Is it really possible to learn to be more creative or more innovative? If the work you’re now doing requires you to be more creative and come up with new ideas that have real value, do you find yourself wondering if you have what it takes?
It’s easy to have bought into the myth that ‘only the creatives are creative’ or that ‘innovative people are born, not made.’ If you’ve bought into those myths, it’s time to cleanse them from your mind. They are both myths, and continuing to believe them could be the biggest mistake you can make today.
Research is steadily showing that both creativity and being innovative are skills, not innate gifts. As skills, they are teachable and learnable.
The first step to becoming more innovative and more creative is to make sure you have developed what psychologist Carol Dweck has called a “growth mindset.” Above all, make sure you haven’t developed a “fixed mindset.”
A growth mindset is the attitude that most things are learnable, and that your level of mastery in whatever you’re doing is not fixed – it can grow. You can grow it.
(If you’ve developed a fixed mindset – and it’s very easy to do – you’ve bought into the idea that your skills or intelligence are pretty much set in stone. This can lead to various negative habits, like not even trying to improve. And be careful: if you’re smart, you’re just as prone. Smart people who have a fixed mindset can be the worst. They can become arrogant and over-confident, thinking their ‘being smart’ is an innate gift; instead, what they should do is open their mind and work on taking their skills to the next level.)
In their inspiring and helpful book, Creative Confidence, David Kelley and Tom Kelley from Ideo and the Stanford d School confirm that the most important first step is to develop this “growth state of mind.” There’s a paradox to master here as well, they explain. “The belief that your innovation skills and capabilities are not set in stone is a prerequisite for achieving creative confidence.” In other words, it’s a classic if you think you can, you can, and if you think you can’t, you’ll be right also. By first developing the firm belief that you can develop and improve your abilities to innovate, you’ll take the right steps and you will develop and improve your abilities to innovate. Now that’s inspiring.
D.G.
(Next post on Wednesday … till then, D.G.)
