Soft skills

Fostering creative thinking

To ensure that all employees think creatively, it is necessary for an organisation to address their creative roadblocks, writes Shawn Tng

Creative thinking is a skill that must be fostered and used continuously in order to keep it strong. You can foster creative thinking by using your emotional intelligence (EI). Understanding how emotions, biology and practice affect creativity will enable you to create an environment that is conducive to creativity. Empathising with your employees’ requests to address their roadblocks will help you create an ideal environment for them. Additionally, by understanding the influence of emotions, you can help your employees channel their emotions constructively.

Emotions and biology

Happiness is the most productive emotion because the hormones produced by the brain counteract negative emotions and overly critical thinking as well as promote increased brain activity. Sadness has the opposite affect on creativity because of the type of hormones the brain produces when you are sad.

The brain’s biology also affects creativity. Practice increases the size of the pathways that are used frequently for thought and action. The more you practice a skill the thicker its path becomes. When you stop practising a skill the pathway shrinks from disuse. When you are first learning a skill the brain must create the pathway for the skill. As you continue to develop the skill the pathway becomes thicker.

The more frequently you practice thinking creatively, fostering a positive attitude, or choosing to be motivated, the easier these skills will come to you when needed. Understanding these concepts will enable you to fulfil your employees’ needs and wants; this will help generate positive feelings about the work they are doing, and in turn will positively affect their performance.

Stimulating tools

When you are developing your creative talents or those of your employees, or when you are struggling to develop creative ideas, you may find it helpful to use a tool to initiate the creative process. There are several tools that you can use include brainstorming, networking and challenging the mind.

Brainstorming

Brainstorming, when used correctly, can produce a variety of options for solving problems creatively. Brainstorming sessions should start with a brief discussion of the problem, the desired outcome, and the resources available. Establishing goals and the resources required will outline the scenario and the definition of success.

Next, open the floor to any and all ideas to solve the problem. Designate someone to take notes or write each idea on a board for everyone to see. The goal is to produce as many ideas at one time as possible before analysing them in order to avoid squelching the creative process.

After all of the ideas are put on the board and no one else is coming up with ideas, it is a good idea to take a quick five-to-ten-minute break. Upon returning, you may find that one or two more ideas were formulated while away from the pressure to participate. Be sure to record any additional ideas. Next, list the positive aspects of each idea, followed by a listing of its negative aspects. During the listing process, you should keep the discussion focused on each idea by talking about the specifics of each idea. Additionally, you should not allow personal biases to interfere with the analysis of ideas.

After you have created two lists, the group will be able to eliminate some ideas immediately. Do not throw away ideas. Discarded ideas may help you fill out the details of other ideas. With the ideas that appear most feasible, confer on the options and decide as a group what is best for the company. You may decide to combine ideas or split them into sub-steps to the overall solution.

Networking

Networking is an effective tool for several different applications. In terms of creative thinking, networking can enable you to discover what has been done elsewhere to combat a similar problem, whether the solution worked, and what things they could have improved. Networking also provides you with another source of creative ideas, or someone to analyse your solution from a distant perspective. This may provide you additional insight into the strengths and weaknesses of your solution.

Challenging the mind

Using brainteasers on a regular basis will help your employees exercise the creative part of their minds and strengthen their brain pathways. Brainteasers are a good way to challenge your mind. Practising brainteasers will enable your employees to access the creative part of their minds more easily. In addition, practising challenges will help reduce the fear that challenges can produce because it helps employees gain confidence in a non-threatening environment.

When developing brainteasers for your employees, you should first work to develop their strengths in order to give them confidence in their abilities. As their confidence grows, begin to challenge their weaknesses. You should gradually increase the difficulty of the challenges to foster confidence. For example, the vice-president of accounting may post a maths teaser on the office board. The teaser may be something like:

Using +, -, x, and / or brackets, find the total of 123456789 = 28. The answer is 1+2+3+(4x5) - 6+7-8+9 = 28.

Roadblocks to creativity

In order to help your employees think creatively, you first need to address

their creative roadblocks. Roadblocks can be environmental, such as uncomfortable chairs, awkward desk structures, or the inability to listen to music while working. Additional roadblocks may include constrictive directions, negative attitudes or disruptive scheduling.

It is unnecessary to create a ‘think tank’ to develop creative solutions. Instead, give each employee the freedom to accomplish tasks the way he thinks is best within defined guidelines.

You can solve roadblocks by addressing those issues that are the worst problems for your employees. Each department will find different roadblocks. Some employees may be comfortable in a typical work environment. Other employees may need to have a ‘creative room’ which might be furnished with living-room style furniture in order to generate a positive environment for developing creative ideas and solutions.

How can you identify potential creative roadblocks your company will face?

Here are a few questions to help you do so:

• Is the environment sterile, with little or no decorative artwork?
• Are the desks large enough to spread out documents for review?
• Was the problem understood?
• Were the directions too constrictive?
• Were the resources adequately defined?
• What are the employees’ attitudes?

After identifying all the potential roadblocks, you should solve as many of them as possible. If you are unable to overcome a roadblock, tell your employees why you were unable to do so. Additionally, encourage employees to talk to you so that you can help them overcome the roadblocks to their creativity.

Shawn Tng is marketing manager, APAC, Thomson NETg. Email: shawn.tng@thomson.com