Beneath it All is the Creative Spirit

Beneath all the creativity tools, tips, techniques, methodologies and process lies the human spirit; incomplete, seeking satisfaction and connection.  Its impulse to meet needs drives a search for new ideas, new decisions and new actions.

Creativityland works with the creative human spirit, opening doors to broader perception and deeper insight from which breakthroughs emerge.

We created, subscribe to and update this Participants’ Bill of Rights

• The Right to take part in ways that are comfortable
• The Right to give from my knowledge, experience, ability and energy in natural ways
• The Right to articulate what I need to be at my creative best
• The Right to be spoken to in language I understand
• The Right to have an insight
• The Right to be educated in ways that support my active participation
• The Right to be challenged to use my capacities
• The Right to be supported, encouraged, involved, engaged, valued
• The Right to an environment that contributes to my health

We have experience with what goes on beneath and offer ways to discipline creative spirit to be accessible,  available for use.

http://www.inspirefirst.com/2012/10/16/mural-herakut-canada-toronto-montreal/

A Voiced Scarf

The late Dr. Ruth B. Noller (1923-2008) was my greatest creativity and creative thinking facilitation teacher and mentor.  Her motto:  A facilitator is a guide by the side rather than a sage on the stage. I feel honored and fortunate to have studied with her for 5 years, both as an undergraduate and graduate student.

In 1997 her 1982 book, Mentoring: A Voice Scarf was revised. Even though she wrote of strategies for effective mentoring, her students and others who knew her focus on effective creativity-thinking facilitation applied these also as internal compasses for working with groups.  I’ve taken the liberty to expand on Ruth’s list to demonstrate ways we can walk the talk and model creativity-thinking behaviors as guides by the sides for others to grow beyond their perceived potential.

Strategies for Effective Mentoring (Facilitation) originated by Ruth Noller (1982, 1997)/adapted by Marci Segal (2014)

Attitude of Positiveness/Think Happy Thoughts

Valuing/What’s the most important thing?
Open-Mindedness/Consider alternatives before deciding
Interrelations/Learn from living and shared experiences
Creative Problem Solving/Deliberately free thinking to create new futures
Effective Communication/Listen well, ask questions, consider others’ worlds and how they survive in them
Discovery/Find ways to learn through curiosity… for positive and challenging unexpected consequences

Strengths + Uniqueness/Leverage personal talents to create new ideas, make new decisions + take new actions
Confidence/Build on experience to continue to improve
Awareness/Notice what is going on in context, find and act on opportunities even when you feel none exist
Risk-Taking/Be an active participator, be proactive
Flexibility/Look for alternatives, ask who else, what else, where else, when else, how else

Strangely enough….

Strangely enough, this is the past that somebody in the future is longing to go back to.

Ashleigh Brilliant.

World Creativity and Innovation Day, April 21

Friends, today, April 21, is World Creativity and Innovation Day, named in 2001, it was expanded to World Creativity and Innovation Week in 2005.

I hope you experienced inspired joy, delight. opportunity, and potential during this week, together with so many others all over the world.

Let’s continue to keep the energy moving for new ideas, decisions, actions and products to make the world a better place and make your place in the world better too.

WCIW happens every year from April 15 – 21. I look forward to sharing it with you in 2015, 2016, ….

Marci Segal, MS. Freeing leaders’ thinking so they can create new futures and Founder, World Creativity + Innovation Week April 15-21

There is always more than one right answer

Your task, if you choose to engage in and/or lead innovation, is to

• Open thinking to new ideas, new potentials, new solutions, new opportunities
• Explore what might work within the current context that takes things forward
• Smile

Marci Segal, MS, Freeing leaders’ thinking so they can create new futures.

Wishing you flexibility, inner strength, and ingenuity during this World Creativity and Innovation Week April 15 – 21, 2014.  And joy…always joy…

Creativity is the ability…

“Creativity is the ability to look at the ordinary and see the…extraordinary.” Dewitt Jones

Neptune’s Horses. Walter Crane, 1893.

Marci Segal, MS, freeing leaders’ thinking so they can create new futures.

Want freedom? Redefine your challenges.

Source: http://lauradambrosio.com/out-of-the-box-creativity/

If you want a problem to go away, redefine it.  See it in another way. Set a new horizon. Dare I repeat…get out of the box… The journey to freedom is a perception change away.

Says Carl Jung –

“The greatest and most important problems of life are all fundamentally insoluble. They can never be solved but only outgrown. Some higher or wider interest arise on the person’s horizon and through this widening of his view, the insoluble problem loses its urgency. It is not solved logically in its own terms, but fades out in contrast to a new and stronger life tendency.”

Says Albert Einstein -

““Problems cannot be solved with the same mind set that created them.”

Keeping a sense of humour helps too.

Creativity involves novelty, usefulness and surprise in ideas, decisions and/or actions.

Three easy ways to open the box

• redefine a challenge [give it new energy]
• see it with new eyes [on a different level of thinking]
• use information to understand it that was not earlier considered

If you are a leader and looking to energize your team, why not hold a lunch meeting where holding a conversation about this notion?  I’m happy to help you structure it so that results are also produced.  Feel free to get in touch.

Marci Segal, MS, Freeing Leaders’ thinking so they can create new futures.

How to connect with people face to face – infographic

Creative thinking involves generating new ideas, making new decisions and taking new actions that are novel, useful and surprising. Interactions with others can help that all to happen.

A client admitted concern because her younger team members didn’t know how to hold conversations. She feared their not feeling comfortable in situations ripe for collaborative creativity. Although they spoke easily about business in face-to-face situations they lacked personal connections with each other and their clients.

She was delighted with the points on this infographic and used it with her team during hosted lunches. Once they felt comfortable with the three steps, they extended their reach with clients by having lunches specifically targeted for strengthening connections.

Perhaps this is something you might explore with your team.  It’s an easy and effective  World Creativity and Innovation Week April 15 – 21 activity.  New ideas, new ideas, new actions that make the world a better place and make your place in the world better too.  Why not, eh?

To really connect with people…

• Ask insightful questions
• Add value
• Learn their stories

Source: http://visual.ly/how-connect-people.

Marci Segal, MS, freeing leaders’ thinking so they can create new futures.

Appealing to people now, in the moment, of this age

Thought to bring you a very well put together generational profile of the millennial generation produced by Brand Amplitude LLC. You can see their 22-page deck here.

Shout out to Velvet Chainsaw Consulting for the link.  BTW one of their more popular posts is 25 Ways to Use Social Media for Your Next Event.

Creativity in meetings and events anyone? 

Are you looking for useful ideas, novel decisions, and surprising outcomes?  We help firms move away from the expert model of conferences (aka talking head) and move toward engaging the talent in the room to participate and collaborate with each other and the content. Get in touch. Give us a call/email/etc.

Marci Segal, MS frees leaders’ thinking so they can create new futures.

Does creativity belong in organizations?

Some say yes, some say no, some say it depends on your understanding of what creativity is. Many arguments using too many words.  I like things simple.

To me creativity connotes new ideas, new decisions and new actions leading to a result that is novel, useful and surprising.

If creativity were to belong in organizations, then where would be the most likely place for it?

Where ever transformation occurs – product and service transformation, business model transformation and transformations of the activities of people, leaders and teams.

If you are wondering what to do for World Creativity and Innovation Week April 15 – 21, remember: New ideas, new decisions, new actions resulting in a product that is novel, useful and surprising.  Ideas from past years’ celebrations can be found here.

Inspiration for this blog post came from this quote: Creativity, innovation and initiative can be described as psychological processes that facilitate transitions into desired future states… Rank, J., Pace, V. L., & Frese, M. (2004). Three avenues for future research on creativity, innovation, and initiative. Applied Psychology: An International Review, 53, 508-518.

Marci Segal, MS, Freeing Leaders’ thinking so they can create new futures.