By Lynne Levesque
Unfortunately, most popular definitions of creativity such as “brainstorming,” “generating big ideas,” or as being a “genius” or an “artist,” miss the incremental, but equally significant, contributions made by building on what others have done. They also don’t recognize that creativity is not just about coming up with ideas; it’s also about doing something with those ideas!
In order to help individuals be their creative best, I developed the Breakthrough Creativity Profile.
So how does this framework and knowledge about these Eight Creative Talents help leaders? Here are my top five reasons:
- The Eight Creative Talents promote more self-awareness. Leaders must be aware of their strengths and challenges in order to be truly effective. Since research has established that personality impacts a leader’s style and their effectiveness as a leader, the Breakthrough Creativity Profile provides double benefits to leaders: greater self-awareness and better appreciation of their creative talents.
- Understanding their preferences for certain creative talents can help leaders define gaps and possible blinders in their strategic thinking and decision making. While the talents help leaders make more creative contributions and more creatively solve problems, they can also create blindspots around the data they see and don’t see and the criteria they use to make decisions.
- Knowledge of an individual’s creative strengths boosts self-confidence, self-esteem, flexibility, and resilience. Stronger creative confidence brings an openness to new ideas, balanced risk taking, and the ability to re-invent a leadership style to engage with a new generation of employees and new types of partners and customers.
- Since the Breakthrough Creativity framework recognizes individual differences in creative endeavors, it helps leaders appreciate the different contributions from members of their team.
- Using the Eight Creative Talents and the newly developed Breakthrough Creativity Team Profile brings a new tool for a leader’s teambuilding efforts. The Breakthrough Creativity Team Profile enhances a team’s creative performance through improved understanding of both the individual talents of team members and how the combination of talents impacts the team’s interactions and creative results.
HRDQ-U and Dr. Lynne Levesque hosted a free webinar on the Breakthrough Creativity Profile you can watch here!
