Breakthrough Creativity for Leaders Who Want to Achieve More Outstanding Results

Leaders everywhere are constantly being challenged to be more creative, to think and to do things differently because old ways don't work anymore and ready-made solutions often don't solve the problem anyway. Leaders who know how to access their creativity can achieve extraordinary results at work — in a team or by themselves. Knowing how you are creative and what you need to do to access that creativity helps you be more strategic and effective. Such knowledge fosters the development of new attitudes and the breaking of old, useless mindsets that can hinder new perspectives and ideas. It promotes more expansive and more strategic ways of looking at the future.

Such knowledge can also lead to increased confidence in handling the challenges life throws your way. You reach a deeper level of resilience to help you cope with constant change, ambiguity and uncertainty. Developing your creative talents strengthens your capacity to be more open, flexible, and buoyant. It builds a positive attitude that you can deal with life's uncertainties and complexities as you change, grow and age. Seeing yourself as creative is thus vital for a healthy and productive life both personally and as a leader.

The Breakthrough Creativity approach provides a fresh look at this fascinating topic. It takes creativity out of the box that it's been put in. Instead of defining creativity as "thinking out of the box," "generating big ideas" or as being "artistic" or "brilliant," the Breakthrough Creativity approach sees things from a new perspective. I have conducted countless interviews and extensive research on the subject of creativity, including examining the lives of those judged by history to be creative. This work and my many years of experience in the business world have led me to believe that everyone has the potential to be creative, particularly if you define creativity as the ability to consciously produce different and valuable results. Those creative results can be:

	new products, designs, and services that increase profitability, quality, productivity, and that meet customer needs;
	novel inventions or minor fixes that solve customer problems;
	big ideas and breakthroughs, or small steps that build on past experience to generate better solutions;
	unusual techniques that overcome obstacles to making a project a success;
	innovative forms for organizing work, that successfully bring together different people who might not have meshed well before;
	tough questions that cause people to see a problem differently;
	different paths to resolving conflict, working on a team, motivating others to grow and develop; or
	uncommon approaches to building the right climate where everyone respects, encourages and challenges each other to achieve their personal best.

Seeing creativity as having many different forms recognizes that it's an ability that can be accessed and further developed. It does not belong to one particular group of individuals, born with a certain, special set of traits. When you look at the many different varieties of creative results, did you find some that felt right for you, that related to the kind of creative work you do (even though you might not have thought of it as creative!)?

If you need some more help in figuring out how to break through to your own unique creativity and to be able to consistently produce creative results, email me or read What are the Eight Creative Talents?

If you need help bringing more creativity to your team, email me or read Achieving Top Performance in Organizations with Breakthrough Creativity.