How Creativity Leads to Success

You’re well educated, you work hard, you’re committed to your career and you believe in your company’s mission, yet you aren’t achieving the level of success you would like to achieve.  You aren’t doing what you really want to be doing, what you really believe will make an impact and allow you to make a name for yourself. What is going on? 

My guess is, there is a skill you are overlooking throughout all of your hard work and busyness. When we have a goal, we have a tendency to get lost in the proverbial trees.  We cannot seem to stop ourselves from running in circles.  We do what we believe is expected, with the hope that the effort will take us where we want to go. And when that doesn’t work we just try harder to meet these expectations, even though deep down we may not even really care about the expectations someone else has placed on us.  Maybe this isn’t the best way to approach our career goals.

HOW CAN I TAKE A DIFFERENT APPROACH?

Success is more than following established rules and doing all the “right things”.  Success requires time to step back and look at the whole forest, not just the trees. It requires insight, flexibility and adaptability. It requires the willingness to think differently in order to stand out and see the solutions no one else sees. The skill you really need to develop is creativity.

If you take a look around at successful people, what do you see?  I see people who know themselves and who confidently share and promote their unique ideas.  You know those ideas that come to you but you don’t share because of fear of what others may think? Or maybe you talk about your ideas but never actually do anything about them because it’s scary. Some of those ideas could be diamonds in the rough, your chance to shine, your success.  What if the Wright Brothers never tried to fly? (You can be sure that many folks thought their efforts were no more than mere flights of fancy . . . bad pun I know, but I couldn’t resist.)

WHAT DO I SEE?

Every single one of us has our own way of seeing the world and our own way of processing what we see.  Everyone thinks differently,which is what makes us so interesting. As people who think differently, we create groundbreaking ideas and dream up ways to solve any number of challenges, from more effectively motivating our staffs to figuring out how to solve major world problems such as disease, climate change and famine. It is the creative minds who will guide the world toward solving these problems, who will figure out a way to eliminate illiteracy and eradicate cancer. Do you believe that you are one of these creative minds?  How can you use creativity to find the success you seek? 

WHAT DOES BEING CREATIVE MEAN?

We have grown accustomed to thinking what the world tells us to think. We seek an understanding about reality, but what we call reality is actually perception.  Albert Einstein didn’t speak until the age of four.  His teachers called him lazy and thought he would amount to nothing – their perception, clearly not the reality.  Fortunately, he did not accept others’ perception of him, and he found his own success.

The Google definition of creativity is, “the use of imagination or original ideas, especially in the production of an artistic work.”  I believe that creativity extends far beyond artistic production.  In fact the Google definition also lists synonyms of, inventiveness, imagination, innovation, originality, individuality, artistry, inspiration, vision, enterprise, initiative and resourcefulness.

Phew, that’s a lot of meaning to put behind one word! Although all those synonyms certainly apply to artistic creations, they also apply to what you need to do at your job, even if you are not sculpting or writing screenplays.

CAN I LEARN TO BE MORE CREATIVE?

Maybe you don’t think of yourself as a very creative person.  I have good news for you.  Creativity is a skill that you can learn just like you learned to read or play the piano.  It is a matter of training your brain to break free of its regular patterns of seeing things. 

HOW CAN I IMPROVE THE CREATIVE SUCCESS OF MY TEAM?

Here are a few quick tips for generating creativity on your work team:

• Know your team and their personalities so that you can find the balance between structure and freedom for individual creativity.
• Be an example by sharing your ideas, even the ones you aren’t certain about. Especially those. 
• Allow your team to fail and make mistakes while discovering solutions and new ideas. Show respect for their efforts and ideas.
• Allow team members to work both alone and together on projects. Our most creative ideas come when we work alone without fear of judgment, but those ideas grow and develop into useable ideas when we have input from others.
• Encourage your team members to have a life outside of work. A variety of experiences in life and interactions with people from different walks of life all lead to more creative thinking.

HOW DO I TAKE THE FIRST STEPS TOWARD CREATIVE SUCCESS?

Getting creative requires time.  Once you begin, you’ll take a few steps forward and then fall into old patterns of behavior.  Don’t beat yourself up.  Just get back on track.  Overtime, your new creative mind will kick into gear without you actively thinking about it and it will just become a natural part of who you are.

What success have you found on your creative journey so far?

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Guest Author Bio

Betsy Conlan is a creativity coach, ceramic artist and reformed accounting guru. She is living proof that even the most analytical folks are creative too. Her passion is helping others awaken their inner creative genius.