“You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.” – Plato

In the Team Advantage coaching process that I use with teams and have seen transform teams in just the short 2-day kick off meeting (that is only the start), we set it up for play from the moment they walk in the room. There are brightly colored toys on the tables, fun music is playing, and there are only flip charts at the front of the room. No projector and slides.

The Spirit Southwest Airlines magazine that is available in the seat pocket on the plane caught my attention on my way to a recent team kick off, the cover had kids laughing and jumping with this headline, “The Art and Science of Play!  (It’s not just for kids)” The article references the research work of Dr. Stuart Brown who created the National Institute for Play (linked) and co-authored the book, “Play” with Christopher Vaughan. He defines play as a voluntary act that has no real purpose and you lose some sense of time. His research shows that our brains work better with some regular play just like we need regular sleep.

For me, it has been amazing to watch the transformation of teams as they play a bit more with the fun little toys that are part of our kick off meeting and enjoy a fun team game. The majority of our 2-day time is filled with more intense thinking and creating a strong plan for executing a big extraordinary goal and I have seen the power of play in the team’s ability to think more creatively about these serious goals and the power of  taking a break to play an improvisational game that opens the team up to more innovative solutions.

How can you add some play into your world?

A note of thanks to my Mother, who instilled a sense of play from a young age and who still wants at least one toy to play with as a gift each holiday season. One of my favorite ways to play is with my great nephew who is quite an expert at the age of two; I think it is time for a play visit with him!

photo credit: duncan via Flickr creative commons

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I’ll get to that after I share an Inc. article that I came across, “A Crash Course in Creativity” with a video (in the article linked) of Tina Seelig speaking at Google, Inc. about innovation and creativity.  Tina is the author of “inGenius: A Crash Course in Creativity” and the Executive Director of Stanford’s Technology Ventures program. She shares a model she created “that shapes how we think about creativity and innovation as individuals, teams and organizations” from her years of research and experience working with teams and organizations.  There were a lot of fascinating points in her model, here are just a few that help explain why the kindergartners perform so well in the marshmallow game.

Challenge Assumptions

Asking the right questions and re-framing are both key for creativity. Seelig suggests that one of the fun ways to re-frame is with jokes that shift perspective. She shares the example of “The Pink Panther” detective asking a person walking a dog, “Does your dog bite?” and they answer no. He bends over to pet the dog and the dog bites him. “I thought you said your dog does not bite?” The reply is, “This is not my dog.”  Kindergartners Edge: They do not have all the assumptions built up that we do from years of  forming our belief systems.

Culture of Experiments

Creating a culture that is willing to experiment is highly correlated with innovative individuals and teams. Rather than see failures, they see great feedback for innovating. Rapid prototyping is encouraged for gathering more data. Kindergartners Edge: They create some of the tallest and most interesting marshmallow towers by naturally using an iterative process that gives quick feedback. The college business students do the opposite, they use most of the allotted 20-minute time to plan how they will build the tower and leave only enough time to try it once (and it often falls over or is much shorter).

Habitat Designed for Creativity

Selig shows a picture of a Kindergarten classroom that is full of bright primary colors and interesting shapes and sizes and then a picture of rows of dreary school desks from a college classroom and finally the scene of ugly square cubicles. Your surroundings make a big difference in your ability to innovate. Bright primary colors, flexibility in rearranging, and building in a sense of play all increase innovation. She showed a picture of a slide that is in the middle of the offices at Pixar, Inc.

How can you learn from those Kindergartners and program your internalGPS for more innovation and thriving? I am going to start sharing more “perspective” jokes, run more experiments and put a few bright colored fun toys in my office!

photo credit via Flickr creative commons: Kindergarten classroom: mastcharter Cubicles: Michael Lokner 

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“Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change….Vulnerability is not weakness. And that myth is profoundly dangerous.” – Brene Brown

Think about a time when you made a significant shift. You created something new or did something courageous that took you down a different path or failed horribly at it.  You never felt the same again. Take a minute and see that time clearly before you read any further.

It was probably one of the most difficult times in your life. Was it also a time when you were most vulnerable? And then all that difficulty was followed by thriving at a higher level.

In Brene Brown’s, “Listening to Shame” TED talk she shares compelling information from her years of research on vulnerability and shame and how you can shift into thriving by courageously moving forward and not letting the tapes of shame stop you. Do those words, vulnerability & shame, make you want to run? Stay with me, thriving comes with a better understanding of vulnerability,  shame and failure. Click on the link and take a few minutes to watch the talk and you’ll see why she had over four million views on her earlier TED talk on vulnerability.

She shares  a shortened version of this quote by  Theodore Roosevelt:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. “

What is stopping you from going into the arena? Brene Brown’s research shows there are two tapes that stop us, “Never good enough” and if you silence that one then, “Who do you think you are?” comes up next. In order to thrive you have to  courageously push past those tapes.

How will you step off the sidelines and possibly fail while daring greatly?

Photo credit via Flickr creative commons: Montanari.Michael

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Unfortunately, as we become adults we unlearn creativity. He told us about a study that NASA conducted using a simple test for creativity. At the age of five years old the group tested at an average of 98%,  by ten years old they were at 30%, at 15 years down to 12% and average adults test at 2%. The good news is that we can re-learn how to be creative.

The More the Better

Dr. Linus Pauling is credited with the creation of the brainstorming process. He found that the best ideas come from creating the largest number of ideas. It is critical to turn off all judgment and let out an explosion of ideas.  And, “release your inner five-year old” to create all kinds of crazy ideas. The term for this is divergence.

Separate the Activity to Evaluate

Dr. Pauling found that the key is to separate divergence from convergence. In the convergence step you are reviewing all of the ideas to find those that you can possibly combine or use to create your new solution or innovation. It is critical to do this in a separate meeting after all the ideas have been gathered (as big a list as possible)!

Failing Fast

The key to strong innovation is to learn by implementing ideas, quickly learning if it doesn’t work and then trying another idea. The businesses that are most successful at innovation, quickly assess information to fail fast and then shift. The leaders make it an accepted culture to celebrate mistakes that take them closer to the next best idea.

Ideas only turn into innovation when you take action.

How do you nourish your creativity? Please share in a comment

photo credit: mavin via Flickr creative commons

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Happy and grateful people are more productive and successful people. There was a study done of people who tracked their acts of kindness throughout the day for a week. Compared with those that did not do this, they were happier and more grateful. Your brain works better in these positive states (see my other posts referenced below) which then creates more focus and more creative solutions.  It makes intuitive sense and it is great that science backs this up with data!

An act of kindness does not have to be big and take a lot of time. It can be as simple as asking the store cashier, “How is your day going?” The key to maximizing the good stuff in your brain is that you don’t worry about their reaction (i.e. whether they actually appreciate it or not). Focus on your feelings of kindness and positive intentions and most likely they will sense your authenticity and be grateful in return (but some people are just having a bad day and that has noting to do with you). Of course, you can add some impact by doing something extraordinary like purchasing coffee or food for the person in the drive-thru behind you or sending a thoughtful note or e-mail of acknowledgment to someone who has made a difference to you. None of these things take more than a few minutes.

Take a few minutes at the end of your day to review your act(s) of kindness and what you are grateful for; write them down for more impact. Just thinking through them on a daily basis will shift your brain.  The research study showed that by tracking the acts each day you create an upward spiral that leads to more kind acts and more happiness. Be kind to yourself too, this is not an opportunity to criticize yourself (that will defeat the whole purpose). If you find that you missed an opportunity then learn from that and make a plan for tomorrow. It takes 21-30 days to re-program your internalGPS (or form a new habit); be consistent and patient and you will see great results.

If you are thinking, “yeah, yeah, I don’t have time for all this happy stuff” then unfortunately you will be right and you will miss out on an easy tool that has been proven to add more productivity to your work and life.

What acts of kindness will you or did you do today? Please share in a comment.

Prior Posts About How Happiness Leads to Productivity:

Coaching for Effective Results with Positive Emotions

Coaching to Focus on What is Going Well for Success with less Stress

5 Strategies for Building a Strength-Based Business & Life for More Success

photo credit: jillallyn via Flickr creative commons

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On Oct 15^th I went to see my first “Ignite Phoenix” event, it is their 8^th production here in the valley. The evening consists of 18 different people presenting their ideas in 5-minute presentations with 20 slides that automatically change every 30 seconds. It was quite entertaining and inspirational. The event is put on by the Phoenix Innovation Foundation, “a non-profit organization that provides educational and community building events in the Phoenix metropolitan area. A small team of volunteers plans and presents each Ignite Phoenix event.”

There were a wide range of presentations with titles from “Let’s Put Beer on the Dinner Table” to “In the quest for truth, I-ran into some problems: The real life of an Iranian-American” to “13: Too Old for Dolls, Too Young For Sex.” Some were more informative and inspirational and others were just entertaining.

Every one of the presenters was impressive for their courage to present their ideas in only 5-minutes to an 800-person audience. Except for the guy that read his entire presentation from his cell phone, that was just plain embarrassing.

Mixing It Up

From the Ignite Phoenix FAQ page: “Who should attend Ignite Phoenix?”

“Anyone who wants to hear new ideas should attend an Ignite Phoenix event. The presentations are informative and often quite humorous. It’s an opportunity to hear ideas and people from outside of your normal sphere of influence. By mixing it up, new and exciting things can happen.”

I love this and agree that by gathering different perspectives from people outside of your normal sphere of influence you are opening up your internalGPS to new ideas and innovation. I learned some new things and have all kinds of new ideas and it was fun too! You can see presentations from the prior #7 event (and eventually the #8 event too) via You-tube with this link.

How have you mixed it up lately? Please share in a comment.

photo credit: Rail Life (via Flickr creative commons)

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Crystal Daigle is a local artist here in the Phoenix area; I recently attended her creativity workshop and learned about her story of beliefs or assumptions that was holding her back.  She held a belief that including words in her paintings was not allowed and in fact was completely wrong.  Once she discovered this deeply held belief she was able to let it go and create some amazing art; her site is linked on her name if you want to see more.   The ironic thing is the fact that her art includes words attracted me from the beginning because of my love of words.

How do you discover these limiting beliefs or assumptions?  I like the eastern philosophy of “beginner’s mind.”  Imagine looking through the lens of a three year old; a true beginner in life with very few learned assumptions.  My three year old nephew recently visited and it was fun to see his eyes light up and hear him let out peels of laughter at simple things like spinning around in the pool.  Try showing an issue or problem you are having to someone who knows nothing about your expertise to help you gain a beginner’s perspective and ask questions you may have never considered.   A coach will also be a big help in asking powerful questions that will help you step back and examine if you are limiting your ideas based on assumptions.

I downloaded a great application from Roger von Oech (author of “A Whack on the Side of the Head: How You Can Become More Creative”) called the “Whack Pack” that helps me think creatively.  I asked for the “Whack of the Day” and received the “Drop an Assumption” card (click on the card name to link to the card).  On the card he gives a couple examples of how assumptions limit our ability to come up with creative solutions and keep an open mind.

How do stay open and question your assumptions?  Please share in a comment.

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