In a fast-changing world, creativity and innovation should be considered core skills that can help differentiate your organisation from the next. That ability to see things differently, to adapt to change and respond positively to new opportunities quickly, can mean the difference between leading the way or always playing catch up.
Trainers’ Library® contains a plethora of training activities that provide practical tools that organisations can use to investigate, generate, develop and implement ideas as part of a cycle of continuous improvement. We’ll highlight some of those in a future article.
In this article though, we want to look at creative mindset and environment. Because having a knowledge of all the tools in the world won’t help your organisation become more innovative if people feel they aren’t creative, or that they can’t bring their creativity to work.
A Creative Mindset
Ask people to score their creativity on a scale of 1-10 and the results can be pretty depressing. But the truth is we can all think creatively, and creative thinking is a skill that can be developed like any other.
A major barrier though is a lack of self-belief. So the following activities are designed to demystify creativity and help people recognise their own, often dormant, skills.
What is creativity? In this module we debunk some of the preconceived ideas about creativity and the stereotypes that go with these and provide a clear definition of creativity that everyone can understand and relate to.
How often do we approach problems from the perspective of what’s worked before? Reproductive thinking is valuable but it’s not all we should do. This article looks at the differences between reproductive and productive thinking and the role they play in creative solution finding.
Creativity can be broken down into four distinct behaviours, all of which can be developed – Bravery, Inquisitiveness, Receptiveness and Drive. This module encourages people to reflect on their areas of strength and areas where development could help them bring more of their creativity to work.
A Creative Environment
The physical, as well as emotional environment we work in can have a major impact on our ability to think creatively. This module explores the former and encourages participants to think about what a creative environment might look like and how they can bring some of that to their workplace.
The thing that has probably most impact on creativity and innovation at work is leadership. This is a brilliant, activity-based module, which illustrates very powerfully the difference leaders can make. Lightbulb moments guaranteed!
We’ve all seen it haven’t we – that initial enthusiasm for an idea wane and ideas that seemed to have such promise withering on the vine. This fun activity looks at the importance of maintaining momentum when innovating and examines those practical things leaders can do to ensure energy doesn’t seep away during the development or implementation phase of a project.
So, there you go, a small selection of the icebreakers and course modules available to Trainers’ Library® members that will help to ensure your teams are ready to think creatively and to innovate.
If you’d like to know more, get in touch.