Part of being an effective leader is learning how to play to your strengths and overcome characteristics that don't lend to good leadership practices. During the course, you will examine your own strengths and learn ways to use them in a leadership role. Learn to manage stress and solve problems creatively. Throughout the course, you will also build a tool kit of useful techniques that you can begin using right away in your engineering career. This course is designed for engineers who are interested in and have the desire to advance into leadership and management roles. You don't need any leadership experience to do well in this course. We ask you to reflect on your personal experiences pretty often,, so some work experience will help you in that aspect, but we hope that most of what you learn here will be applicable to many areas of your life.
Overcoming Barriers to Creativity
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From the course by Rice University
Self Awareness and the Effective Leader
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From the lesson
Creative Problem Solving
Discuss the differences between analytical and creative problem solving. Develop techniques for encouraging creativity in solving problems while recognizing and overcoming conceptual blocks. We add mind mapping to your toolbox this week for a way to foster personal creativity.
Meet the Instructors
David Van KleeckProfessor in the Practice of Engineering Leadership
Rice Center for Engineering Leadership
Now that we have explored the conceptual blocks to creativity,
let's take a little closer look at the four approaches to creativity in groups.
We begin with incubation, this is characterized by an approach where
teams work together over sustained periods of time to generate an idea.
It tends to be slow process, ideas percolate and
grow over time in this particular setting.
As we look at the imagination approach to creativity,
this is characterized by the big idea.
Typically, it will be multidisciplinary types of approaches and
will create those revolutionary and groundbreaking ideas.
When we look at the investment approach, this is really the approach of
getting there first with your idea, so the emphasis here is on speed.
Lastly, we have the incremental improvements
that are characteristic of a lot of the work that engineers will do.
Here, we're working on incremental improvements to existing processes or
products or services.
With these four approaches to creativity in mind, let's begin to explore
how do we improve creativity in ourselves, in teams and in our leadership roles?
As we look at how do you improve your creativity as an individual,
let's think about, first of all, giving yourself time to reflect, time to absorb,
time to define the problem, time to generate creative alternatives.
Creative problem solving is not a fast process and
you're going to have to give yourself adequate time to accomplish it.
Find places where you can think.
For myself, I need to have periods of quiet time to reflect.
There are other times where I need to be in a group and it's a little more chaotic.
But that quiet time is extremely important to give your reflection and
generate those creative solutions.
Share your ideas with other people.
The opportunity to do that allows you to express the problem and
put it into words, such that you can explain it, develop it, and
get the benefit of other people's perspectives.
Ask for suggestions, ask for
those things that you can do that might be helpful in generating solutions.
I encourage you to read a lot.
The more broadly you read, the more you will be able to apply those lateral
thinking principles that we talked about earlier.
Try to isolate yourself from those who would be what I call idea-killers.
Those who would be prone to criticizing and evaluating
ideas before the appropriate time in the creative problem solving process.
Let's move now to talking about facilitating creativity in groups.
One of the approaches here is to disturb the equilibrium of the group.
Once groups tend to become static, they got stock in ways of thinking.
So, you’re going to want to look for ways to disrupt that equilibrium.
Here are some of the ways that you can do that.
One is to change the composition of the group.
Occasionally pull people out, bring additional perspectives in, but
that change in dynamic will help stimulate creative thought.
Don't be afraid to hold people accountable.
Monitor and prod the people around you.
Make them contribute to the process.
Don't allow people to be spectators as opposed to participants in the process.
One of the things that you want to do is encourage people to assume multiple roles.
Some people assume these very naturally because it's consistent with their
personality.
But some of the roles that you might want to recognize
as you approach the creative process are the idea champion,
who's that person in that team who can really sell the idea?
Who's the sponsor?
Who's willing to devote resources and
support generating not only the solutions, but the implementation of those?
Who is the person who administratively
guides the group through the creative problem solving process and
facilitates all of the administrative things that go on within the team?
And lastly, you need to encourage the person who will be the devil's advocate or
the rule breakers, somebody who will, again, disturb the equilibrium of
the group so that you can move towards creative solutions.
One of the ways to encourage creative problem solving is
to generate lots of alternatives.
Many of us are familiar with the term brainstorming and that will be one of
the key techniques that we use throughout the creative problem solving process.
But when you do that make sure that you don't prematurely judge
the ideas that are generated, so defer judgement when you're brainstorming.
Wait till all the ideas are collected before you start the evaluation process.
Try to expand beyond the current alternatives,
whether it's redefining the problem, or generating as many wild ideas as you can.
Try to combine unrelated attributes of the problem in such a way that you can
generate new ideas.
As I mentioned before, some of the rules of brainstorming will be,
don't evaluate ideas before their time.
Encourage those wild ideas.
You never know, those wild ideas can be a point of departure for
generating entirely new lines of thought that will result in a creative solution.
As you go through brainstorming, make sure you get lots of ideas.
Try to stimulate as many as you can, as fast as you can.
Build on the ideas of others.
Once you reach a block,
survey the ideas that have been generated by other members of the team.
And see if there's some ideas there that might encourage you or stimulate your
thought process to take it another step beyond or to go in a different direction.
Let's now consider what your responsibilities might be if you were in
a lead role in a team that is charged to solve problems creatively.
You're going to have to balance multiple aspects of the creative
problem solving process.
One of the ways you're going to have to do that is how do you bring in fresh
perspectives without losing sight of traditional ways of doing things?
There's some benefit in both of those, and
you're going to have to balance those issues.
You're going to have to give the team freedom, but not so
much that they don't drive towards solution.
They have to have space in order to be creative.
You're going to need to encourage some playfulness.
Having fun and
generating ideas is going to be important in generating lots of ideas and solutions.
But that has to be balanced with making sure that your serious enough to drive to
an effective solution.
Improvisation will be important in stimulating lots of ideas.
Building on the ideas of others, whether it's continuing along the same idea line,
or diverging along a different path.
But balancing that with again,
enough focus to move to a solution will be extremely important.
In your creative solving problem process,
you're going to need to balance experience with new ideas.
I mentioned earlier, the possibility of bringing in
new people to change the dynamic or equilibrium of the group.
You're going to need to balance that experience level
with people who know how to solve problems creatively with bringing in new people
to offer a fresh perspective.
You're going to have to balance
discipline with that playfulness that I talked about earlier,.
You can't be so restrictive that you limit the process but you also
have to have enough discipline to generate a timely solution to the problem.
In all of the process, you have to balance
professionalism with that playfulness aspect I mentioned earlier.
Being professional, delivering a solution, is ultimately what it's all about.
As you think about solving problems creatively,
don't forget that planning is important.
But don't let it become so
restrictive that it limits your ability to solve problems creatively.
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