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“Creating Successful Leaders”

November 14, 2012 Ways To Kick-Start Creativity

This week I came across an insightful talk on creativity Julie Burnstein gave at a TED Talk conference. As a radio host, Bernstein has interviewed numerous artists, creators and innovators, and began seeing similarities in their take on finding a creative spark. While a bit unconventional, I feel her 4 lessons on creativity ring true for us all:

1. Pay attention to your surroundings. 

“That’s hard to do when you have a leather rectangle in your pocket that takes all of your focus.”

Sometimes we’re so wrapped up in our own little bubbles that we forget there is a busy, beautiful world all around us, right now. Creative people don’t live in bubbles; they engage with the world. Doing so fuels their work. So keep your eyes open. Opportunities, inspiration and unique ideas surround you at this very moment.

2. Some of life’s difficulties create the best breakthroughs. Difficulty, hardship, and failure boost positive creativity by forcing us to think in new ways. For instance, someone having ongoing trouble finding a job will need to eventually adapt by getting creative. Whether it’s modifying their goals or their strategy, they’ll most certainly need to think in ways they hadn’t before, i.e., creatively.

3. Pushing up against the limits of what you can do will help you discover what you thrive at. Using the example I gave above, it would be easy for this job-seeking person to get discouraged and simply give up, but she doesn’t have to do that. Instead, she should acknowledge her personal limits, which we all have. She has found what doesn’t work for her and now possesses a better sense of where her strengths lie. To put it simply, discovering what we can’t do forces us to look, think, and act creatively with the strengths we have.

4. The embrace of loss.

“In order to create you have to stand in that space between what we see in the world and what we hope for, looking squarely at rejection and heartbreak, at war and death.”

This morning, I heard a radio story about an entrepreneur with a pretty simple idea: selling soccer balls. But his inspiration came from seeing Afghani children kicking around a wadded up ball of garbage. So, he created a line of virtually indestructible soccer balls to be donated to impoverished communities around the world. While the “loss” of a ball is a much lighter example of the loss many of us encounter in life, it shows how loss itself can act as a catalyst for positive creativity and innovation.

Bernstein concludes as such:

“We all wrestle with experience and challenge, limits and loss. Creativity is essential to all of us whether we’re scientists or teachers, parents or entrepreneurs.”

It’s true. Creativity is attainable and important for us all. Every kind of job relies upon creative people, and more importantly, creativity enables us to successfully navigate through life.

You can watch Julie Burnstein’s full talk here:

4 Lessons In Creativity

“4 Lessons in Creativity,” TED Talks, accessed November 13, 2012. http://www.ted.com/talks/julie_burstein_4_lessons_in_creativity.html

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November 6, 2012 What’s The Deal With Difficult People?

It’s not uncommon to have met some of your best friends through work. Yet we also know that the workplace is full of people who seem dead set on making things more difficult for everyone around them. In order to maintain a productive and fulfilling work environment, it’s vital to know how to effectively deal with “problem people,” as we will lovingly call them.

The problem person comes in many varieties. There’s the passive-aggressive person, the micro-manager, the hostile one, the egotistical guy/gal, the overly-dramatic one, and the list goes on. Hara Estroff Marano of Psychology Today states that these diverse personalities all share a common trait:

“Their MO is to provoke, then make you feel you have no reason to react—and it’s all your fault to begin with!”

Their power therefore comes from “getting a rise” out of you. Which means that in order to reestablish control in a situation, you must identify when, where and how a problem person is manipulating your emotions.

First, we must step back and try to remain composed during an unpleasant exchange. Doing so gives us the chance to evaluate the situation clearly. “Therein lies your advantage,” says Marano. “It allows you to predict the specific emotional trap being set for you, which is your passport to getting your own power back.” Although it seems counter-intuitive in the moment, keeping calm even while being yelled at demonstrates that the difficult person you’re dealing with has no power over how you react; you alone possess this power.

Next, determine when and where you are most likely to interact with your difficult person, and form a strategy that limits their negative influence on you. Physician Susan Biali provides a few examples of what this looks like:

“Minimize time with problem people. Keep interactions as short as possible.”

Some personality types just don’t mix well, and it may be best for both parties if you restrict face time with your difficult person to business-only exchanges.

“Before any interaction with a difficult person, mentally review the topics that invite attack and make an effort to avoid them.”

In this way, you are withholding fuel they could use to cultivate negativity in the workplace.

Whatever you do, don’t let the problem go unresolved. You may need to confront the person head-on if their behavior continues to hinder your ability to get work done. If this be the case, use “I” statements that seek to show how their behavior effects you, and do your best to be gentle, reasonable and to-the-point. Often, people giving you problems may not be aware that they’re impacting you in a negative way.

Overall, remember that only you control your behavior, your reactions and your emotions. Patience, perspective and a grain of salt go a long way when it comes to effectively dealing with difficult people.

1 “The High Art of Handling Problem People,” last modified July 2, 2012, Psychology Today, accessed November 5, 2012, http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/201204/the-high-art-handling-problem-people

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October 31, 2012 Choosing Your Path

Should you go back to school? Stay with your current job, or make a radical change? Take on part time work while you’re on the job hunt for a full time job? And which type of career should you pursue? Let’s face it, all these choices only complicate the job hunt process. In his book, “One Big Thing,” Phil Cooke asserts that simplifying the search to one important strength provides the best chance at success and happiness.

“I love asking this question: What could you be the best in the world at doing?…I’m really trying to see what you feel is your greatest strength. Where you could compete. Where you stand out. What’s your niche. What areas of your life are you most proud of?”1

Cooke’s overall message is simple. We all have one distinguishing strength that sets us above the rest, and the key to a fulfilling job is finding and utilizing this strength. Cooke leaves his definition of a strength open to interpretation, but he wants us to think specifically.

For instance, perhaps you have strong communication skills. While this puts you at a great advantage in almost every job, it won’t help you narrow your focus because it applies to so many jobs. Instead, think of specific areas in your life you feel your ability to communicate makes you stand out, flourish, and gives you joy. What age group do you best relate to? Are you better standing before large groups, or do your strengths lie in one-on-one conversations? Hone in on the particulars, drawing on your own experiences.

To help us on our quest to find our strength, leadership coach Ginny Clarke suggests we “ask ourselves what we loved doing when we were 10 years old.” Sadly, many people lose touch with their true passions during the long, hard process of growing up. Thinking back to what excited your 10 year old selves is an effective and powerful method of finding our one big thing, because “this is the age when you are free to imagine,” says Clarke. “If you allow yourself to explore this, then your search stays closer to what speaks to you.”2

Cooke reminds us that most people don’t find their one big strength all at once; it is indeed a process. “Rather than an explosive ‘aha!’ moment, we find bits and pieces along the trail—take a few wrong turns in the process—and eventually start piecing together the puzzle of our lives.”

It’s never too late to discover that one thing that really makes you tick, excites you, and causes you to stand out above the rest. Keep pushing forward, simplify your options, draw from your memory and always follow where your strength leads.

1 Cooke, Phil. One Big Thing: Discovering What You Were Born To Do (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2012), xiv, 12-13, 15.

2Jen Weigel, “Stop being average and start being extraordinary,” Star Tribune, October 29th, 2012, accessed October 29th, 2012.

 

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