A642.1.4.RB – Your Creative Genius
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For a while, knowledge defines all we currently know and understand, imagination points to all we might yet discover and create.” ~ Albert Einstein
Masaru Ibuka, the founder of Sony, creativity is derived from finding the unexpected and stepping outside our experience. According to Heimans, J. & Timms, H. (2004), critical is thinking and feeling differently as well as committing or focusing to something differently. Cognitive thinking is about breeding new ideas; the affective or emotional side of creativity is all about our perception of the things around us; and lastly, the effortful side of creativity is about our self-restraint or self-containment (Heimans, J. & Timms, H. 2004).
Listening
If I were to assess and rank the five creative talents I possess, my first would be my listening ability. After 20 years of being married to my husband, Eddie, he never failed to let me know that what attracted him most was my focus and attention to our conversations. When we first met in Tokyo, Japan, he had just lost his father. It was December 26th and all expats left for their home country to celebrate Christmas. Here he was alone in a foreign land. The whole night, all we did was talk about his family, although it was him who did the talking most of the time.
As a human resources professional and leader, it is critical to have an open mind and most importantly to have a listening skill without bias and prejudice. Whenever I sit down with an employee to relay the company’s decision of terminating his or her employment, the employee never leaves my office without giving me their thoughts, frustrations, and even anger towards their supervisor for deciding to terminate their employment. Although most of the time, I never do mind listening to the employee's stories sometimes I find it very challenging to focus most importantly when I am working on a very critical project. I could never find the heart to tell the employee that I need to cut our meeting short, so I can go back to the project that I am working to finish.
On the other hand, when one of my staff steps in my office with a bright idea, I always make sure to hear them out and respond in a non-judgmental manner. My team often had times told me that they feel empowered, engaged, and respected under my leadership. That is how I know that I am a successful leader due to my listening ability because the result is valuable where it fuels creativity within my team.
Empathy, Tolerance, and Adaptability
I possess the attributes of empathy, tolerance, and adaptability. As an adaptive and situational leader, my focus is listening, supporting, engaging, and facilitating employee interactions in our workplace. I try to make sure to involve my staff in any strategic decision-making that affects our department and the organization as a whole. As a situational leader, I provide support and encouragement to my team when I see fit. I am very tolerant to mistakes and empathize the reason behind the error i.e. the employee is suffering from a personal issue that caused him/her to commit the error. I delegate tasks to my employees based on the individual’s skills and expertise. Unfortunately, there were times that I was not very open to discussion how the task or tasks can be accomplished. When challenges occurred, instead of opening a discussion on how the issue can be resolved, I tend to dictate the resolution to be taken without soliciting recommendations from my staff especially when time is of the essence. In short, I make the decision for my team instead of making the decision with my team. A challenge that I know I need to resolve.
Capacity to overcome failure
Based on experience, I have the capacity to face and overcome failure as it comes. To some, experiencing setback is the worst thing and often find hard to spring back from it. At a young age, I come to terms that failure is inevitable and with constant practice, I found it easier to find positivity as a result of my failure. When the father of my children and I separated, my children were the ones who suffered most. I found strength to overcome the hardships that resulted from the separation for the sake of my kids. I developed resiliency to cope up and decided that there was a deeper reason for the separation and I started on looking towards good things that the future was stored for my children and me.
When I decided to leave my position as Assistant Director of Human Resources at one of the local University in Daytona Beach, Florida area due to burnout, overworked, stressed, and under appreciated, I assured my husband that I would find a better company that would appreciate my talent, creativity, and dedication. For three weeks, I did not try to find work until I figured out how I got to the level of burnout. I re-evaluated my performance, goals (personal and professional) and was able to identify my weaknesses. I was over committed to my work and forgot to find a balance between work and personal life. I was 24/7 available to my employees, leaders, and students but was neglecting to enjoy my time with my husband. Today, working with my current organization and at the same time working towards my master’s degree, it seemed I have more time with husband. I always tell my colleagues, friends, and staff never to give up and never lose hope. For every dark time, a brighter day is inevitable to follow.
Coaching
Coaching is based on helping another individual to learn things differently towards their personal or professional growth and development. Being a good coach is one of my good attributes. I have the ability to increase someone’s effectiveness and identify their strengths and weakness that needs to develop to achieve their challenging goals. When a supervisor comes to my office to consult with an employee with behavioral or performance issues, my first advice is to make sure first to build a trusting and respectful relationship with their staff. Once trust and respect were established, the employees will be open to any constructive criticism or constructive feedback about the identified behavior that needs improvement.
I listen to my team member’s feedback and recommendations. I always encourage them to be creative and innovative finding ways to cut cost in our processes and procedures. Together, we set meaningful personal and professional goals holding each other accountable for mistakes as well as we celebrating our successes.
Self-Awareness
I have come to learn the art of self-awareness successfully. Self-awareness is about understanding why we act or behave differently from others. It enables our autonomy to develop and change who we are. Gaining better awareness or comprehension of ourselves gives us greater experience as a unique human being. As a leader, self-awareness is crucial to my effectiveness in the workplace. It is of utmost importance that I recognize not only my strengths but most importantly my weaknesses. I do not always have the right answer to a question, but most especially, I do not have the best excellent idea for innovation and to be lean in my current workplace processes.
Steiner (2016) claimed that without the skills of self-awareness, the thought process of a leader could be obscured with deception. The chaotic and complex environment of a leader can cause underutilization of self-awareness to the extent of abandonment. Steiner’s research showed evidenced that the authenticity and self-awareness were consequential to successful leadership. Understanding and raising awareness to the essential facet of authenticity and self-awareness as well as authentic behavior and self-awareness posed in leadership was not only imperative to me as a leader, but also to my team who pursued aligning themselves with their personal authenticity.
Creative Problem-Solving
The Creative Education Foundation (2016) defines Creative Problem Solving as the process that helps us in redefining the problems and opportunities that we face daily finding new innovative responses and solutions before taken actions. The method offers tools and techniques that are collaborative, engaging and pleasurable. CPS helps leaders to create better solutions and positive experience for a speedy adoption of new ideas. Ruth Noller, a noted CPS educator, and practitioner characterized CPS as the summation of its parts. Creative dictates elements of innovation, novelty, and newness. Problem indicates to events that exhibit challenges and proposes opportunities. Solving signifies creative processes to meet, resolve or satisfy an issue or concern by self-altering or to modify a situation.
With my current situation at work and home, there are so many adversities that present themselves in finding appropriate resolutions to the problems and issues that I face daily at home and in the workplace. At times, I find myself settling for taking short-cuts or simple resolutions just to offer temporary resolutions to the problems I face that are mounting and hope to move to the next situation that needs attending. In the end, I found that I had not resolved anything since the real core or center of the problem was never dealt with from the very beginning.
To fully engage in creative problem solving, I need to identify, assess and develop my strengths and weaknesses to increase my effectiveness and efficiencies. Knowing my weaknesses will enable me to reach out to someone that I trust to assist me in finding resolutions to certain situations or events that I am weak off and find ways to turn those weaknesses alternatively into my strengths. I will also have to consistently and continuously search for and practice creative alternatives to live my work and personal life balanced. For now, a daily 10-minute meditation has worked so far. Work cannot overtake my life and visa vi. I need to regard my life and work evenly.
Stress Management
The crucial element to manage stress is assimilated to the attitudes, thoughts, and feelings of a leader. In short, leaders metamorphose that which they think about ultimately. Effective leaders center their abilities and skills in interaction, visioning, influencing, mentoring and communicating. The focal point of stress is based on the individual’s manner of thinking and feeling (Darling, J. & Heller, V., 2011).
Stress has its positive effect. Stress keeps effective leaders like me focused, competitive and begot action. Unfortunately, stress can also be toxic to my emotional and mental capacity most specifically during company layoffs and acquisitions that require long hours of work. There are critical elements that I must consider in managing stress such as keeping an open perspective, welcoming feedback, exercising and recharging. During challenging times, I have the tendency to bottle up and try to handle difficult tasks by myself.
Opening up to others and welcoming feedback and criticism may be easier said than done. As a leader, I need to have the ability to ensure that the people I work with and the people around me to be honest with me and at the same time, I need to accept the reality that their honesty will not always be to my liking. To live stress-free, I need to find a balance between life and work which meant, being organized, knowing my priorities personally and professionally. Practicing the art of recharge or recovery will be to my benefits.
Transforming Conflict to Creativity
According to Campbell & Clark (2015), conflict is neither good nor bad. Campbell and Clark (2015) introduced us to one of the two essential elements of transforming conflict into creativity is a vulnerability. The vulnerability was described as the willingness to expose ourselves by taking the risk and being honest say what we think and feel about our relationship with someone or an individual situation. Being vulnerable at all times is going to be a challenge for me, but this does not mean that I cannot accomplish it. I know now that pride can be an impediment for me whenever I try to be vulnerable. I do at times like Campbell tend to agree with what the other party’s opinion to avoid disagreement which may turn into a fight. Like Campbell, I need to be consistent in finding my voice and creativity and be not afraid to express regardless if the other person(s) disagree actually to make the connection. I have to give the people that I work with the benefit of the doubt, that they are trying to make a connection with me or want to engage me when they are showing their vulnerability right in front of my eyes. They are doing it just because they have nothing else to do. Instead, they are doing it because they are trying to reach out.
Critical Thinking
Personally, critical thinking is learning to think things through, clearly defining the problem or issue at hand, finding authentic resolutions to solve the problem or issue and lastly believing that the acquired resolution will solve the problem or issue at hand. In short, critical thinking is developing our intellectual traits of perseverance, courage, humility and faith.
I have come to learn to apply different intellectual standards like clarity, accuracy, precision and relevance. I have come to examine the actions I took to analyze the “why” of my decisions. I have also learned to separate my personal opinions from the facts of the issue at hand. Whenever an issue or problem is presented to me, I am learning not to give in to my emotional impulses and instead, I am learning to apply rational thoughts to reach a logical resolution.
I believe that it will require the consistent practice of good critical thinking skills to make lasting and positive changes in the way I think. It is of utmost importance that I internalize principles and be consistent in applying them to everyday situations either personally or professionally. It will also require me to set aside biases whenever asked for any logical course of actions.
Management Skills
Developing management skills is a challenge because as unique individuals, we possess different personalities, styles, and inclinations. I am very aware that I do not have to respond the same manner to similar occurrences. Managing unique relationships precisely the same manner or behaving the same way from one encounter to the next is just impossible. According to Whetten & Cameron (2016), a significant part of an effective leader’s repertoire is sensitivity or perceptiveness to individual differences.
Our workplace of today is culturally competitive, but that does not mean that as a leader, I cannot be honest to admit that I don’t have the answer or resolution to every question or situation. It is necessary to own up to the mistakes I make. Self-awareness is to my advantage as a leader. Admission of not having all the answers, accepting and apologizing for our errors and most especially, asking for help from my team humanizes me, gaining respect and trust from members of my team. Pretending to know it all will only result in my demise as a leader.
Reference:
Campbell, Cris Marie & Clarke, Susan (2015). Conflict – Use It, Don’t Defuse It. Retrieved
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