Breakthrough Creativity and Carl Jung

The concept of Breakthrough Creativity recognizes that there is no one right or best way to be creative. You just need to figure out how you are creative and what you need to do to develop your own unique creative style. While there are a variety of techniques for identifying your creative style and your creative process, there is one that I recommend since it has helped me and many others. I have found a structured approach based on the work of the Swiss psychologist Carl G. Jung (1888-1961) to be a very powerful tool. His framework (the Myers Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI®) is also based on Jung's work) can help you define your creative style or talents and then figure out how to be more consistent, purposeful and effective in producing creative results.

Using Jung's preferences, I have defined eight creative talents that produce different creative results and make different contributions to the creativity and strategic direction of the organization. Four of the talents are used to collect data and information about the world and the challenges you face. They are:

	The Adventurer talent whose Improvisational Creativity allows you to experiment and play with clever and skillful adaptations based on the five senses and the facts at hand. Examples of individuals who might have had this talent as their favorite talent are: photographers Margaret Bourke-White and Ansel Adams and the great jazz musicians.
	The Navigator Navigator talent whose Adaptive Creativity helps you pull in facts and details to build on what others have already done while adding a new twist. Examples of individuals who might have had this talent as their favorite talent are: inventors Thomas Edison and George Washington Carver, and painters Claude Monet and Mary Cassatt.
	The Explorer talent, with its Possibility Creativity that continually challenges the status quo and generates new ideas and opportunities. Examples of individuals with this talent as their favorite talent might be: Walt Disney, advertising giant Jay Chiat, and Virgin Group founder Richard Branson.
	The Visionary talent, with its Synthetic Creativity that causes you to ask bold questions, see multiple connections, and provide far-reaching insights into the future. Examples of individuals with this as their favorite talent might be: Microsoft's Bill Gates and Nobel Laureate Albert Einstein.

The other four creative talents are used to act on that data or information, to make decisions or judgments. They are:

	The Pilot talent, whose Strategic Creativity provides you with designs, strategies and plans to improve an organization and get things done. Examples of individuals with the Pilot talent as their favorite talent might be: former Prime Minister of Great Britain Margaret Thatcher and reorganizer of General Motors Alfred P. Sloan, Jr.
	The Inventor talent, with its Analytical Creativity that will cause you to shift paradigms and build theories and models to analyze and provide unusual insights. Examples of individuals with the Inventor talent as their favorite talent might be: architect Frank Lloyd Wright and the philosophers Immanuel Kant, Fredrich Nietzsche, and Simone de Beauvoir.
	The Harmonizer talent, whose Relationship Creativity provides a focus on people issues and fosters a nurturing environment that brings out the team's creativity. Examples of individuals with the Harmonizer talent as their favorite talent might be: humanitarians Eleanor Roosevelt and Mahatma Gandhi and civil rights activist Martin Luther King, Jr.
	The Poet talent, whose Values-driven Creativity encourages reflection, articulation of eternal values, and an appreciation for quiet beauty and elegance. Examples of individuals with the Poet talent as their favorite talent might be: writer Emily Dickinson and business leaders Anita Roddick and Tom Chappell.

Each of the eight creative talents has equal value. No one talent is better than another is. They just work differently. All talents can produce creative results — just different ones. You might be creative in the way build on the work of others to find a different treatment for an old problem. You may access a sixth sense to brainstorm a myriad of possibilities. You may get inspired by visions of the future that come to you out of the blue. You may be creative in the way you strategize to get things done, introduce new ideas, or work with a team to draw on their energies to build a safe place for testing new behaviors. And all the talents can help you be more strategic, to break through long-held assumptions.

Which talent is best for a strategic leader? That's a trick question, of course! When charting the future course of an organization, leaders need to draw on all eight creative talents to be sure they are balancing planning with flexibility, quantitative goals with plans that engage the hearts of employees, and broad visions with practical steps to ensure action.

A note of caution: The talents can also cause blinders that can get in the way of great strategic choices. For example, the Navigator talent, with its focus on the past, can get stuck and ignore or misinterpret data that is not consistent with what they already know. The Adventurer talent, with its emphasis on the present, can fail to see the need to plan for the future and instead prefer to continue responding to present challenges, fighting fires, and dealing with daily crises.

Overuse of the Visionary or Explorer talents can cause a leader to fall in love with change for change's sake, fail to remain sufficiently focused on pragmatic alternatives, miss subtle cues about changes in the environment, and overlook the need for an implementation action plan.

Using their Pilot or Inventor talents too heavily can cause leaders to overlook issues around values and relationships that don't fall into objective goals and strategies. Over-reliance on the Harmonizer or Poet talents may let a concern for those values and relationships overshadow other needs of the organization.

Given these possible blinders, leaders must be careful to examine their favorite talents and be sure they are using the best the talents have to offer in planning for the future and not letting them become blinders. They can do this through self-awareness and through conscious use of the other creative talents.

For more information, email me or see the various chapters in Breakthrough Creativity: Achieving Top Performance Using the Eight Creative Talents. Order the book.