This is one of those myths that drive neuroscientists crazy! It is up there with the ‘we only use 10 per cent of our brains’ (the people that think that do). Some people believe that if the left-hand side of your brain is dominant you are more logical and thoughtful, and if your right-hand brain is more dominant you are more creative. No.
People are not left-brained or right-brained. Your brain does have specializations in certain areas, but the idea that one side is more dominant in certain people has been shown to be bunkum.
This myth does have a fascinating origin, going back to the very birth of modern neuroscience (so I guess we only have ourselves to blame), but creativity is a brain-wide trait, using areas of sensory cortex, higher level processing, language and memory – it takes your whole brain to make you creative, not just the right half (and certainly not just 10 per cent).
You need to brainstorm
Though brainstorming was once the en vogue method of corporate creativity, its time has now come and gone, with it shown to be effectively useless, and probably harmful for real creativity.
Studies have shown that brainstorming sessions end up leading towards a single, non-creative idea, normally one of the first ideas and certainly not usually one of the creative ones. If you want to get truly creative, then it is best to have sessions in smaller groups, or even individually first, before presenting ideas to the group.
One recent suggestion is to brain-write instead of brainstorm. Here everyone writes down their ideas before the meeting and then posts them on a whiteboard for critique and discussion. This means that the group can move past the obvious ideas to the most challenging and creative ones straight away and come up with novel ideas.
Pressure breeds creativity
Though some people do thrive on pressure, it’s not usually a good idea for creativity. It can work if the person thinks that what they are doing is important and that they are ‘on a mission’. A 2002 study looking at how companies use pressure in the work environment found that the best companies maintained high levels of creativity in their employees whether they were under pressure on not. When they were under pressure they thought that they’re on a mission and were set on fulfilling it. When they were not under pressure, they felt that they were ‘on an expedition’, and were allowed to explore different creative scenarios before coming up with the best solution.
Either way, it was the company ethos of instilling a cause in their employees that led to the creative output, rather than the pressure.
Which factors destroy creativity?
Teresa Amabile is the Director of the Harvard Business School and one of the world’s foremost researchers into how organizations foster creativity in their employees. In 1998, she looked at seven different companies and found that they all had drastically different ways of dealing with creativity, and that some seemed to be actively destroying it in their employees. She detailed six keys ways in which companies can turn creative people into drones.
The Wrong Job
A common mistake that companies make is that they just assign a new task to the next available employee, no matter whether the employee is really suited to the job or not. This ‘role mismatch’ means that either employees are not stretched enough, or end up out of their depth.
In any job, people need to feel like they are challenged, but that the goal is not out of their reach. This way they neither feel themselves stagnating, not feel themselves subsumed by overwork.
Managers need to understand the traits and skills of each of their employees and make sure they can match them to the tasks needed according to their skillset. This not only leads to a more efficient workplace, but more creativity from happier and more challenged employees.
Restricted Goals
Whenever there is a supposed outcome to the creative process then people feel more restricted. This means that they stop pushing themselves and just head straight for the preassigned goal without putting any thought into the process. Employees then don’t push themselves as far and everyone loses out.
Companies might do this by always rebuffing any new ideas from employees, or by constantly moving the goalposts so that the employees don’t know where they are.
Organizations should set goals for a project, but the more open-ended they are, the more likely employees will be creative.
Unreasonable Restrictions
As I said, pressure does not work for creativity, yet managers and companies continue to think that it does. They put unrealistic time constraints on their personnel to come up with new and exciting ideas, and are then unimpressed when the employees turn up with ill-conceived solutions.
People need enough time and resources to be able to perform the job. As companies are always concerned about the bottom line, they often try to get by with the least resources, restricting creativity by restricting the amount of time and resources they give their employees.
Lack of diversity
The siloed work environment that most offices have – coders with coders, designers with designers, admin with admin – means that monotony can easily set in in each of these little groups.
These groups get along very well, but partly because they are not challenging each other’s thinking. Each member of the group has the same viewpoint, so all ideas are the same. In this way, creativity ends up being kept at a minimum, even though each group might think of itself as creative.
The more diverse a group is, the more viewpoints will be seen and the more ideas generated. This takes longer and is more difficult to organize, so companies generally don’t do it, hampering creativity. But for companies that do, where anyone is allowed to chime in, and all different views are represented, tend to reward creativity and generate far better ideas.
No encouragement
If people think that there is going to be a cost, such as criticism, for coming up with a new idea then they will not be creative. Amabile found that some companies end up evaluating and criticizing their people so much that they have effectively driven creativity out of the company altogether.
Good companies do not punish their employees for coming up with novel ideas, even when those ideas don’t lead to anything, which is what happens most of the time. Companies need to encourage any and all ideas if they are to get true creativity from employees.
No support
One of the reasons that small startups can often out-maneuver their bigger rivals is that these big companies are generally not set up for true creativity. Power struggles, office politics, and infighting are part and parcel of such organizations and these can be complete creativity killers, as the internal machinations of the company become more important, and individual creative employees do not have access to the support and resources they need simply because of personality issues within the company.
The more companies support collaboration between groups and the flow of information, the better for creativity.
Unleash Your Creativity Today
We still have a lot to learn about creativity. We still want to know exactly what goes on in the brain when you have an original thought, putting those spurious experiences together into something entirely new. We still want to know how all of our experiences, ideas, wants, and thoughts work together to come up with something unique.
But we are getting there. The main facts seem to be that the more you live life, the more creative you will be. It is nearly always better to be out in the world, experiencing, exercising, and thinking, than stressing at a desk. The more you enjoy life, the more likely you be able to summon more and more creativity.
These answers should show you how much power you have over your own creativity (and worryingly, how much power others have over your creativity as well). But the take-home message should be that whoever you are, and whatever you are doing, you have the ability to become a creative powerhouse, just as long as you can harness that creative energy within yourself.