To: The Great Leaders Who Have a Passion for Continuous Learning
A key element of highly successful leadership is creative thinking – seeing opportunities that other people don’t see; connecting dots that are not apparent to others. In his wonderful book, How Successful People Think, John Maxwell discusses ways to harness creative thinking. He captures your attention with a quote from Annette Moser-Wellman, author of The Five Faces of Genius: ‘The most valuable resource you bring to your work and to your firm is your creativity. More than what you get done, more than the role you play, more than your title, more than your ‘output’ – it’s your ideas that matters.” It is this skill that drives change in business and our personal lives – exploring new possibilities within our environment and within ourselves. He suggests that creative thinking can be learned, and provides characteristics that serve as a model for that learning:
- Creative thinkers value ideas – They love ideas and have a discipline for constantly finding new ones… and lots of them.
- Creative thinkers explore options – Creativity give us options that become threaded discussions in which one thought leads to another and then another.
- Creative thinkers embrace ambiguity – There is no black and white in their view of the world; they see inconsistencies which serve as opportunities to explore.
- Creative thinkers celebrate the offbeat – Maxwell quotes Kingman Brewster, Yale University President: “There is a correlation between the creative and the screwball. So we must suffer the screwball gladly.” They may be view as a little out-of-touch, but that's the point - they are envisioning new possibilities.
- Creative thinkers connect the unconnected – It is the exciting ability to change challenge into opportunity by creatively connecting ideas or events that appear at first to have no relationship. It is a process that he describes as: THINK -> COLLECT -> CREATE -> CORRECT -> CONNECT.
- Creative thinkers don’t fear failure – It’s all about learning. Yes, there’s risk and even a possibility of some raised eyebrows. That’s accepted and part of the process.
On the value of creative thinking Maxwell quotes creativity expert Ernie Zelinski: “Creativity is the joy of not knowing it all. The joy of not knowing it all refers to the realization that we seldom if ever have all the answers; we always have the ability to generate more solutions to just about any problem. Being creative is being able to see or imagine a great deal of opportunity life’s problems. Creativity is having options.”
This week enjoy your great gift of creativity. Create options for your life and business. As you do, remember the words of Buckminster Fuller: “There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly.”
Have a beautiful day and an incredible week!!!
Mike