Lots of types of creativity

Innovation requires creativity. Creativity is the ability to create something original, such as a new idea. A creative team with flexible and dynamic employees brings ideas to life and diversity within the company. Creativity can take different forms. For example, there are the explorers, who mainly look for new solutions and dare to think “outside the box. The developers, on the other hand, tend to look for better solutions within existing structures and work in a structured way.

Managing creative minds can be challenging. Because as a team leader, how do you recognize, encourage and implement different types of creativity to achieve a flexible and dynamic company? And how can you find black holes in competencies both individually and as a team?

Who is actually the creative person here?

Everything is changing: customer demands, the market and competition, society, the global economy, … . To survive, companies need to come up with new answers faster and faster to cope with these changes. The buzzword, popular with business leaders, economists and politicians, is “innovate. And this also makes itself felt within teams that increasingly need to quickly and effectively formulate the right responses to these changes. In other words: how to successfully use their collective creativity in an efficient way?

Teams working together on new, ill-defined problems or challenges often have a difficult time formulating both an innovative and efficient answer. Sometimes all eyes are turned to the creatives in the group to formulate an answer, sometimes everything possible is done to keep those same collaborators in check. Much of this behavior can be traced back to the misunderstanding of what creativity is and especially the misunderstanding of who is “creative.” A clear understanding of each other’s various creative strengths makes teams highly effective and innovative in successfully addressing these ill-defined problems.

We are all born creative, but then exactly how we choose to use our creativity to frame challenges, generate ideas and create action plans, that is where we differ. Understanding the different creativity profiles and how they are present within the team makes it easier for the team to come up with new, successful and creative solutions.

Measuring tool VIEW: for a clear view of creativity

VIEW measures these differences in creativity preferences. This assessment has since evolved into a scientifically validated method that measures these styles in a consistent manner. It gives you insights on an individual level, but also makes it possible to draw up a “team picture”. This team picture shows you the potential strengths and weaknesses of the team. This enables teams and team leaders to avoid pitfalls in the search for creative outcomes.

Want to get a scientifically validated picture of your team creativity? Then contact us!

Would you like more info around the validity of the measurement instrument VIEW? Send a mail with your question to luc.deschryver@o2c2.eu!