Creativity Assessment involves, quite simply, determining your unique creative style and how to develop your other creative assets.
Creativity assessment kick-starts a four-phase personal development strategy:
1. Know yourself - determining your own unique creative style, its strengths and weaknesses, and how it fits into the range of defined creative styles
2. Know others - learning how to cope with others who might have different creative styles, how they can help you solve problems outside your preference, and how you can ultimately help them
3. Develop creativity skills - learning creative thinking techniques, creativity processes, and focused problem solving skills
4. Application - take on a problem with a group to learn how to put creative styles and creative skills into action
A creativity assessment helps you know yourself - what makes you uniquely creative, how you innovate, how you solve problems.
You probably have a 'feel' for your own creative style now, but more than likely it's never been defined for you. A creativity assessment increases your awareness of self - 'This is who I really am as a creative individual.'
A good, comprehensive creativity assessment will tell you:
· How you tend to perceive problems
· How you go about generating ideas
· What kind of methodology you use to innovate
· How much 'structure' you need in your life
· How you prefer to participate in each phase of the problem solving process
· How you interface with others - what aspect of your creativity do others see in you
· What areas you need to develop
Here are some of the aspects of my own creative style:
· I like to come up with 'new and different' solutions for whatever problem confronts me
· I like to explore exciting possibilities, but in the end I feel the need to develop practical solutions
· I like to gain group consensus
· I tend to focus on the 'problem definition' phase of the innovation process
· I keep aware of what's working in other areas, because like to integrate ideas I find in the external world in new and novel ways
· I like to keep my possibilities open, even after deciding on a direction
Others I know have totally different creative styles. But I have learned to recognize the value of our creative differences and use this knowledge to bridge creative gaps.
In a team or organization, ultimately we are enabled, and limited, by our creative diversity. Creative diversity enables us to handle a wide range of problems.
But if we spend too much energy managing our creative differences, we won't be able to put this diversity to good use. An organization can be full of creative individuals, but not know how to wield its collective creativity effectively.
Liken it to a body - a body can be sick, it can be healthy, or it can be optimized (like a pro athlete or a PhD). A creativity assessment helps us start optimizing ourselves and our organization.
A creativity assessment is the first step on the path to total creative development.
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