Being Creative With How You Were Created
Loriana Sekarski
July, 2019
This is the last in a series on becoming more innovative. The first blog focused on culture, the second one focused on becoming a more positive what-if person, and this one gives helpful tips for increasing your creativity.
“I’m just not the creative type.” It’s a complaint I hear often from my clients. If this sounds like you or one of your employees or volunteers, keep reading. We will explore some ways to help you overcome this perceived constraint. Why do I say perceived? Because often this comment is preceded by something like:
I don’t do art.
I’ve never been that person who’s always coming up with these really unique ideas.
I’m not flamboyant. I just got it done.
We’ve somehow convinced ourselves that being creative requires one to paint, draw, or sculpt; to ooze a continual flow of new ideas and present them with flourish; and to exhibit over-the-top energy that gets everyone excited.
Is there a place for that? Certainly. But for most organizations and for implementing Organic Outreach, we’re seeking something a little different: being able to bring some “out of the box” thinking to new ways of reaching people.
Define Your Creative Self
To start, you must redefine what it means to be creative or innovative so you can start thinking of yourself in that light. Halt the negative self-talk, which inhibits being successful in this vital area of leadership. Answer this question, “Given how you’re wired, how can you be creative?”
Here’s what one client wrote as she defined how she can be creative:
- Trying new ways to engage people
- Coming up with new approaches to marketing: helping the team think differently as well as pushing their thinking
- Identifying a different way to solve a problem or pulling in the right people to solve the problem
- Devising more efficient ways to handle something or developing a process to go after a new approach
- Solving budget issues despite the constraints
Doing this exercise totally changed her mindset. Notice how two of the descriptors focus on getting the creativity out of people by asking powerful questions. You’re creative when you help your team be more creative.
"for most organizations and for implementing Organic Outreach, we’re seeking something a little different: being able to bring some “out of the box” thinking to new ways of reaching people."
Aim Your Gallup Strengths at Being More Creative
If you know your Gallup strengths, you should be intentionally aiming your top 10 strengths at everyday activities and interactions to maximize your effectiveness. You can do the same with creativity. While the Ideation strength is a natural go-to for being creative, it’s not needed. Here are some examples of others you can use:
- Harmony: bringing a team together to work toward innovative solutions
- Learner: reading about (and borrowing) ideas from other churches
- Includer: putting the innovative types on your idea generation team
- Connectedness: looking at the connections between people and ideas and seeing if any new possibilities emerge
- Arranger: rearranging the pieces for a new outcome
- Discipline: questioning every assumption to ferret out a new possibility
- Competition: being motivated by making your team more innovative than others
- Relator or Woo: bringing others into the process to increase your energy
- Input: collecting examples and stories about other programs and giving them to your team to inspire new options
Almost all the strengths can contribute to being more innovative. Again, it’s being creative with how you were created.
Upping Your Creative Index
With all the above, there are simple actions you can take to boost your creativity. One objective is to get out of your current situation to help change how you think. Here are some ideas:
- Pray before you go and ask for His help. Often, I can tell God is generating the ideas or words for me, which is so cool!
- Have a goal or focus area. What do you hope to accomplish during your creative period?
- Schedule a longer block of time so you don’t feel rushed.
- Visit new “thinking spots” (like coffeehouses) and see if they spark creativity.
- Leave your laptop/phone in your office or car.
- Use Post-it notes to get all your ideas on a wall or table so they’re visible to spur ideas and connections.
- Throughout the week, journal ideas to take to your creative time.
- Look for spurts of creativity, but don’t force it. (And if it’s flowing, keep going!)
- Schedule before the worries and pressures of the day inundate you.
- Read articles you’ve collected, your journal notes, etc., at the beginning of the interview, then step back and see what insights you have.
- Right before your creative period, meet with someone creative — it will rub off on you.
- Read articles on other creative programs to help spur ideas.
- Turn off the inside critic who questions your ideas.
- Use music to get to your happy place.
Your challenge: Start defining your creative self this week and try 2 of the suggestions on the “Upping Your Creative Index” list.
Loriana Sekarski is the founder and president of BONSAI, a consulting company that transforms leaders (and businesses) into the best version of themselves. As a leadership coach, Loriana teaches leaders how to hone soft skills, spur workplace engagement, and achieve untapped levels of potential. Outside of BONSAI, Loriana serves as an adjunct professor at Washington University’s graduate student program. Additionally, she’s fine-tuning her passion project, TakeFlight, a program that addresses domestic abuse within the Christian community.