Creating Leadership Breakthroughs » Facilitating Breakthrough Creativity Workshops

Facilitating Breakthrough Creativity Workshops

Lynne's experiences working with the Breakthrough Creativity model and the Eight Creative Talents have resulted in several lessons for those facilitating a Breakthrough Creativity Workshop. (More information on facilitating a Breakthrough Creativity workshop ) Many of these questions revolve around how the eight creative talents relate to the Myers Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI® and why there can be differences between the results of the MBTI® and the talents. There are three issues here that need to be addressed to answer these questions:

1. Both the Eight Creative Talents and the MBTI® are based on the work of Swiss Psychologist Carl Jung. The Eight Creative Talents model is specifically designed to help individuals and teams identify their creative talents and then learn how to be more creative, effective and productive.
2. The Eight Creative Talents model is based on the well-founded belief that we have all eight talents, Jung called them preferences, within us. However, over time most individuals tend to develop favorite talents. The first step for leaders then is to identify their favorite talents. Once leaders are comfortable with their favorite talents, they then want to be sure they are tapping into their other talents when needed.
3. As for differences between MBTI® results and those from the Breakthrough Creativity Profile (BCP), the primary reason is that the MBTI® looks at preferences, while the BCP focuses on behavior. How someone behaves in a particular job or situation may in fact be quite different from how they would really prefer to be. In addition, a leader's education, upbringing, job situation, work environment, and other factors in life can all impact how freely individuals are able to use their true preferences.

One further note: The September 12, 2004, Boston Globe article titled "Against Types" raised a frequent criticism against the MBTI® and other personality tests: the tendency of individuals and organizations to use these instruments, designed for personal awareness and growth, to stereotype and label one another. It is important to remember that Jung developed his framework not to label people, or as he said "not to put them in drawers," but to help them be more effective, productive and creative.