Archive | creativity RSS feed for this section

When failure is part of the rules

19 Mar

A few weeks ago, a woman in one of my workshops raised her hand and asked a very important question: “Are you telling us that it’s okay to fail?”

A group of incredibly smart, focused, and skilled future leaders was confused. No one had ever given them permission to fail before.

I told her what one of my mentors, Randy Nelson told me: life is not about error avoidance, it’s about error recovery.

I wasn’t actually encouraging them to fail, I simply encouraged this group to change their reaction to failure.

Most of us fail inward – meaning, our bodies tense up, we get smaller and we let the world know that we are ashamed.

Improvisers practice what same may see as a silly exercise called the “Failure Bow” – we turn failure from an inward defeat to an outward celebration. This small practice helps us act the way we want to feel.

Seth Godin speaks brilliantly about failure, here in this interview. Some of the highlights:

  • those who fail more often, win – The people who don’t win are the ones that don’t fail at all and get stuck, or the ones that fail so big that they don’t get to play again.
  • What are the risks that you can take that keep you in the game even if you fail?
  •  Following the rules can lead to a fear of initiation and a fear of failure. Where can you work where failing is part of the rules?

The concept of embracing failure is broad and confusing for some – depending on your profession, and your past experience. This concept is also juicy and full of connection to vulnerability, innovation, creativity, you name it.

Simply put…error recovery builds resilience, it provides a new kind of reward…perhaps one that we aren’t teaching or recognizing enough.

 

Tags: , , ,

How to give yourself permission to be more creative

14 Feb

High on a mountaintop sits the creative genius. Not to be bothered with, talked to, or talked down to. He speaks in short, punctuated sentences, rides a scooter (yes, on a mountaintop) and abstains from yellow food. Who is this person? Surely he must be creative.

If you ask me, the great divide between “the creative person” and the non-creative type is phony.

Anyone can be creative. It’s not a category you fall into, the job you are assigned, the assessment you take. Creativity starts with permission.

To be creative is to give yourself and to give others the permission to explore, to have new ideas and to follow them. 

Creative people are more comfortable with the freedom inside structure than just the structure itself. They are more comfortable exploring, less on logic and rules and more on what could be.

They take risks because they have given themselves permission to. They think broadly, in opposites, in analogies, or in obvious straight-forward methods.

It’s a shift – from a judging to learner mindset, a mechanistic or organismic structure, technical to adaptive problem solving, or whole-brain thinking. But, becoming more creative involves not just a neurological shift but an environmental shift as well.

Peter Sims talks about this in this article, “Ultimately, while basic design and creative methods can be learned much like muscles, and developed and strengthened through practice, this shift in mindset requires a different kind of leadership.”

Helping others become more creative involves giving them permission to fail, to have big ideas, to take risks and to blur the lines between who is deemed creative and who isn’t.

 

 

Tags: , , , ,

TOOL: The Failure Bow

10 Oct

Last year I had the privilege of meeting Ted DesMaisons – a fellow Improviser, also a blogger, Stanford Business School Graduate, and a very gifted man and teacher.

His latest blog post, The Transformative Failure Bow , talks about one of the greatest resources in an improviser’s toolkit: the ability to transform failure and a mistake into a celebration of boldness. It is a learned skill worth practicing. Here he describes the history of this great tool, how he teaches it, and how it creates transformation by shifting our reaction and definition of “failure”.

He asks the question we all could be asking – what are we rewarding? The effort, the result, or both? How do you define the result?

“As Matt Smith affirmed in a recent conversation, “The Failure Bow isn’t designed to reward or focus on the failure. It’s designed to reward the willingness to be transparent, the capacity to remain available in the present moment, and the ability to get back on the horse without residing in shame.” It’s that awesome eagerness that leads an athlete to say “Hit me another, Coach” or a student to insist “Let me try again.” We get knocked down, but we get up again.”

The Transformative Failure Bow 

Tags: , , ,

One link between emotion and creativity

2 Oct

Say you want to help a group be more creative. 

What emotion would best help the group achieve this goal?

This question was recently posed to students in a weekend workshop I attended on Emotional Intelligence at Columbia University.

The choices:

1. Happiness

2. Worry

3. Sadness

4. Anger

5. Other

What would you say? I listened as classmates, one after the other, suggested that negative emotions would fuel the creative fire.

Sure, we know that not everyone responds the same way, but could negativity really be the answer? It saddened me that this was the myth or common view floating around the University halls.

Results of a study published by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, set us straight.

The emotion that best helps a group promote creativity is happiness.  Why? An upbeat mood makes people more receptive to information, helps widens our lens and allows us to see connections we normally would have been closed off to otherwise.

In addition, happiness and laughter release dopamine which contributes to stress reduction.

Stress reduction and an overall relaxed state triggers responses in our brain that coincide with inhibition – and the ability to have more creative insights.

This blog post is brought to you by the letters “H.A.P.P.I.N.E.S.S” and Positive Psychology. Now go out and make someone happy!

Tags: , , , ,

What’s the drill – September 12: And because of that…

12 Sep

Remember the Story Spine? The fantastic tool we use to apply elements of storytelling to a plethora of organizational situations and cases?

  • Once upon a time …
  • And every day …
  • Until one day..
  • And because of that …
  • And because of that …
  • And because of that…
  • Until finally…
  • And ever since that day ..

Today specifically we can talk about the Story Spine as a means of discussing risk and reward.

Take the phrase, “And because of that…”

Improvisers are taught, and become more comfortable with taking risks. They feel on stage, experientially, what it’s like to get out of their comfort zone. And because of that, they stretch, grow, and so much more.

Sometimes, off-stage, we take a risk (“until one day”) and wait for the reward (“because of that”). We see risk taking as a means to an end. It’s got to be something tangible, right?

“Where is my ‘because of that‘ already?”, we ask. Show me the reward! Let’s flip to the end of the story.

In truth, the other, “because of that’s” might not have been written yet. We often can’t see them coming although we hope they appear. It may take months, years for you to recognize what they are. You might find there are more than 3, perhaps dozens of “because of that” phrases. All we know sometimes is that the risk moves us forward, certainly in learning, and hopefully in tangible results.

If we are taking risks solely in pursuit of the reward we might never be satisfied with our story spine.

The point is that we as organizations and the people who run them have a responsibility to keep the story moving forward. Choosing to take risks and to use the call to action of “until one day” moves us forward, compared to the glacial, steady, predictable pace of “and every day”.

 

Tags: , , , ,

Saying Yes to the Mess – The Improvisational Mindset of Frank J. Barrett

9 Sep

In the midst of change (large or small), our natural instinct is often to try to control the chaos and the mess.

What if instead of fighting it, we said yes to this mess?

This question and more is one posed by author and professor Frank Barrett in his new book, “Yes to the Mess: Surprising Leadership Lessons from Jazz.”

His approach is one we might recognize, as the author of “Appreciative Inquiry – a Positive Approach to Building Cooperative Capacity.

We can safely say he is a fan of the tenants of Improvisation and Positive Psychology and their application to leadership and management.

This Improvisational mindset is one we’ve discussed:

  1. Face the mess
  2. Learn to take action with incomplete information – you can’t always stop and problem solve
  3. Build affirmative competence by learning how to respond in the moment
  4. Solo and Support – Learn to play both roles, let others shine, while following your instincts.

Learn more from Barrett in this insightful interview here!

Tags: , , , , , ,

The top five qualities of innovative companies, via HBR

14 Aug

Companies that know how to innovate have something in common — they make it a priority. The companies listed in Hay Group’s seventh annual Best Companies for Leadership (BCL) ranking recognize the value of  innovation and put it at the heart of their corporate culture.

How do they do they do it? Well, you may recognize some of these best practices. The theme remains one of openness, flexibility, agility, and growth via learning:

1. Create a safe space for innovation

  • Idea – allow calculated risks
  • Example – build a lab environment into part of the culture

2. Enable organizational agility.

  • Idea – allow job definitions to be more flexible and fluid — if you want an organization to be adaptable, and flexible,  and changing to the needs of the marketplace, take a look at the job structure.
  • Give employees room to grow and explore their range of interests within a company, for example, Google is great at this.
  • Example – build empathy across organization, independent thinking and problem solving by allowing others to join a new department for a month/quarter, etc.

3. Broaden perspectives. 

  • Idea – new ideas can come from anywhere – an innovative company knows this and is an expert at “staying open”.
  • Example – Solicit feedback on ideas from the community and company as a whole.

4. Promote and reward collaboration.

  • Idea – the majority of innovations are born from collaborative efforts.
  • Create an environment that encourages collaboration
  • Ideas can be those of the individual, and “yes, anded” by the group as a whole.  Reward dependence, not just independence.

5. Celebrate success and learn from setbacks.

  • Idea – fail forward
  • Innovative companies see problems and failures as learning experiences. By reacting this way, companies encourage risk taking and keep the innovation engine running. An employee who feels they can never mess up, will never try to be anything other than average.
  • Encourage “what if’s” and “why not’s”

 

Tags:

Why Creative Ideas Get Rejected – via David Burkus

8 Aug

If you feel like getting your creative ideas approved and accepted is a battle, new research suggests it may not be your fault.

Creative work that’s novel and different often goes head-to-head with our desire for certainty and structure. When that certainty is well…uncertain, our natural, inherent creativity bias can rear its ugly head.

We want creativity without the risk. Can we have our cake and eat it too when it comes to creativity and innovation?

To help our brains accept new ideas, this research and wonderful writing from Management Professor David Burkus gets us thinking about how we sell our ideas:

“We now know that regardless of how open-minded people are, or claim to be, they experience a subtle bias against creative ideas when faced with uncertain situations. This isn’t merely a preference for the familiar or a desire to maintain the status quo. Most of us sincerely claim that we want the positive changes creativity provides. What the bias affects is our ability to recognize the creative ideas that we claim we desire. Thus, when you’re pitching your creative idea, it may not be the idea itself that is being rejected. The more likely culprit could be the uncertainty your audience is feeling, which in turn is overriding their ability to recognize the idea as truly novel and useful.”

Regardless of how open-minded people are, they experience a subtle bias against creative ideas when faced with uncertain situations.”

To me, this research shares similarities with the work of David Rock and his S.C.A.R.F model of rewards and threats. When our certainty, the “C” in scarf’” is threatened we close down.

To break through, Burkus and Rock remind us to speak the language of those we are trying to persuade, make them look good by using empathy, listening, and perhaps most of all, patience.

http://99u.com/articles/7207/Why-Great-Ideas-Get-Rejected

Tags: , , , ,

What makes people more creative on some days and not others…

7 Aug

The million, okay, billion-dollar question: How do you create a culture of creativity, and make it last?

Harvard University Professor Teresa Amabile wanted to find out.

Discussing her research into the topic with Bloomberg Television, Amabile and her team compiled over 12,000 individual daily diaries over 5 months, from professionals who were working on creative projects within their company.

What she found, “People do their most creative work on days when they’re feeling most positive emotions, most pleasant thoughts about their organization and their co-workers and strongest intrinsic motivation in their work”.

To put it simply: inner-work life drives performance, and allows teams and individuals to come up with better, creative ideas.

Every area in business requires coming up with creative solutions – and to foster that kind of creative thinking takes more than waving a magic wand:

  1. create an atmosphere of trust and collaboration
  2. tap into those favorite intrinsic motivators of autonomy, purpose, and mastery
  3. Remember that “small wins”, making progress on meaningful work (Amabile’s Progress Principle) matters.

For more: http://www.bloomberg.com/video/what-inspires-creativity-in-the-workplace-xLy2z9V~TGKtienzTsGryQ.html

 

Tags: , , ,

What’s the drill – August 6: The Four Traits of Learning

6 Aug

Here’s a crazy idea.

What if, instead of pushing learning on people, we find ways to integrate it into their everyday lives? We take an approach to learning that makes it fun, engaging, humor-filled even… one that’s memorable, co-created, and reminds us that our ideas matter.

Recently I watched a speech by a man whose company and mission I am so excited about. In this speech he says:

“Curiosity, creativity, discovery and wonder; they aren’t traits of youth, they’re traits of learning. If you want to feel younger and you want to replicate the conditions of youth, do that.”
Adults are busy, adults are information-saturated. Learning, especially at work, can be viewed as a chore. I believe, the more we can do as educators to provoke curiosity, encourage questions and discovery, add play, humor, fun and exploration, we are encouraging people to not just learn, but to be changed by what they learn.

Tags: , , , ,

The genius of the “and”…

1 Aug

 

“Collaborative innovation involves the genius of the “and” versus the tyranny of the “or.” It’s not that brainstorming must always turn into “Groupthink” or that introverts or individuals have the best ideas. In good brainstorming, one feeds off the other and the end result is significantly more powerful than either approach alone.” – Harvard Business Review 

The need, space, and time for “Passionate Champions” to “and” an idea is the often missing step in the brainstorming process, says this latest article from HBR. 

Step One: Collaborate on ideas as a group. Make sure everyone is heard, help individuals improve their own thinking and be exposed to ideas they may not have thought of on their own.

Step Two: Open up the session to passionate, individual champions:

“Anyone, alone or with other people if they need or want help, can pick any idea and develop it further. Even if the idea has already been developed in one direction, a Passionate Champion may see it very differently and develop it in a totally different manner. Or, they can pick an idea that was not advocated by the group or selected by the client, and develop it as they see fit.

In our work, we find that Passionate Champion ideas often account for 50% of those that make it through internal and external vetting, and 20-30% of the ideas that make it into final concepts. What’s more, they are often the most breakthrough in terms of truly new, game-changing concepts.”

Create the safe environment for ideas to flow, allow those who want to “yes, and” an idea to do so. Who can say yes to an idea in your organization? 

Tags: , , , ,

Break it down – A lesson in creative insight

31 Jul

To spark creative insight, you don’t necessarily need to start from scratch.

Staring at that blank sheet of paper for hours on end probably isn’t doing you any favors.

We find inspiration from increasing the number of associations in our brain, and according to new research , also breaking apart our items of inspiration to just their component parts.

This isn’t the first time we’ve talked about this technique for busting through rigid thinking, also known as “functional fixedness”.

To overcome your functional fixedness, says researcher Tony McCaffrey:

1. Break down the item at hand into basic parts

2. Name each part in a way that does not imply meaning.

Strip away the fixed associations that are holding you back.

In his research, subjects he trained on this technique solved 67 percent more problems requiring creative insight than subjects who did not learn the technique, according to his study published in March in Psychological Science.

Give this trick to engineer friends, and those who enjoy and crave tactile problem-solving and learning.

His research is a nice reminder to remove the limitations we put on everyday objects, and maybe even… people? Is our description or label of something or someone keeping us from creative insight and innovation and a better way of working?

To me, this technique applies to more than just design thinking. Finding your creative solution starts with building your platform. What do you already have to work with. How can you “yes, and”, or amplify these pieces to find your creative solution?

Tags: , , ,

A new way to think of change

26 Jul

In an Improv scene, a movie, a story, or a great presentation we find resolution by completing this sentence,

 “and ever since that day”…

What changed?

This change is brought about by what we call a tilt. Something a character says, does, expresses, and admits to, etc in a scene.

It is our goal in an Improv scene to be open to change and to actively seek it. This change then answers the question, “what was different about this day”.

As innovators, creative problem-solvers, leadership coaches, managers, trainers, and facilitators we push positive change.

“And ever since that day”….

The tilt, the catalyst for change, comes from being hyper-aware to what offers and ideas have already been expressed. What is around us that we can use? What are our characters feeling, expressing, and wanting and what honest reactions and desires can we pull from to help our characters organically grow and evolve?

We can think of it this way:

Once there was…
And every day…
Until one day…
And because of that…
And because of that…
And because of that…
Until finally…
And ever since that day…

Improvisers want to be changed. The static scene and character that stays the same from beginning to end is not our friend.

To embrace change is to ask… “and ever since that day”… and to see the world of possibilities that appear when we making even one small tilt pushes us in a direction we couldn’t have predicted.

Tags: , , , ,

How to rev up the creativity engine at your workplace

23 Jul

Here’s what we know…. To rev up your creative engine:

  1. Expose your mind to a broad range of stimuli – expand your creative awareness by ingesting more remote associations in your brain. To think differently, your inspiration needs to come from different places. The more associations, and the wider the variety – the more possibilities!
  2. Don’t worry be happy – the more relaxed (and in a good mood) you are, the more likely you are to find insightful solutions to a problem.
  3. Create more opportunities for insight – direct your psychological experience inward

Inward attention + context of fresh ideas + relaxation ….  tell me more! But if it seems like these efforts cost too much money (or time) consider your competition. “Creativity in the workplace isn’t a “nice to have”—it’s what keeps companies in business”, says Fast Company magazine.

I couldn’t agree more.

Tickle the senses. Break up the routine. Encourage interaction, sharing. New experiences. Time for relaxation. A creativity room? Chalk board walls? More spontaneity.

Can you create a stimulating, and relaxing work environment that also promotes empathy across departments?

The first step towards promoting creativity at work is to make a conscious decision to devote effort and energy to it. I’d argue the only failure comes in sticking with the same old.

Tags: , ,

What’s the drill – July 17: Put this brainstorming trick into action

17 Jul

Did you know, IBM’s 2010 Global CEO Study cited “creativity” as the most important leadership quality for the future.

Bolster your toolkit to include strategies for creative problem solving… like this one:

A two-minute brainstorming session… it might just be the efficient tool you’ve been looking for and a go-to trick when you’re stuck in a creative rut.

Here are the rules:

1. Two minutes

2. No judgement of ideas

3. Write down everything

4. Quantity over quality

Then, take a look at your results.

Pick 3 of your ideas (trust your instincts on this one) to do another 2 minute brainstorming session, extrapolating on each idea.

Dig deeper into your creative well by asking yourself questions like — what would happen if the opposite were true? What would this idea look like a year from now? How would our competition execute this idea?

Start with the phrase… “What if” and see where it takes you. By role-playing scenarios and ideas without any fear of judgement (and just a little bit of time and energy) you’re pumping up your creative muscle by asking the  curious questions that promote self-reflection, resilience, flexibility, empathy, and sometimes… more questions.

 

 

Tags: , ,

Censor got you silent? Try this exercise for your next brainstorming warm-up

29 Jun

When you hear the word ‘brainstorming’ you might instantly tense up.

What if my answer isn’t correct? I can’t think on my feet. What if my answer is judged?

All of these concerns (which can be lessened based on your office culture and reinforcement of values) are common and because of them, we tend to censor ourselves and become more inhibited with our ideas and contributions.

We filter out our “crazy” ideas, pre-judging them before they’re even spoken.

To fool our filters and train our brains to be more spontaneous, one trick, per this article in Fast Company is to focus on speed. When you’re going this fast, there’s no time to judge ideas.

We know it’s hard to brainstorm cold. So here’s my favorite 3-minute warmup to quiet your censor and get you primed for better brainstorming.

  1. Walk around the room, pointing out what you see and naming it out loud (60 seconds)
  2. Walk around the room again, point out what you see, but name it the item you previously pointed at (60 seconds)
  3. Walk around the room, point at things and purposefully call it by the wrong name. Anything you want! (60 seconds).

What did you notice?

 

Tags:

Once upon a time…Integrating story tips into your organization

8 Jun

“But one day”… is what’s known in storytelling as the tilt. The moment everything changed and our characters, world, and story transformed.

It’s just one part of what’s known as The story spine, by Ken Adams.

As someone who studied screenwriting in college, I have always been fascinated by how the worlds of storytelling and human behavior collide — essentially, studying how screenwriters craft powerful narratives built on human emotion, connection and transformation, and using some of those same secrets to positively affect human and organizational development.

Today I came across this blog, which shares some story rules pulled directly from Pixar Animation. I’ve posted them below. Which ones resonate and connect most with you – whether it pertains to leadership, transformation, presentation skills, or more?

http://www.pixartouchbook.com/blog/2011/5/15/pixar-story-rules-one-version.html

#1: You admire a character for trying more than for their successes.

#2: You gotta keep in mind what’s interesting to you as an audience, not what’s fun to do as a writer. They can be v. different.

#3: Trying for theme is important, but you won’t see what the story is actually about til you’re at the end of it. Now rewrite.

#4: Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___.

#5: Simplify. Focus. Combine characters. Hop over detours. You’ll feel like you’re losing valuable stuff but it sets you free.

#6: What is your character good at, comfortable with? Throw the polar opposite at them. Challenge them. How do they deal?

#7: Come up with your ending before you figure out your middle. Seriously. Endings are hard, get yours working up front.

#8: Finish your story, let go even if it’s not perfect. In an ideal world you have both, but move on. Do better next time.

#9: When you’re stuck, make a list of what WOULDN’T happen next. Lots of times the material to get you unstuck will show up.

#10: Pull apart the stories you like. What you like in them is a part of you; you’ve got to recognize it before you can use it.

#11: Putting it on paper lets you start fixing it. If it stays in your head, a perfect idea, you’ll never share it with anyone.

#12: Discount the 1st thing that comes to mind. And the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th – get the obvious out of the way. Surprise yourself.

#13: Give your characters opinions. Passive/malleable might seem likable to you as you write, but it’s poison to the audience.

#14: Why must you tell THIS story? What’s the belief burning within you that your story feeds off of? That’s the heart of it.

#15: If you were your character, in this situation, how would you feel? Honesty lends credibility to unbelievable situations.

#16: What are the stakes? Give us reason to root for the character. What happens if they don’t succeed? Stack the odds against.

#17: No work is ever wasted. If it’s not working, let go and move on – it’ll come back around to be useful later.

#18: You have to know yourself: the difference between doing your best & fussing. Story is testing, not refining.

#19: Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.

#20: Exercise: take the building blocks of a movie you dislike. How d’you rearrange them into what you DO like?

#21: You gotta identify with your situation/characters, can’t just write ‘cool’. What would make YOU act that way?

#22: What’s the essence of your story? Most economical telling of it? If you know that, you can build out from there.

Tags: , , , , ,

(Updated) Two words that kill innovation and creativity

21 May

This past week, I had the privilege of guest blogging for online leadership think tank, LeaderLab. A re-posting of my updated post is below and here. I’d love to hear your thoughts. 

Every moment and in every interaction we are capable of choosing our “performances” and how we act, behave, and respond in a given situation.

Often our performances, and our reactions are habitual, instinctive, and we aren’t even aware of the mindset that’s ingrained in us or our companies.

But is this mindset decreasing your organizational capacity for innovation?

It’s possible these two little words are killing the innovation and creativity of your team:

“Yes, But”.

Reflect on how you and your company respond to new or untested ideas. Do you “but” ideas to death? And in doing so, do you cast a negative light on risk-taking, failure, and openness.

The unconscious performance might look like this:

“Yes, but it won’t work”

“Yes, but we don’t have the time”

“Yes, but we tried something similar before and it didn’t work”

Researcher Shawn Achor from Harvard tells us 75% of or job successes at work come from optimism, our ability to see stress as a challenge instead of a threat, and social support at work.

When we are met with a “yes, but” attitude to our ideas and innovations, it can be difficult maintain the motivation to do our best work and to feel support for our contributions.

I’m not advocating a company full of just “yes” men. Instead, we can choose a performance that involves less judgement, more open-mindedness, acceptance of others ideas, and a willingness to build on ideas instead of rejecting them.

Luckily, research from Achor (and others) tells us we can train our brain to become more positive. Through practice and habit building, we can learn to scan the world through a lens of positivity, instead of negativity and to create more conscious performances that involve the words “Yes, and”, instead of “Yes, but”.

Think about all of the performance choices you have every day. How can your performance increase and not block the flow of ideas, open communication and an open mind.

“But….” , just give it a try!

Tags: , ,

Innovation as Jazz

18 May

http://blog.clomedia.com/2012/05/ld-and-all-that-jazz-at-astd/

“Jazz is a conversation that is comfortable with uncertainty and new knowledge,” said John Kao at the ASTD conference keynote session last week.

Jazz, he says, is a metaphor for innovation – where you need a combination of improvisation and discipline.

“If you play just to what’s on the sheet of music in front of you, you’re limiting your options. Jazz musicians have a different mission – to go new ways with the music and create new notes and moments.”

The freedom found in the limitations creates the magic.

Develop the basic skills needed to play the notes – build your capacity first, set the ground rules, set the target – but realize that the real innovation happens in the space between that structure and the unknown.

 

Tags: , , ,

What’s the drill – May 15: Give your presentation skills a boost

15 May

Are you a detail or big-picture person? Do you describe or present information with all of your senses?

One simple exercise changed the way I look at presenting information – and its applications stretch from vision planning, leadership, presentation skills, story, learning retention and more.

It’s an exercise I first learned in an Improvisation class at BATS Improv, and then continued to read about in Kat Koppet’s book, “Training to Imagine”, and then applied to my workshops at DreamWorks Animation.

It’s called, Color/Advance.

Here is a basic example of how it works: Grab a partner and pick one of you to begin describing your day.

At any point, your partner can say, color… or, advance. Color means to add more description to your story – use all of your senses. When your partner says Advance, it is your job to then go back to advancing or continuing the story. Continue to switch back and forth, with the direction given by your partner.

Give your storytelling, imagination, creativity, and presentation skills a boost.

Also use this tool to learn what inspires or interests your audience – see what they want to learn or hear more about.

Color. Or Advance? Why not add both to your toolbox.

Tags: , , , , , ,

← Older Entries

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 156 other followers

%d bloggers like this: