learn

• How to create a comprehensive action plan
• The importance of identifying Assisters and Resistors
• The power of the Jump Start Action

Resources and Links:

• Download the entire CPS workbook (includes worksheets for Episodes 004-007)
• The Progress Principle by Teresa Amabile & Steven Kramer

Write a Review and Win!

Enter the Podcast Review Contest! Write a review by July 12, 2015 and you'll be entered to win a free deck of Climer Cards or a series of three creativity coaching sessions with Amy Climer. Details here.

The Weekly Challenge

Your challenge for the week is to design your action plan and do one thing toward reaching your action plan. Share in the comments one step you did towards your plan!

In this episode you will learn tools to use for stage three of the Creative Problem Solving process – Develop.

What You’ll Learn

* How to evaluate, strengthen and select your best ideas

* How to use the PPCO tool to further develop your top ideas

* How to design and use an Evaluation Matrix to assess the best idea to implement

Resources

* Climer Cards – a simple deck of cards that can spark thousands of ideas

* Book Decisive: How to Better Choices in Life and Work by Chip and Dan Heath

Transcript

Feel like reading instead of listening? Download the PDF Transcript. Enjoy!

Write a Review and Win!

Enter the Podcast Review Contest! Write a review by July 12, 2015 and you’ll be entered to win a free deck of Climer Cards or a series of three creativity coaching sessions with Amy Climer. Details here.

The Weekly Challenge

Your challenge for the week is to use the PPCO and Evaluation Matrix to narrow down to one idea that you will then implement. Share your selected ideas in the comments!

 

Note: The links on this page may be affiliate links. That means I get a small commission of your sale, at no cost to you. However, I only share links to products that I or my guests believe in. Enjoy them!