What’s your creative profile?
In 2010 IBM surveyed 1,500 CEO’s from 60 countries and 33 industries and found that the majority of them believe “More than rigor, management discipline, integrity or even vision — successfully navigating an increasing complex world will require creativity.”
In fact, 64% of the CEO’s claimed ‘being creative’ is the most valued employee trait of all.
I was still teaching at Duke then and had found there are lots of folks who will accept a call from a stranger when told he’s a college professor, so I called the lead researchers and talked with them about the study.
They shared with me that the study was associating IBM with creativity but, as one of the researchers put it, “We grind the creativity out of our new hires just like everyone else.” They decided that perhaps they could kick start employees’ creative growth by developing and sharing a four-part taxonomy of creative types. The idea was it would help their employees think about their individual creative and entrepreneurial motivations and that self-reflection is useful at the beginning of a personal development program.
So, IBM asks it’s employees “Are you motivated to be creative and entrepreneurial because you are…”
- An Explorer? Do you apply your creative qualities and entrepreneurial behaviors because you are excited by the unknown, because you love discovering new ideas or opportunities?
- An Artist? Are you motivated to be creative and entrepreneurial because of your need to express your personal vision, a vision for entertaining or informing or serving others?
- A Warrior? Do you love to compete, to show you are the best at what you do, and are you eager to use your creatively entrepreneurial skills to win?
- A Saint? Are you motivated to be creative because you like to be of service, you want to help others, you want to use your creatively entrepreneurial talents to help make the world a better place?
As I listened over the years to how folks applied these types to their own creative predispositions and behaviors I added two more:
- An Orchestrator? Do you enjoy using your creative and entrepreneurial talents to recruit the right people and collect the best resources for them as you help them identify their best opportunity?
- A Cultivator? Do you enjoy taking on something someone else has started so you can use your creative and entrepreneurial abilities to make it even better?
I’ve offered this tool for personal insight to a least a couple of thousand folks and have yet to find anyone who claims to be only one of these types; often they are a combination of three or four.
After you consider your motivations and identify your collection of types I urge you to re-examine how one of the creative types you didn’t include might serve your continued growth or your work on an upcoming project and how you might begin to incorporate those new qualities into your creative make up.
You will enjoy even more insight — and have some fun — when you visually represent your combination. Graph it, map it, chart it, doodle it. Create a cartoon character out of your types. Maybe try a couple of visual strategies like make a pie chart and then create a character; it takes one understanding of an idea to hold it in your head, it takes another understanding of the idea to write it down, and it is likely you will be offered a whole new understanding of the idea when you visually represent it.
And while any unlined piece of paper will do maybe this exercise is a good time to start a journal; when you record your thoughts there you can look back and see how you’ve grown.
There are important benefits of doing this off-line, with pen or pencil or marker in hand. Research shows your brain becomes more alive when your hand is grasping and using a tool.
This is a great family activity. Introduce it after dinner and challenge each family member to come back the next night with your Creative Types identified and illustrated. Then, hey, try to profile the family as a unit and see what you learn about each other.
Have fun.
“Exploring Your Creative Genius” takes an expansive view on what it means to be creative and entrepreneurial in an ongoing conversation led by Carl Nordgren — entrepreneur, novelist, and lifelong student with decades of experience growing his own creative capacity and assisting others to do the same in exciting new ways!
You can also find more ways to explore your creative genius in this column’s companion radio program, broadcasting on 97.9 The Hill WCHL and posted here on Chapelboro!
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