“Creativity is something you’re born with.”
I call bull shit. People are certainly born with a wide range of genetic dispositions. But creativity, IMO, is rather low on that list. I believe your environment is more likely to contribute more to your creative output than your genetic makeup.
But who cares what I think, let’s find out what science has to say. Specifically, let’s review a review: Research on Workplace Creativity (2000-2014). And besides learning what the research shows, we’ll learn how to shape your environment for the better.
TL;DR: Everyone can be creative. Invest in leadership, team culture, and the individual’s environment.
Creativity at the workplace
Let us first pause, and consider if creativity at the workplace is a good proxy for creativity as a whole? Go ahead, think for yourself - is it?
You probably skipped that, and just continued reading huh?
Well, I believe it is a valuable proxy wherever creativity is needed within a team, IF that team has some financial incentive in their delivery. However, creativity as a solo show, or within a team without financial ends, could have different considerations, or simply not map onto these points. However, many of the points here are general, and seem like they should deliver value outside of the workplace too.
All this to say, this research isn’t an absolute truth for all circumstances.
The obvious
A lot of the research had, in my opinion, obvious findings. But let’s not skip these points. It’s all too easy to get caught up in the nuanced or corner case findings, forgetting that the basics can get us where we needed to be.
Listing these points out, because I’m lazy, and this saves me valuable time from having to string these points together in comprehensive sentences:
- “Leadership plays a key role in forming a supportive context for creativity” (duh).
- Trustworthy leaders build team creativity.
- All tasks should be given goals (but not too focused - use design thinking).
- Have positive belief in one’s capacity to perform their job.
- Autonomy is key (do not micromanage - again, duh).
- Moderate time pressure is good.
- “Allowing team members to tackle an idea-generation task individually first, before engaging in collective ideation led teams to generate ideas of higher quality.”
So this is a nice list of things to do, but what about things not to do?
Unfortunately, the review didn’t really touch on that research because, well, how to suppress creativity isn’t well studied. I guess there isn’t much money in it? Go figure 🤷 However, there is one study mentioned. It showed knowledge hiding decreases an individual’s creativity.
“The main and moderated effect of knowledge hiding on the knowledge hider’s creativity was mediated by distrust of another person and in turn that person’s own knowledge hiding”.
In other words, do unto others as you’d have them do onto you. You hid information from them, they’ll hide it from you.
The nuanced
Okay, so far, we’ve basically reminded ourselves why culture matters; why it benefits a team to have strong leadership, not micro manage, and be kind to ourselves and others. Probably all things that have a positive affect outside of creativity too.
What are some more nuanced findings brought to light by this review? For starters, there are a few recommendations for leaders:
- Leaders sharing their inner struggles, and a broad amount of information, leads to trust and positive information sharing, which leads to creativity.
- “Leader inspirational motivation on creative effort (an antecedent of creativity) was more positive when leaders were highly prototypical, and more negative when leaders were less prototypical”.
- Leaders thought of as creative role models can boost creativity by displaying unconventional behaviour.
- Creativity should be declared as a desirable outcome.
- When expecting creativity, employees perform more creatively. This positive effect was seen when expectations came from coworkers or family and friends too. A classic example of meeting the expectation placed upon us by others.
Two of my favourite takeaways here showcase how true it is that we are social creatures. That creative expectations placed on us by others, and leaders displaying unconventional behaviour both improve our creativity shows how much our minds are fueled by those around us.
Beyond useful tips for people leadership, there are some team values that can foster creativity:
- Team diversity boosted creativity only when team members excelled in taking on other’s perspectives.
- Create a diverse team, AND a culture of listening to ideas that aren’t yours, and maybe oppose your beliefs.
- Information sharing and team wide understanding of who knows what (especially in diverse teams) positively affected individuals’ belief in their creativity.
- Transformational leadership helps to unlock creativity in general, and is necessary to unlock creativity benefits brought on by diversity.
- Reward those who benefit others; “prosocial motivation” moderates intrinsic motivation for creativity.
- Part of this motivation comes from a culture of help seeking.
- However, prosocial motivation comes at the expense of increased help giving, which negatively affects creativity.
Here we see a general theme arise. Having an environment where new ideas flow easily, free from echo chambers or dogmatic beliefs, elevates creativity for everyone involved. Fall prey to close mindedness or stop listening to new ideas, and you’re sure to take a hit to your creativity.
The context
So far, these recommendations have been generally applicable. But what about the “actor–context” findings mentioned in the paper’s abstract? (yeah, you should probably open the paper I linked in the opening - how do you know this whole post isn’t just fake news?)
How might the same context affect people differently?
For example, the interplay of context and the individual leads to positive, or negative, or a mute impact on creativity. Let’s take a look:
- Benevolent leadership leads to creativity when autonomy is high, but NOT when job autonomy is low.
- For individuals with creative role identities (i.e., believing your results are delivered in part due to creative thinking), creativity was higher than peers only if organization support for creativity was perceived. If that support was perceived to be missing, their creative output was actually less than their peers.
- Individuals expecting an informational evaluation of their ideas performed better in their creativity when given a standard (or creative) example before working on a task. Conversely, individuals expecting a controlling evaluation of their ideas showed worse levels of creativity when given a standard example compared to no example at all!
- Moderate levels of competition fostered creativity within groups with stable membership (low levels of competition were bad, and high levels were no better than moderate). However, for groups that change frequently with new members, the effect of competition on creativity followed a U shape (good at low and high, but bad at moderate).
- To optimize creativity via social networks, you either want: i) high centrality and low outside ties, or ii) low centrality and high outside ties.
These examples highlight the need to consider each person, or their team, separately when trying to improve creativity. There is no “one size fits all” solution here, as we’d expect.
Additional research will shed light on trade-offs for team’s trying to optimize heavily in one dimension. For example, trusting relationships with leaders has a positive effect for team creativity with a learning goal orientation, through information exchange. However, if instead of a learning goal orientation, your team has a performance approach orientation, this same mechanism (information exchange + trust in leadership) actually results in a negative impact to creativity. Interestingly, this double-edged sword works in reverse as well, where less-trusting relationships with leadership had a positive impact on team creativity with performance approach orientation.
Gong and colleagues (2012b) showed that having a trusting relationship with the leader moderated the indirect effect of team learning goal orientation on team creativity through team information exchange such that this indirect effect was positive when teams had a trusting relationship with their leaders, but it was not significant when trust was low. Interestingly, and underscoring the need to look at the interplay of the creative actor and the surrounding context, having a trusting relationship with the leader had the opposite impact on the indirect effect of a team’s performance approach orientation on team creativity through information exchange. This effect was more positive when members reported a less-trusting relationship with their leader and more negative when the relationship with the leader was more trusting.
Environment engineering
Clearly, the context which we find ourselves, or those we’re evaluating, is an integral part to success. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. The more we’ve learnt about human behaviour, the more we understand how crucial one’s environment is to shaping who we are. As I mention in my takeaways to Malcom Gladwell’s book “Talking to Strangers”, Don’t judge a stranger, judge their environment..
Empowered by this idea, we can purposely shape our environments for the better. Allowing our context to deliver value day after day. I call this Environment Engineering (not to be confused with Environmental Engineering, although I do see the problem I’ve created for myself).
In the workplace, there are 3 primary environment changes we can make to improve creativity:
- Invest in your team’s culture. Incentivize information sharing, open mindedness, and seeking of diverse ideas for teams that have creative role identity. For example, have “information sharing”, and “inclusivity” as core competencies that employees (both leaders and makers) are evaluated against.
- Invest in leadership. Incentivize leaders to be vulnerable. Have them share genuine thoughts and feelings, both good and bad, which builds trust. Train leaders in transformational leadership and how to craft clear goals with design thinking.
- Invest in the makers. Give them ownership, resources and equipment to succeed. Encourage them to believe in their abilities, and support them to learn missing skills. You’ll see results aligned with expectations. Expect poor, non-creative output, and your makers will deliver; expect creative goodness, and you shall receive.
A couple of caveats: i) obviously leaders shouldn’t share sensitive company information that should be contained (i.e., poor performance of others, potential M&A, etc.); ii) expecting greatness of an employee at all times is a high bar to reach, hence why I said goodness.
Also, I should clarify, a “maker” is an employee who makes (think associate), versus a “leader” who leads (think manager).
Do not overlook the 1% improvement
A king of environment engineering is Sir Dave Brailsford. He’s the man behind Britain’s dominance in cycling over the past decade.
When he took over the cycling program, he got right to work improving the cyclist’s environment. He started with the obvious improvements you’d expect: testing various bike suites to optimize aerodynamics, reducing the weight of the bikes beyond what had already been done, and implementing biotracking during fitness routines to optimize for the individuals the next day.
He then went above and beyond these more obvious environment changes. He painted the inside of their bike transportation truck white to help spot dirt on bikes. He hired surgeons to teach the team proper hand washing technique to reduce sickness. And he had all bikers A/B test over 30 pillows so everyone had the perfect pillow they could take with them to events.
These minor changes, ever so small, had real dividends. Before Sir Dave Brailsford, Great Britain had never won the Tour De France. With him at the helm, they’ve won 6 of the last 10 titles.
When Sir Brailsford speaks about marginal gains, he reinforces context changes similar to what was suggested by this research paper:
- Create a positive culture. Everyone knows their responsibilities, achieves them for the betterment of the team (knowledge sharing & open mindedness). Hire for behaviour fit more than technical prowess, and teach where needed.
- Have strong leaders who can create those clear responsibilities and positive environments (clear problem statements - design thinking).
- Give people ownership (autonomy), and a supportive environment to succeed.
Note: much of this section was taken from a podcast interview from Sam Harris and James Clear. You should really listen to James speak about this topic, he’s the expert.
Beyond the workplace
Environment engineering isn’t for the workplace alone. It’s a very powerful tool for self improvement too. As outlined by James, habits are the compounding interest of self improvement.
What are habits? they are the moment-by-moment decisions we make. How are decisions made? they are often the simplest choice to a current dilemma. What determines the simplest choice? the simplest choice is a function of your environment. Therefore, self improvement begins with improving your environment.
At a personal level, there is a ton of low hanging fruit anyone can do. For example, removing distractions from your environment can greatly improve focus by eliminating context switching. Try keeping your phone out of reach, with notifications off for everything except maybe phone calls or other possibly urgent forms of communication. Mute notifications for everything else.
Or try working in an open space to fuel expansive thinking (a quiet park if your living arrangement cannot provide). If focus is what you need, maybe a closed-off dark room is preferable. Recognizing when you need to be alone, with your own thoughts, or together, sharing ideas, is another big environment change you can make.
Try creating purposeful stress modulating reminders in your environment. Mindfulness meditation, and certain breathing exercises can quickly change your stress levels if they are unwantingly high. At times of unwanted stress, it can be hard to bring these tricks into the present moment. Maybe a poster, or a note, or a piece of artwork help ground you in times of unwanted stress. Add these reminders to your environment and practice using them.
If you’re new to mindfulness as a tool for stress management, I suggest trying the Waking Up meditation app. If you’re unsure what breathing exercises to do, review Andrew Huberman’s work.
In closing
Everyone can be creative. As said in the closing remarks of the paper,
Our review suggests that leadership plays a key role in forming a supportive context for creativity. Hence, organizations should train their managers to exhibit the type of leadership or supervisory behaviors that nurture instead of inhibit employee creativity.
Beyond leadership, invest in the context your team operates within. Create a culture of information sharing, and open mindedness. Total knowledge on a team is not a summation game. The distribution of this knowledge matters.
Invest in the maker’s environment. Find those 1% gains that deliver success day after day. Clear responsibility and autonomy are prerequisites, of course, but don’t stop there. What additional resources / environment changes can you provide that will give your team the edge to outperform?
Appendix:
My favourite run on sentence from the paper… gotta love peer reviewed literature:
“The limited number of factors studied at both levels [individual and team] of analysis renders premature a general conclusion as to whether creativity is an isomorphous construct across levels of analysis that displays homologous relations with a broad range of antecedents”