creativity

Creativity is a requisite competency in today’s workplace. In “A Whole new Mind” Daniel Pink describes it as one of six areas to be leveraged in a world where knowledge and skills are no longer sufficient to distinguish yourself in the marketplace.

Marci Segal has studied and mastered facilitating the emergence of creativity in all aspects of work and play – for individuals, in families and for organizations large and small.

The word “creativity” often triggers protests and denial… “Not for ME…I’m not creative.” Marci understands environments that foster a wide spectrum of creative contributions. She also has expertise in understanding individual differences and dynamics after years facilitating and teaching the Myers Briggs Type Indicator. The result is an approach to creativity that gets everyone in the picture – yes – even you.

Marci was one of the first instructors I had in doing my MBTI training. Her style is upbeat and engaging. She gets you into action right from the start.

Marci is one of the eight presenters in the series on applying type in the workplace offered by TypeLabs. The price for this series had been drastically reduced but that special pricing ends Friday.

If you have been thinking that you’d like something to rev up your energy and refresh your approach, check out this offer. It’s all about application – learning you can actually use in your work.

Learn more by clicking on the link below.

Type Practitioner Blueprint
Get training from 8 international psychological type experts

Art is a business – I kid you not. 80% or maybe even 99.9% of artists aren’t great at the business end of the business. You have heard of the expression “herding cats?” It doesn’t come close to describing what it is like for a business person to work with artists. Artists create and want to be left to be able to do just that. Unfortunately a tube of paint costs an arm and a leg and people need to sell to keep on painting – or they find a job or grant. Patrons don’t exist anymore as far as I know.

Whether they like it or not artists need to learn to “sell” their work to an agent, to gallery owners, to the public or to jurists in juried shows. Many of us just don’t have the preferences that keep us focused on the bottom line tasks necessary to market and promote our art.

That means reaching out for HELP!

In any aspect of business life working against your type preferences drains your energy and is often not productive. When finding someone to help you, find someone who is good at the parts of the work where you lack the ease and capability. This typically means finding someone with a different MBTI profile. My ENFP anti-detail loving style benefits from the orderly, concrete grounded approach of the ISTJ.

Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!

Today in a call with my mentors Denise Wakeman and Patsi Krakoff of the Blog Squad, I was again reminded of consistent practical things to do over and over and over. Things like being specific – for instance reminding people to click on the above image to enlarge. Things like linking back to products and resources that I have to offer; for example, this painting is one of 33 paintings done to illustrate the MBTI and all of these images can be found in Inner Landscapes II: A Visual Guide to the MBTI

BTW The snapshot I took of my webpage is a new tool for Mac skitch.com which allows you to post parts of any webpage. It looks like something with a lot of possibilities for creativity …YUM creativity YUM YUM

What’s next?
What else?
What’s new?

These three questions swirl and lurk for me all the time. They could simply be a sign of the times as I am one of the masses constantly seek stimulation and distraction. They could be indications of the long distance that I still have to go on any kind of spiritual journey. I also have a hunch they are part of my ENFP DNA. If I could write my ideal job description in one word, it would read – “pay me lots and lots of money to BRAINSTORM”. These questions are like high test fuel to me.

Lately I have been toying with the idea of doing more video for this blog besides the MBTI type interviews. First thought I could do 30 second MBTI video tips.

You know – things like if you are going to meet with someone with a preference for Intuition give the an overview first before you launch into the details.

What that misses for me is the spontaneity of interviewing others. I never plan these video interviews (surprise, surprise) I love what emerges when people reveal an aspect of their MBTI type when we are simply “in the moment” together. I have a harder time being spontaneous by myself. I become stiff and pedantic and that is not a pretty picture.

Next thought was that I could do these tips with props. Then there would be something to interact with. Hmmm Maybe I could have puppets of type… Okay okay… I want to be taken seriously so let’s not DO puppets.

Maybe cartoon characters… Oh Oh I love http://gapingvoid.com Hugh MacLeod’s cartoons. Could I be half that clever? Would people get value from insights presented this way? Could I distill something down to two witty lines and still have it be meaningful? Can I take Hugh’s inspiration and yet not copy but make it my own?

I decided I needed to explore that and see what I could come up with. You never know until you try – right?

Over this long weekend I spent two days subjecting my holiday company to the frenzy of my sketching. If the boys can spend 6 hours chasing a golf ball surely they can look at some line drawings. “What do you like better sketch A or B? How about now? Do you “get” it Huh Huh?” Our houseguests get major points for tolerating my process. Their feedback was so helpful and I even got a laugh or two – that’s a dangerous thing – it is enough to make me want to continue to do more.

As soon as I have something decent enough to show I will ask for your opinion. BTW I am shameless in asking for help – any wit and wisdom you want to share, any topic you want me to explore please pass it on to me. I am a bottom feeder gobbling up ideas like I’m at a Smorgasbord.

I wonder if Hugh has ever been a muse before?

The title of the post might be a tad misleading as this could be the 112th way to apply knowledge of type but it is more likely the 3011th way.

I use it in paintings that I call “Insight Portraits”.

Four years ago I convened an evening where I gathered what I dubbd my “Board of Directors” – six people plus a facilitator plus my husband. I was in a purely observer role. The intention of this dinner event was to help me integrate my art and my coaching (which iincludes using personality assessment tools such as the MBTI.) Part of making this a valuable process was in deciding who to ask to help. My goal was to get a cross-section of people from the art world and from the world of business – some I knew well and people who were recent acquaintances. I had an artist, 2 gallery owners, 3 consultants, a business owner and a senior executive.

At the end of the evening I gave each person an abstract painting that captured an aspect of them that I admired and which also was part of the reason why I asked for their counsel.

One of the consultants, upon seeing her personalized painting, advised that “This was it.” – a unique way to do a discovery process of current conditions and to capture and anchor it in a visual image. “Insight Portraits” were born.

These videos show two of the latest paintings. Knowing type is very helpful in that I can very quickly understand what might be important to include. These videos are a way of communicating with the client to see if the image is on a course that matches their intent.

This first video is for someone who I suspect is NT and the second is for a family of where 3 of the 4 siblings were most likely sensing. One painting is more abstract and the other more specific.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOSC8ofGgIE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6zztgyHpps