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February 28, 2013

Eliminate Barriers for a Creative Workplace

Creativity is one of the most important and least understood resources in organizational life.  Within work teams we often mismanage creativity.  There are always ways for individual team members to actively foster a creative climate which can result in higher performing teams.
As adults we tend to find it difficult to draw from our natural creative ability; this tends to be particularly difficult in group or team settings.  The training course, “Eliminate Barriers to Creative Thinkinggives idea killers as well as builders that affect creativity in the workplace.  There are common statements which can discourage or encourage creativity in a group.  For every idea killer statement, a builder can counter act it.  Here are some examples given in the course:
Killers:

  • “It’ll be an awful lot of work”
  • “We’ve never done anything like that before”
  • “That’s too weird, let’s stay on track here, okay?”
  • “You know we don’t have that in the budget”
  • “Be realistic for once”

Builders:

  • “But it would be worth it don’t you think?”
  • “Maybe it’s time we try something we’ve never done before”
  • “Let’s stay with this, it has possibilities!”
  • “Budget aside, how would your solution work?”
  • “There’s time to be realistic later.  Let’s be creative…let’s play a little!”

To stimulate creativity, you have to support the ideas of other team members.  Focus on idea generation, not evaluation.  Denying the opportunity for others to develop their own creative functions, discourages the development of innovative concepts which halts the organization from growing, and keeping up with competition.   The course wraps up by reminding us, “A high performing team will capitalize on new ideas whenever they arise.”
Use “Eliminate Barriers to Creative Thinking” to keep the creativity flowing in your team.

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