Fostering Creativity

If you're looking to foster creativity within your team, but you feel like you are sorely lacking in "creative types," author Mike Brown would beg to differ. He wrote Idea Magnets: Seven Strategies for Cultivating and Attracting Creative Business Leaders and he believes Idea Magnets are everywhere—you just need to know where to look. Here’s what he has to say:

“Wondering how to identify them? Use these 11 signs to identify current or blossoming Idea Magnets.

Idea Magnets...

1. Absorb diverse, creativity-generating references and resources. 
2. Ask rich questions.
3. Listen before they talk.
4. Generalize opportunities and challenges as a way to find comparable situations to expand creative possibilities.
5. Connect people, resources, and ideas in intriguing ways.
6. Easily move between foreground and background in group settings.
7. Embrace building on their own and others’ ideas to grow their potential.
8. Are encouraging when a creative idea (as well as a fellow Idea Magnet) is new and needs support.
9. Enthusiastically cheer for others to be successful creatively.
10. Display boldness for stretching what is possible as well as envisioning the impossible.
11. Make challenging decisions when an idea has outlived (or is about to outlive) its usefulness.

Make a list of the people who meet at least one of these criteria and then tap them to help grow creativity within your group.”

For more information about Exchange's magazine, books, and other products pertaining to ECE, go to www.ccie.com.

© 2005 Child Care Information Exchange - All Rights Reserved | Contact Us | Return to Site