Suggested Length:  One Day

Developing Your Creative Thinking Skills

Join our intensive “think tank” session where you’ll

• Learn creative ways to deal with team issues
• Release creative talents now overlooked in your team
• Develop new and effective patterns of thinking
• Practice new techniques for solving complex problems

You begin this fascinating Learning Lab by discovering how to develop the creative talents you have … including the talents you’ve probably ignored in the past but which could help you in your job.

Then, you’ll immerse yourself in a powerful “roll-up-your-sleeves” clinic where you learn to approach your job – and your personal life – in a more positive, creative way.

Today’s critical need for thinking creatively

• The key role creativity plays in solving problems
• Things they never taught you in school.
• Creativity killers we find all around us
• What research says about creative talents
• Can an entire organization be creative?

Developing your natural creative talents

• Why didn’t I think of that?
• The burden of outdated and incorrect assumptions
• How to discover and guide your natural creative talents
• Competencies that enable greater creativity
• Applying the “What if” principle
• Identifying and stopping negative thinking patterns that hold you back

The creative process

• Beyond the obvious – the knack for looking at things differently
• How to get the light bulb to turn on
• Breaking out of your mental grooves
• Start your day with these brain stretchers
• Curiosity – the starting point for creative thinking
• Identifying work-related opportunities for your creativity
• Framing the creative problem and bringing it into focus
• Developing fluency and flexibility in generating new ideas
• Beyond brainstorming: techniques for developing your creative ideas and talents
• Are you ready to take the risk of your idea?
• When to work hard … and when to play … with a new idea
• Stepping away from your creative idea for greater insight
• How persistence is often the difference between success and failure
• Nurturing your idea to success

Taking action on your idea: from imagination … to innovation … to implementation

• Creativity and it’s role in innovation
• The challenge of keeping a good idea alive
• What to do when others resist your creative ideas
• Expanding your ability to develop breakthrough ideas
• Applying critical thinking to evaluate your creative ideas

Building organizational support for your creative idea

• How organizational culture and management style affect creativity
• Moving from imagination and aspiration to innovation and implementation
• Key factors in nurturing your creative idea to successful implementation

Take away: Get started on developing a work-related idea using our Creative Thinking Toolkit and Action Plan, complete with workshop exercises, helpful hints, worksheets and more.