How do Creativity Facilitators Need to Behave? A checklist of sorts
Oh, Mabel Behave (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Every so often for a break I clean out files. Here’s today’s find, a gem. Questions for people in helping roles to consider (adapted from Fundamentals of Counseling Shertzer and Stone, 1974 p.8).
What if these are questions are for creativity facilitators as well. You think? Should they be?
- Can I behave in some way which will be perceived by the other person as trustworthy, dependable, or consistent?
- Can I be expressive enough so that I will communicate unambiguously?
- Can I let myself experience positive attitudes towards the people I’m working with – warmth, caring, liking, interest and respect?
- Can I be strong enough as a person to be separate from the group and not own their content?
- Am I secure enough to permit others’ their unique identities and not try to force my will on them?
- Can I let myself enter fully into the world of the others’ feelings and personal meanings and see them as they do?
- Can I receive people as they are? Can I communicate this attitude?
- Can I act with sufficient sensitivity in the relationship that my behaviour will not be perceived of as a threat?
- Can I free others from the threat of external evaluation?
- Can I meet this group or person as people who are in the process of creating something new and not be bound by their past and by my past?
Do you feel it’s important for creativity facilitators to ascribe to a code of behaviour? Just wondering…
Marci Segal, MS, Creativity and Change Leadership; Freeing leaders’ thinking so they can create new futures; Founder and Steward, World Creativity and Innovation Week April 15 – 21. Speaker, facilitator, author. Executive team building, innovation programs.
Follow…
Top Posts & Pages
How do Creativity Facilitators Need to Behave? A checklist of sorts http://t.co/mRVuCOuljE via @sharethis
Marci-
Thanks! Timing is wonderful- about to join new Executive Committee of Newcomers’. These will be wonderful ‘foundation’ pieces for training with the team!!
I completely agree with this code of conduct. I would perhaps add:
Can I act in a way that does not impose my FourSight preference on the process and the people involved?
That is actually a good list!
Hey Marci –
Yes! I believe there are many reasons to ascribe to a code of conduct. 1) It acts as an effective signalling tool to prepare people for what they can / can’t expect and therefore the role each person will play. 2) In doing so it builds trust and opens the door to a conversation / dialogue. 3) It can provide credibility – outlining the art AND the science of creativity. 4) It helps to navigate a path. 5) As creativity facilitators we should be open to our own learning, development and change – I believe this is accelerated if we have a frame within which to place our learning. A code of conduct can provide this. 6) It creates a network of expert practitioners & learners. I could go on!!
…. one final thought. The words ‘Code of Conduct’ (to me) sound so ‘stuffy’. Whilst we all know that creative thinking happens within a ‘framework’, these three words seem more reductive than expansive & therefore at odds with what we (as creativity facilitators) are seeking to achieve.
Hi Sarah, thanks for writing. For a couple of years I’ve wondered what people expect, behaviour-wise, from people who say they are creativity facilitators, and if it would be helpful if there were a standard of sorts, somehow. ‘Code of conduct’ as a phrase may have a connotation of olde worlde stuffyiness, and if so, then what newer descriptor-idioms might be used to achieve the intended (unstuffy) intent? Ideas?
Hi Marci –
Leave this one with me – I’ll come back to you. I’m reflecting on how to scale some of the words I use when it’s “just me” out there!
Are you a creativity facilitator?If so read How do Creativity Facilitators Need to Behave http://t.co/cOvUeXWvdI to make sure its a good fit