In this episode of the "HR Mixtape," host Shari Simpson welcomes Dr. Caroline Brookfield, a veterinarian, researcher, and keynote speaker specializing in creative leadership and embracing ambiguity. With over 25 years of experience, Caroline shares insights on how leaders can foster creativity within their teams, emphasizing the importance of psychological safety and the need to redefine creativity beyond traditional artistic boundaries.
Key Takeaways:
- Understanding Creativity: Creativity isn't just about art; it encompasses problem-solving and innovative thinking in everyday tasks.
- Embracing Ambiguity: Leaders must cultivate an environment where team members can sit with uncertainty, which can lead to greater creativity and resilience.
- Practical Strategies: Caroline introduces the "DANCE" model, highlighting habits like daydreaming and curiosity that can enhance creative thinking in the workplace.
Tune in to discover how to inspire innovation and navigate change effectively!
Guest(s): Dr. Carolline Brookfield, Author, Keynote Speaker https://carolinebrookfield.com/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
You're listening to the HR Mixtape Your podcast with
the perfect mix of practical advice, thought-provoking interviews, and
stories that just hit different so that work doesn't have to feel,
well, like work. Now, your host,
Joining me today is Dr. Caroline Brookfield, a veterinarian, researcher,
and keynote speaker who helps teams embrace ambiguity and
(00:25):
spark creativity. With over 25 years of global experience
in high-stakes environments, she knows how to lead through change with
confidence. Caroline blends science, humor, and real-world
Caroline, thank you so much for jumping on the podcast with me today. I'm so
(00:45):
excited to be here. So cliche podcast thing to say. It
is, but I'm excited that you're here. We were just chatting a
little bit before we started, and I'm just so impressed
with your profession and what you do and your
focus on leadership. And I learned that you do some standup comedy, which I didn't know,
and that's fantastic. So I think you are going to be perfect for
(01:05):
our audience. I'm glad you're here. Maybe we can start with you sharing just a little bit
about your background and your journey before we get into our topic about
Well, I'll warn you, I'm not the best at these elevator pitches. My training,
you know, listeners probably don't know is that I'm trained as a veterinarian. I've
been a veterinarian for 28 years. And I
had this kind of long, weird, bumpy creative journey to determining
(01:29):
that I love speaking, you know, I love performance and drama, but I'm a
terrible actor. I kind of, you know, like many people in
their career, things kind of merge together. And I started professional
speaking. And the topic I just, I chose was this
idea that we all show up so much in these boxes and
what society expects us to look like. And I didn't.
(01:49):
And people would say, well, how do you do this? And why do you do that? And I realized
it was all about creativity, which is engaging with what makes
I love that because I would describe myself as a multi-passionate individual.
Sometimes that's hard to describe to people when they ask like, hey, where do you want to be in five years?
I was like, I don't know. I was like, I could be doing these five things and they would all make
(02:10):
me happy. Not all people are wired that
way, but there is something to be said about tapping into
your creative juices that I think we don't talk about
enough as leaders and as people in general who are
in kind of the corporate space. So how did you, you
know, come to the conclusion about helping leaders understand that
(02:30):
like the same old way of thinking and that exploring creativity
Yeah, well, I think the first thing that needs to be addressed is the definition of
creativity, because some people still think it's like arts and crafts and
macrame and finger painting. And it's not true at
all, because it's such a tiny word to encapsulate everything
that it represents. And researchers have split it up into a number of
(02:53):
different categories. And broadly, there's big C creativity, which
is like the iPhone and massive inventions that are celebrated in that domain.
And then there's small C creativity, And that's what I talk about because I
can't even draw a stick stick. I can't sing.
But that small C creativity is things like just
building a pivot table that shaves 10 minutes off your reporting. Creativity
(03:15):
is like creating a shift schedule so that everybody's
happy. Creativity is just taking something in your brain that's an idea
and implementing it into the world. And so I think the first thing is knowing
that you don't have to be artistic or some innovator or
Steve Jobs to be creative, and that we all have that capacity to
do it. And then from there, it's thinking about what
(03:36):
are the creative habits that I need to practice so that I have it
on tap all the time, because it's not something you schedule into your
calendar on a Friday at 2pm to do like, you know, paint
night or paint day or whatever. You can do that. That's great. Also
has lots of benefits. I'm not, I'm not dissing it at all, but it's how do
I embed this creative mindset throughout my leadership journey so that
(03:56):
I can start seeing things differently and finding new solutions
and, and knowing especially that leaders are negatively
primed for creativity. Like leaders will say, we want something creative,
but in the tests, when they kind of test that they actually don't,
they don't want creativity. So it's like an awareness about
what's holding them back from like a creative mindset potential,
(04:18):
but also knowing that being in a position as a
decision maker negatively influences your ability to be creative as
A lot of it is related to, well, their butt's on the line, right?
They don't want to fail. So anything you do that's creative is new. It's
different. It's not able to be assessed in a
way you can't tell if it's, if you think something's going to work, it's probably
(04:42):
not creative because if it's truly creative, it's never been done before. So
you can't have like a gut feeling about it. So I think that fear of
failure is a big thing holding people back. I think the subconscious bias
against creativity that's not deliberate is also holding leaders
back and probably, you know, a fear of putting themselves
in harm's way, whether that's like an organizational failure and
(05:03):
the team and then putting, you know, revenue at risk and jobs
How do you create that space then for them to be,
A, willing to take the risk and B, in an
environment where the leadership above them will allow
Yeah, I mean, you hit on the nail on the head. Psychological
(05:27):
safety, you have to feel supported, you have to have the freedom to
take risks. I mean, Gallup identified three criteria for
an organization to be creative, time, to
be creative, expectation to be creative, and freedom to take risks.
That's it. If you have those three things, you're a creative organization. So
Yeah, it's that. And I think there is something to be said about
(05:49):
the time piece. I'm reading this book right now by Johan
Hari, and it's about focus and how as
a society, our focus is changing with the advancement
of technology and how we have to really work to get back to
like flow state and those types of things. And one of the examples he gave was,
you know, when we were younger, and I guess I should look up to see how
(06:10):
old he is, but it resonated with me. When we were younger, we could sit and
read books and, you know, devour them and be focused and
have that time. And now You know, we're like, let me get let
me get through the book. Let me check it off my Goodreads list. You know, and
you're not kind of sitting and thinking about that. I
have found for myself that when I am most creative, it's
(06:31):
because I've had that space to let my mind almost
wander. You know, I find like you're in the shower and you have this brilliant idea and
you have to go write it down. How do we embed that into our work day, though?
Yeah, so I talk a lot about these five habits that I've developed
from my own experience exercising my non-artistic creativity and
also a lot of the research and data around this and it spells the
(06:52):
word dance and one of the ones you hit on is daydreaming, right?
So I think embedding in our day these times to put our phones down There's
that trend now. Have you seen this? It's kind of like the bro culture where they just stare
at the map on the plane for like four or five hours. Yeah,
like try to like decrease their dopamine. So to your point,
we need to give our brains space to process because we have this
(07:13):
system called the default mode network, which is fascinating. And they
found it by accident. And basically, when we're thinking about nothing, our
mind is very, very active, in fact, more active in certain ways
than when we're thinking about something. And it's because we're trying to
connect all these ideas and thoughts and problems that we're trying to solve. And
we don't even know what's happening. So it feels like nothing. So I think that
we need to reframe this idea around what productivity is
(07:37):
as well, right? Like it's not unproductive to
think about a problem and then go for a walk and gaze at nature because
that's when you come up with like in the shower because you've got some
visual stimuli that are that's limited, but
you're doing something. So you're keeping your executive functioning part of
your brain busy, which is usually the part of the brain that's like, that's dumb, don't
(07:57):
do that. Everybody thinks that's, you know, silly. And so because you're
kind of doing something, your brain's a little bit busy, but not so busy,
you don't capture those ideas in your consciousness. So there's
a lot to be said for making space in the day for daydreaming. I
So the second one is ambiguity, a whole, I mean, I just, I love
(08:18):
talking about ambiguity. So ambiguity being something in
the world that you're uncertain about. So when you see something ambiguous,
like the blue or gold dress, is it blue? Is it gold? That's ambiguous. And
it makes us feel uncertain. And so much of that, like, coming
out as like a fire hose and the ability to sit in ambiguity is
very conducive to creativity. So if we feel uncertain, it makes us
(08:40):
jump to things that have worked in the past. We have a very strong push to status
quo. So if you're able to take a deep
breath and sit in that ambiguity and feel that discomfort
of not knowing the answer, then you can look at other possibilities. So
ambiguity is the second one. N is for novelty. So
You know, hang out with the same people, do the same stuff, you're not going to have a lot of ingredients
(09:03):
for your brain when it's daydreaming to come up with these amazing ideas in the
shower. So doing new things, trying new things, learning new skills, travel
is a big one. The C is for curiosity, because if we don't wonder how
things could be different, how are we ever going to use our creativity as foundational. And
then the last one is kind of take some explanation, but you know, and
building an acronym is like, well, what are how what letters am I going to put here. So
(09:24):
the last one is E for editing later. And that's a
very important if I were to say what the other other than daydream would
be the embed in the day is this idea of When you're trying to think
of an idea, we tend to criticize it as it
comes up, like, oh, that's a dumb idea, or I don't want to share that. And
so there's two parts of creative thinking. There's divergent and
convergent. And divergent is, how could we
(09:47):
get a unicorn to the moon? But a convergent question is very focused in
one answer, like, which unicorn is going to the moon? So I say, if I'm writing a
poem, a divergent question would be, what should I write my poem about?
But a convergent question would be, what word belongs
in this sentence? And a quote I love from attributed to
Ernest Hemingway, which encapsulate this, right drunk, sober.
(10:08):
What good advice. Yeah. So you don't have to drink, but the idea
of like letting your inhibitions go. And when you're an idea generation mode,
like be in it, don't try to judge your ideas. Like,
you know, the guys, the guy or the gals at the whiteboard, the boss or
the most creative person, people are shouting out the ideas and then they just pause. Is
that really the idea? And it's like, no, just write it down, you
(10:30):
Yeah, I don't know for those listening, I'm sure most of you
have. And there's this exercise I've done when we've been doing greenbelt
activities and kaizans and those types of activities where it's
like a giant post-it note experience where you just dump brain
dump onto these post-it notes and you stick them on the wall and no, no ideas off
limits. There's no budget, there's no... And some of it is very creative
(10:51):
and hilarious and you have a good laugh over it. But I have always
walked away from those sessions with brand new ideas that
we had no idea somebody in our team kind of was storing in
their mental load, you know, as they were going through the day.
So I love that. I think that idea of giving space
for creativity and curiosity is so important. You
(11:13):
know, I'm one of those people who definitely live underneath the
idea of ask for forgiveness later. You know, do the
thing, ask for forgiveness later. And you already aren't
doing the thing. So if you're curious and you ask and the answer is going to be no,
that's OK. The answer already was no. There's no harm in asking
and being curious. I know that I'm a little bit of an outlier, though. And
(11:33):
as a leader, you know, I find it really important for
me to help instill that in my team. And one of those things that
you talked about in that dance model is that ambiguity is helping
your team sit in ambiguity. So you have the space to
think about things. So I guess this is a two part question is one, how
does how do leaders start to build that into their team so
(11:53):
that they can feel that ambiguity? And then how do they foster it
after it's built in the team so that they're still meeting things
that they have to meet, right? That they still have their unfortunately, their
productivity metrics that they have to meet. We can't just sit in ambiguity
Yeah, like we have to make decisions and move forward, right? Yeah. So
when it comes to ambiguity, there's this interesting paradox. So when
(12:16):
you look at the research around leading people, role ambiguity
is highly stressful, highly predictive of burnout. So
people need to know what they need to do in their jobs. So that you
need to resolve. So we need to resolve the ambiguity where we can at
the higher level where it matters. Like, what am I supposed to be doing here?
And then the other thing is that because we have smartphones and
(12:37):
we have the answers at our fingertips, especially in younger generations,
our tolerance of ambiguity is dropping. And so what that
means is we cannot sit in that place of not knowing. So
as a leader, the two things you need to do is resolve that role ambiguity
with clarity so people know what they need to do and give them a
little bit of room to implement it in the way they want. And
(12:58):
this is all assuming that there is that safety for them to take risks
and that they're supported in taking a small risk and moving through the ambiguity.
You know, we feel ambiguity in nine different ways with the research out of the
University of Queensland. It's not just like, do I not know what I'm
doing? It revolves around managing the uncertainty, moving teams through
uncertainty. It also revolves around our desire for leaning
(13:19):
into challenges and problems. Like, are we just going to take the first
answer or are we going to dig deeper? And that's a dimension of tolerance of
ambiguity, as well as social ambiguity. Like someone might be
really comfortable not knowing the answer, but then you put them in a situation
where they don't know anybody and then they become very anxious because they
don't know how people are going to react to them. So ambiguity itself is
(13:39):
like a massive, massive topic. But I think the two things
that leaders can do is really focus on reducing that role ambiguity. What
is the goal here? And helping them feel supported to move
through that and know that we don't have to have all the answers right away.
And to your point about productivity and getting things done, I think that
it's probably situation dependent, right? Like if you know that there's a
(14:00):
system that works really well, like why are we sitting in ambiguity about
it? Just get it done. And maybe the creative part is how do
we message or how do we communicate this system and
help people feel like they're comfortable and trained on this process that
we already feel it works and nothing's broken versus this
process isn't working. Now we need to use our creativity to
(14:21):
think about how we can adapt it so that it is more efficient.
So creativity, there's a place for creativity within productivity, but
there's also a way with like reducing ambiguity where we can, because
that is also protective against burnout. If we build our
tolerance of ambiguity, when that's combined with self-compassion, it's
also very protective against burnout. So we have these two kind
(14:46):
And you've created or have access to a quiz that helps leaders
Well, yeah, so I'm accredited in the University of Queensland and
Adaptive Minds have this Tolerance of Ambiguity Assessment, which
is kind of like a Myers-Briggs or DISC for ambiguity. And
so that one's like a validated test and, you know, you have to
sign up for it and it's like a whole system. But I created this
(15:09):
like kind of fun 10 or 11 question quiz to give
you a sense of whether your team is handling ambiguity well.
You know, and some listeners might be wondering, well, what does this have to do with creativity, even
though it's a habit? What got me most interested in this ambiguity
research is that creativity is the single factor that influences
all nine dimensions of tolerance of ambiguity. So if you
(15:30):
use your creativity, you will start to become more tolerant of
ambiguity. because anything creative is
stepping off the unknown, or stepping off the known into the unknown,
risking failure. And the more we do that, in whatever capacity that
is, whether it's painting Game of Thrones figurines, or building, painting a
garden, that will help you with the ambiguity. So back
(15:52):
to the quiz. But yes, I have this quiz that kind of just gives you an idea of
whether your team is handling ambiguity well or not. And then an
opportunity to chat with me, like no pressure just to say like, what
wins I can get here. I love that. And I'll make sure to include a link to
your resources in the show notes for anybody listening. As we wrap up
our conversation, I'd love for you to leave our HR professionals
(16:13):
with maybe one tactic or tool or approach
that they can use to bring back to their C-suite to say, hey,
we need to increase creativity in the organization. This
One tactic, that's hard, Shari, to help build the creativity in
To help them see the value in it and that it's going
to impact their business in such a good way. You know, a lot of
(16:35):
times it's got to start with the top. There's like, there's that safety you said.
They've got to know from their leadership team at the highest levels,
Well, I could rattle off some quick stats, like 83% of
companies want to deliver on innovation, but only 3% are ready to
deliver. Why? You need creativity. is
basically the cornerstone of innovation. Also, when
(16:56):
you're looking at creativity, people who feel like they're using their creativity are half
as likely to be looking for another job. that feel like
they're using their creativity. It's not like they are creative and
it engages employees. The creative study that Calla
talked about where it's a creative organization, they're more productive, they're
more profitable. Like there's so many ways because I think the C-suite often
(17:17):
needs data, right? Because creativity feels so ambiguous. Speaking
of ambiguity and creativity feels esoteric, it feels fluffy, it
feels like a nice to have. But if you want to differentiate your
organization, either with employee retention engagement or
with innovation and navigating change with more confidence, then
creativity influences both our tolerance of ambiguity as
(17:38):
an organization and as individuals in it, but also our
ability to change and adapt and build more productive and efficient, because
it takes creativity to build an efficient process. So I
No, I think it's exactly what I was hoping for. And
you leaned into something I talk about a lot is come with data,
(17:58):
bringing the data to support what you kind of intuitively know
as an HR practitioner, show it how it's going to impact the business. So absolutely
amazing answer. This was a great conversation. I'm so glad you were able to
I hope you enjoyed today's episode. You can find show notes
(18:21):
and links at thehrmixtape.com. Come back
You're listening to the HR Mixtape Your podcast with
the perfect mix of practical advice, thought-provoking interviews, and
stories that just hit different so that work doesn't have to feel,
well, like work. Now, your host,
Joining me today is Dr. Caroline Brookfield, a veterinarian, researcher,
and keynote speaker who helps teams embrace ambiguity and
(00:25):
spark creativity. With over 25 years of global experience
in high-stakes environments, she knows how to lead through change with
confidence. Caroline blends science, humor, and real-world
Caroline, thank you so much for jumping on the podcast with me today. I'm so
(00:45):
excited to be here. So cliche podcast thing to say. It
is, but I'm excited that you're here. We were just chatting a
little bit before we started, and I'm just so impressed
with your profession and what you do and your
focus on leadership. And I learned that you do some standup comedy, which I didn't know,
and that's fantastic. So I think you are going to be perfect for
(01:05):
our audience. I'm glad you're here. Maybe we can start with you sharing just a little bit
about your background and your journey before we get into our topic about
Well, I'll warn you, I'm not the best at these elevator pitches. My training,
you know, listeners probably don't know is that I'm trained as a veterinarian. I've
been a veterinarian for 28 years. And I
had this kind of long, weird, bumpy creative journey to determining
(01:29):
that I love speaking, you know, I love performance and drama, but I'm a
terrible actor. I kind of, you know, like many people in
their career, things kind of merge together. And I started professional
speaking. And the topic I just, I chose was this
idea that we all show up so much in these boxes and
what society expects us to look like. And I didn't.
(01:49):
And people would say, well, how do you do this? And why do you do that? And I realized
it was all about creativity, which is engaging with what makes
I love that because I would describe myself as a multi-passionate individual.
Sometimes that's hard to describe to people when they ask like, hey, where do you want to be in five years?
I was like, I don't know. I was like, I could be doing these five things and they would all make
(02:10):
me happy. Not all people are wired that
way, but there is something to be said about tapping into
your creative juices that I think we don't talk about
enough as leaders and as people in general who are
in kind of the corporate space. So how did you, you
know, come to the conclusion about helping leaders understand that
(02:30):
like the same old way of thinking and that exploring creativity
Yeah, well, I think the first thing that needs to be addressed is the definition of
creativity, because some people still think it's like arts and crafts and
macrame and finger painting. And it's not true at
all, because it's such a tiny word to encapsulate everything
that it represents. And researchers have split it up into a number of
(02:53):
different categories. And broadly, there's big C creativity, which
is like the iPhone and massive inventions that are celebrated in that domain.
And then there's small C creativity, And that's what I talk about because I
can't even draw a stick stick. I can't sing.
But that small C creativity is things like just
building a pivot table that shaves 10 minutes off your reporting. Creativity
(03:15):
is like creating a shift schedule so that everybody's
happy. Creativity is just taking something in your brain that's an idea
and implementing it into the world. And so I think the first thing is knowing
that you don't have to be artistic or some innovator or
Steve Jobs to be creative, and that we all have that capacity to
do it. And then from there, it's thinking about what
(03:36):
are the creative habits that I need to practice so that I have it
on tap all the time, because it's not something you schedule into your
calendar on a Friday at 2pm to do like, you know, paint
night or paint day or whatever. You can do that. That's great. Also
has lots of benefits. I'm not, I'm not dissing it at all, but it's how do
I embed this creative mindset throughout my leadership journey so that
(03:56):
I can start seeing things differently and finding new solutions
and, and knowing especially that leaders are negatively
primed for creativity. Like leaders will say, we want something creative,
but in the tests, when they kind of test that they actually don't,
they don't want creativity. So it's like an awareness about
what's holding them back from like a creative mindset potential,
(04:18):
but also knowing that being in a position as a
decision maker negatively influences your ability to be creative as
A lot of it is related to, well, their butt's on the line, right?
They don't want to fail. So anything you do that's creative is new. It's
different. It's not able to be assessed in a
way you can't tell if it's, if you think something's going to work, it's probably
(04:42):
not creative because if it's truly creative, it's never been done before. So
you can't have like a gut feeling about it. So I think that fear of
failure is a big thing holding people back. I think the subconscious bias
against creativity that's not deliberate is also holding leaders
back and probably, you know, a fear of putting themselves
in harm's way, whether that's like an organizational failure and
(05:03):
the team and then putting, you know, revenue at risk and jobs
How do you create that space then for them to be,
A, willing to take the risk and B, in an
environment where the leadership above them will allow
Yeah, I mean, you hit on the nail on the head. Psychological
(05:27):
safety, you have to feel supported, you have to have the freedom to
take risks. I mean, Gallup identified three criteria for
an organization to be creative, time, to
be creative, expectation to be creative, and freedom to take risks.
That's it. If you have those three things, you're a creative organization. So
Yeah, it's that. And I think there is something to be said about
(05:49):
the time piece. I'm reading this book right now by Johan
Hari, and it's about focus and how as
a society, our focus is changing with the advancement
of technology and how we have to really work to get back to
like flow state and those types of things. And one of the examples he gave was,
you know, when we were younger, and I guess I should look up to see how
(06:10):
old he is, but it resonated with me. When we were younger, we could sit and
read books and, you know, devour them and be focused and
have that time. And now You know, we're like, let me get let
me get through the book. Let me check it off my Goodreads list. You know, and
you're not kind of sitting and thinking about that. I
have found for myself that when I am most creative, it's
(06:31):
because I've had that space to let my mind almost
wander. You know, I find like you're in the shower and you have this brilliant idea and
you have to go write it down. How do we embed that into our work day, though?
Yeah, so I talk a lot about these five habits that I've developed
from my own experience exercising my non-artistic creativity and
also a lot of the research and data around this and it spells the
(06:52):
word dance and one of the ones you hit on is daydreaming, right?
So I think embedding in our day these times to put our phones down There's
that trend now. Have you seen this? It's kind of like the bro culture where they just stare
at the map on the plane for like four or five hours. Yeah,
like try to like decrease their dopamine. So to your point,
we need to give our brains space to process because we have this
(07:13):
system called the default mode network, which is fascinating. And they
found it by accident. And basically, when we're thinking about nothing, our
mind is very, very active, in fact, more active in certain ways
than when we're thinking about something. And it's because we're trying to
connect all these ideas and thoughts and problems that we're trying to solve. And
we don't even know what's happening. So it feels like nothing. So I think that
we need to reframe this idea around what productivity is
(07:37):
as well, right? Like it's not unproductive to
think about a problem and then go for a walk and gaze at nature because
that's when you come up with like in the shower because you've got some
visual stimuli that are that's limited, but
you're doing something. So you're keeping your executive functioning part of
your brain busy, which is usually the part of the brain that's like, that's dumb, don't
(07:57):
do that. Everybody thinks that's, you know, silly. And so because you're
kind of doing something, your brain's a little bit busy, but not so busy,
you don't capture those ideas in your consciousness. So there's
a lot to be said for making space in the day for daydreaming. I
So the second one is ambiguity, a whole, I mean, I just, I love
(08:18):
talking about ambiguity. So ambiguity being something in
the world that you're uncertain about. So when you see something ambiguous,
like the blue or gold dress, is it blue? Is it gold? That's ambiguous. And
it makes us feel uncertain. And so much of that, like, coming
out as like a fire hose and the ability to sit in ambiguity is
very conducive to creativity. So if we feel uncertain, it makes us
(08:40):
jump to things that have worked in the past. We have a very strong push to status
quo. So if you're able to take a deep
breath and sit in that ambiguity and feel that discomfort
of not knowing the answer, then you can look at other possibilities. So
ambiguity is the second one. N is for novelty. So
You know, hang out with the same people, do the same stuff, you're not going to have a lot of ingredients
(09:03):
for your brain when it's daydreaming to come up with these amazing ideas in the
shower. So doing new things, trying new things, learning new skills, travel
is a big one. The C is for curiosity, because if we don't wonder how
things could be different, how are we ever going to use our creativity as foundational. And
then the last one is kind of take some explanation, but you know, and
building an acronym is like, well, what are how what letters am I going to put here. So
(09:24):
the last one is E for editing later. And that's a
very important if I were to say what the other other than daydream would
be the embed in the day is this idea of When you're trying to think
of an idea, we tend to criticize it as it
comes up, like, oh, that's a dumb idea, or I don't want to share that. And
so there's two parts of creative thinking. There's divergent and
convergent. And divergent is, how could we
(09:47):
get a unicorn to the moon? But a convergent question is very focused in
one answer, like, which unicorn is going to the moon? So I say, if I'm writing a
poem, a divergent question would be, what should I write my poem about?
But a convergent question would be, what word belongs
in this sentence? And a quote I love from attributed to
Ernest Hemingway, which encapsulate this, right drunk, sober.
(10:08):
What good advice. Yeah. So you don't have to drink, but the idea
of like letting your inhibitions go. And when you're an idea generation mode,
like be in it, don't try to judge your ideas. Like,
you know, the guys, the guy or the gals at the whiteboard, the boss or
the most creative person, people are shouting out the ideas and then they just pause. Is
that really the idea? And it's like, no, just write it down, you
(10:30):
Yeah, I don't know for those listening, I'm sure most of you
have. And there's this exercise I've done when we've been doing greenbelt
activities and kaizans and those types of activities where it's
like a giant post-it note experience where you just dump brain
dump onto these post-it notes and you stick them on the wall and no, no ideas off
limits. There's no budget, there's no... And some of it is very creative
(10:51):
and hilarious and you have a good laugh over it. But I have always
walked away from those sessions with brand new ideas that
we had no idea somebody in our team kind of was storing in
their mental load, you know, as they were going through the day.
So I love that. I think that idea of giving space
for creativity and curiosity is so important. You
(11:13):
know, I'm one of those people who definitely live underneath the
idea of ask for forgiveness later. You know, do the
thing, ask for forgiveness later. And you already aren't
doing the thing. So if you're curious and you ask and the answer is going to be no,
that's OK. The answer already was no. There's no harm in asking
and being curious. I know that I'm a little bit of an outlier, though. And
(11:33):
as a leader, you know, I find it really important for
me to help instill that in my team. And one of those things that
you talked about in that dance model is that ambiguity is helping
your team sit in ambiguity. So you have the space to
think about things. So I guess this is a two part question is one, how
does how do leaders start to build that into their team so
(11:53):
that they can feel that ambiguity? And then how do they foster it
after it's built in the team so that they're still meeting things
that they have to meet, right? That they still have their unfortunately, their
productivity metrics that they have to meet. We can't just sit in ambiguity
Yeah, like we have to make decisions and move forward, right? Yeah. So
when it comes to ambiguity, there's this interesting paradox. So when
(12:16):
you look at the research around leading people, role ambiguity
is highly stressful, highly predictive of burnout. So
people need to know what they need to do in their jobs. So that you
need to resolve. So we need to resolve the ambiguity where we can at
the higher level where it matters. Like, what am I supposed to be doing here?
And then the other thing is that because we have smartphones and
(12:37):
we have the answers at our fingertips, especially in younger generations,
our tolerance of ambiguity is dropping. And so what that
means is we cannot sit in that place of not knowing. So
as a leader, the two things you need to do is resolve that role ambiguity
with clarity so people know what they need to do and give them a
little bit of room to implement it in the way they want. And
(12:58):
this is all assuming that there is that safety for them to take risks
and that they're supported in taking a small risk and moving through the ambiguity.
You know, we feel ambiguity in nine different ways with the research out of the
University of Queensland. It's not just like, do I not know what I'm
doing? It revolves around managing the uncertainty, moving teams through
uncertainty. It also revolves around our desire for leaning
(13:19):
into challenges and problems. Like, are we just going to take the first
answer or are we going to dig deeper? And that's a dimension of tolerance of
ambiguity, as well as social ambiguity. Like someone might be
really comfortable not knowing the answer, but then you put them in a situation
where they don't know anybody and then they become very anxious because they
don't know how people are going to react to them. So ambiguity itself is
(13:39):
like a massive, massive topic. But I think the two things
that leaders can do is really focus on reducing that role ambiguity. What
is the goal here? And helping them feel supported to move
through that and know that we don't have to have all the answers right away.
And to your point about productivity and getting things done, I think that
it's probably situation dependent, right? Like if you know that there's a
(14:00):
system that works really well, like why are we sitting in ambiguity about
it? Just get it done. And maybe the creative part is how do
we message or how do we communicate this system and
help people feel like they're comfortable and trained on this process that
we already feel it works and nothing's broken versus this
process isn't working. Now we need to use our creativity to
(14:21):
think about how we can adapt it so that it is more efficient.
So creativity, there's a place for creativity within productivity, but
there's also a way with like reducing ambiguity where we can, because
that is also protective against burnout. If we build our
tolerance of ambiguity, when that's combined with self-compassion, it's
also very protective against burnout. So we have these two kind
(14:46):
And you've created or have access to a quiz that helps leaders
Well, yeah, so I'm accredited in the University of Queensland and
Adaptive Minds have this Tolerance of Ambiguity Assessment, which
is kind of like a Myers-Briggs or DISC for ambiguity. And
so that one's like a validated test and, you know, you have to
sign up for it and it's like a whole system. But I created this
(15:09):
like kind of fun 10 or 11 question quiz to give
you a sense of whether your team is handling ambiguity well.
You know, and some listeners might be wondering, well, what does this have to do with creativity, even
though it's a habit? What got me most interested in this ambiguity
research is that creativity is the single factor that influences
all nine dimensions of tolerance of ambiguity. So if you
(15:30):
use your creativity, you will start to become more tolerant of
ambiguity. because anything creative is
stepping off the unknown, or stepping off the known into the unknown,
risking failure. And the more we do that, in whatever capacity that
is, whether it's painting Game of Thrones figurines, or building, painting a
garden, that will help you with the ambiguity. So back
(15:52):
to the quiz. But yes, I have this quiz that kind of just gives you an idea of
whether your team is handling ambiguity well or not. And then an
opportunity to chat with me, like no pressure just to say like, what
wins I can get here. I love that. And I'll make sure to include a link to
your resources in the show notes for anybody listening. As we wrap up
our conversation, I'd love for you to leave our HR professionals
(16:13):
with maybe one tactic or tool or approach
that they can use to bring back to their C-suite to say, hey,
we need to increase creativity in the organization. This
One tactic, that's hard, Shari, to help build the creativity in
To help them see the value in it and that it's going
to impact their business in such a good way. You know, a lot of
(16:35):
times it's got to start with the top. There's like, there's that safety you said.
They've got to know from their leadership team at the highest levels,
Well, I could rattle off some quick stats, like 83% of
companies want to deliver on innovation, but only 3% are ready to
deliver. Why? You need creativity. is
basically the cornerstone of innovation. Also, when
(16:56):
you're looking at creativity, people who feel like they're using their creativity are half
as likely to be looking for another job. that feel like
they're using their creativity. It's not like they are creative and
it engages employees. The creative study that Calla
talked about where it's a creative organization, they're more productive, they're
more profitable. Like there's so many ways because I think the C-suite often
(17:17):
needs data, right? Because creativity feels so ambiguous. Speaking
of ambiguity and creativity feels esoteric, it feels fluffy, it
feels like a nice to have. But if you want to differentiate your
organization, either with employee retention engagement or
with innovation and navigating change with more confidence, then
creativity influences both our tolerance of ambiguity as
(17:38):
an organization and as individuals in it, but also our
ability to change and adapt and build more productive and efficient, because
it takes creativity to build an efficient process. So I
No, I think it's exactly what I was hoping for. And
you leaned into something I talk about a lot is come with data,
(17:58):
bringing the data to support what you kind of intuitively know
as an HR practitioner, show it how it's going to impact the business. So absolutely
amazing answer. This was a great conversation. I'm so glad you were able to
I hope you enjoyed today's episode. You can find show notes
(18:21):
and links at thehrmixtape.com. Come back
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