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- P e r s o n a l _ C r e a t i v i t y -
Sheila Campbell
Here are two quick exercises you can use to create a mindshift in a group. The first is based on research reported in "The Creative Cognition Approach," edited by Steven Smith et al., published by the MIT Press in 1995. It's a recap of recent creativity research and the specific chapter that stimulated this exercise is titled, "What's Old about New Ideas?" by Thomas B. Ward, a professor of psychology at Texas A&M and one of the book's editors.
Exercise #1 -- Give everyone in the group the following task:
Please imagine a creature living on another planet. In fact, this planet isn't even in our solar system. It might be an imaginary planet, so it's very different from earth. What kind of animal might live on such a planet with an atmosphere so different from ours?
Please draw your critter. (Give them two or three minutes; it doesn't take much time.)
When they're done, ask several people to show their creatures and describe them to the group. After hearing about four or five, ask the group,
"How many of you drew creatures that had two eyes?"
-- Most hands go up.
"With four legs or appendages?"
"With bilateral symmetry, like humans and animals on earth?"
Most people draw creatures with two eyes, four appendages and bilateral symmetry, even though they're free to think up anything. The point is, of course, that we use the patterns in our minds that define "animal" to us.
In most groups, a few people will break those patterns and come up with completely new patterns. Seeing that "out-of-the-box" thinking frees up the other members of the group to begin thinking in new ways. This exercise demonstrates how easy it is to feel creative without really breaking pre-existing patterns.
Exercise #2 -- This is a variant of an Edward de Bono technique.
Give people a list of eight tangible objects (vase, baby, etc.) and ask them to divide the words into two groups (without giving them a basis for the division). This can be done individually or in small groups.
Everyone can do this, and some can even come up with more than one way to group the nouns (they get very "creative" with this task, thinking up things like "Words with the letter u, and words without the letter u," or "things that hold water and things that don't," etc.).
After letting several people or groups explain their connections, you reveal that actually there is no real link ... that you picked the words at random ... by blindly pointing to words in a magazine, for instance. You could even just ask eight people as they were filing into the room to give you a noun, and ask them not to say any- thing when this exercise comes up.
The point is that our brains are incredible pattern-making and pattern-recognizing mechanisms. No one ever says, "There's no connection," because it's almost inconceivable to us that there wouldn't be.
Feel free to use these quick exercises to open up your groups to more innovative and creative thinking.
Sheila Campbell , President of Wild Blue Yonder, Inc., is a creativity consultant and trainer who can be reached at 202-265-7325 or at skye@aol.com