There are few things in the world more fragile than the psyche of creative people. The truth is fragility is not just isolated to the artist; everyone – at some time or another – has battled doubt, the feeling of inadequacy, and the fear of not being accepted or doing a good enough job.

As leaders, we sometimes lose sight of the power we have to change the climate of our organizations and the feelings of our teammates simply by engaging in the economy of encouragement.

Economics is defined as the study of production, distribution, and consumption – generally of goods and services. The economy of encouragement revolves around the production, distribution, and consumption of encouragement.

Consumption is easy. Everyone likes to be told they matter and, more often than not, we attempt to surround ourselves with people who value us.

Distribution is a little harder. This entails putting others above ourselves, giving back encouragement when we’re in desperate need of it ourselves, and seeking opportunity to find places, moments, and opportunities to encourage others. This is a responsibility of good leadership. Distributors are always looking to find ways to get the content out. In this case, they are looking for opportunities to encourage.

Production is a little more exclusive. Every one consumes products. Some people distribute products. But producers create products. As leaders, we’re able to produce our absolute best in our teams, volunteers, and relationships when we find out ways produce encouragement. Correction is always needed, but encouragement puts wind in the sails of people. When people believe they are valued, that they matter, and that their contributions make a difference, they tend to produce their best projects.

Today, I encourage you to invest. Invest in your local economy of encouragement. Send a text. Tell someone how you feel about them. Write a card. Make a phone call. Appreciate someone.

If you are creative, share your feelings with others on your team.

If you manage creatives, understand the importance of making them feel valued. Value and vision are so important for artists; they know they may not always be right, but they do always want to be valued.

Have you engaged the economy of encouragement?

Creating is what we do. In this realm, there are generally two moments of fear we all face. First is the fear of starting. The fear of facing the blank page, screen, or recorder. The fear of what might happen when we actually get started. This is a fear we must learn to conquer if we want to ever create great art.

Usually the equation goes like this:

First, we identify a problem.
Then, we come up with an idea.
Here, we’ve faced our first fear – the fear of starting.
Then, we go in and work. We build, we craft, we battle.
Here is where we face the second scariest moment of creation – the moment we have to share our art with others.

There are a few things that happen when we give in to this moment of creation:

• We procrastinate until the very last minute so we don’t have to make any changes. We would rather be wrong then be corrected.
• We blow our deadline, which then impacts trust.
• We create in a vacuum that limits our ability to build teamwork and risks art that won’t connect.
• We isolate our teammates and lose equity that we wish we had around our projects.

These moments are selfish and prideful, causing us to think that outside input won’t make our art better. Succumbing to these moments will only continue to feed the monster of fear that crippled us in the first place. Creating requires us to learn how to be brave and face our fears. Embracing these scary moments of creation is where we actually provide our ideas the opportunity to get better and actually make a difference in the world. It never will get any easier than it is today, but if we commit to beating our fear, we will make a difference.

Do you battle with the two moments of fear inside creativity?

Do you ever feel the pressure of creativity? The pressure to have great ideas always on call? The pressure to have unique answers for the problems that exist in our organizations? The pressure to produce better work with every project?

Creativity is a unique gift, but it’s not like the ability to count – that never goes away. Creativity is more of a muscle than it is a talent. So what can we do EVERY DAY in order to be prepared to be our creative best?

• Remember The Law of Scarcity – Creativity is not unlimited. We have to make deliberate actions to refill our creative tanks. We have a limited number of hours a week to work on a project. Make sure we’re doing all necessary tasks to make those the most productive. Scarcity of time is a killer of creativity so ensuring we’re prepared and the tank is full when we are working on creative projects is vital to daily creative momentum building.
• Rehearse The Action – As we tend to our “business”, we should be rehearsing our creativity, even if just mentally. What colors will we need? How will we use them? What do we want the melody to sound like? Where do the drums go? How do we craft that paragraph in order to create a clincher.
• Embrace Inspiration – Spend time each day reading something, looking at something, listening to something that inspires you. Then document the inspiration so it can be used later when we need to have a catalog of ideas at hand in order to be our creative best.
• Shut it Down – The resistance is going to do everything in its power to distract our creative process. Be willing to shut down the distractions. Our phones, twitter, Facebook, email, the door to our office, whatever necessary…if it distracts our attention, shut it down.
• Find The Right Space – Space matters. Get into a space that allows for good work flow. Personally, I need sunlight. Matt Singelton, our creative director, loves dark and dreary, rainy days. Every creative person has their own space. Coffee shops, parks, offices, couches, desks – whatever your space, get there to get the juice going.
• Revisit the Purpose – Nothing fuels creativity better than vision. Why are we doing this? What can happen? Who can be impacted. Our purpose is paramount in daily remembering why we’re doing what we’re doing and helping us to get geared up to be creative.
• Know Your Breaks – Taking breaks actually promotes better creativity. When we take breaks, it actually is like resting our creative muscles so we can get stronger and better. Be intentional with how we break. Break frequently enough to revive, but not so often we can’t catch a solid rhythm.
• Stay On The Idea – Avoid the risk of chasing the rabbit trails. If a new idea pops up while we’re working on our current idea, document it. Save it. Be ready to go back to it, but don’t allow a new idea to kill what we’re working on right now.

What are some ways that you daily prepare to be the creative genius God designed you to be?

Creative work would be so much easier if we could just put all of our data into a formula, push a button, and out popped great art. Unfortunately, creativity is not and should never be formulaic.

In our creative lives, we have to fight the urge to approach our projects and problems based on formulas. It’s common and has even become expected to approach our problems and projects looking for a formula. In theory, formulas simplify our work. Unfortunately, formulas also stifle creativity and breed copying over creating.

Psychologists frame fixation as an effect where previous experiences or familiarities can make problem solving more difficult. This is the case whenever habitual directions get in the way of finding new directions.

Doing the same thing – approaching our art the same way – believing we will get different results, does not create solutions or new art. It positions us to repeat old solutions.

Our responsibility as creative professionals is to be brave enough to try something different. We have to have the guts to do something new. We have to be intentional in approaching each day as if it’s our first time and be willing to break the patterns that become choke-holds on our creative process. Creativity is about rhythm and instinct more than it is about formula and repetition. Make no mistake: creativity is work. We must show up every day and be willing to tackle work that takes effort more than magical inspiration.

So let’s fight. Let’s fight the status quo. Let’s battle the temptation to repeat our approach. A fight that, when we win, will force us into creating the best art of our lives.

If we’re willing to fight, we will uncover more options to solve our problems and approach our art – as well as create great pieces. And just maybe, we’ll find a more rewarding result in the process.

Do you find yourself becoming fixated? How do you fight to find new lenses and approaches to your approach?

Whatch You Got?

It’s a powerful paradox; God, the Creator of the universe knew that when He created us we would be imperfect creations. Not only would we be blemished creations, but He would love us because of the blemishes, the cracks, and the flaws – they would become endearing to Him. But what’s really amazing is that a Holy God, a God with no sin and no flaws – desires the worship of His blemished and flawed creations. We are not only accepted by Him, He longs for our worship.

How many of us turn our back on some of our creations when they become flawed, or fail, or get messed up. I sure am glad God doesn’t roll like that.

On 2.22.12 we will be hosting our next worship night at the Bellevue Campus. It’s going to be a night unlike any other we’ve done in the past. We’re seeking new ways to praise and worship a Holy God through all of our beautiful imperfections. I hope you can join us.

Photo Props:

Part of being on a never ending quest to learn forces us to sometimes admit when we are wrong.

I have said repeatedly that as our lives get busier and busier, we have to schedule time to create. I have believed this rule and even have followed it in my own life. Every Thursday from 3-5, I don’t book any meetings. I save that time for creation. From time to time, it actually works. But more often than not, it ends up in frustrated and half baked attempts at doing our creative work.

I have wondered why, until today when I ran across a great article by Tim Sanders about an entirely different way to handle this problem. Sanders contends that scheduling time to be creative leaves very little room for inspiration, muse, and the art of creating. “Creativity is a burst of structured insanity”…which means we have to allow it space to burst when it’s ready, not when we can fit it in.

So what do we do with this information?

1. Be prepared to document. Flirting with or staying in our creative zones is important because our best work is done there. If we are too compartmentalized in our approach to creativity, we will stifle the gift we have to impact our ideas, situations, problems, and organizations. That being said, we need to always be prepared to document our creativity. Images, words, thoughts, insight, a sentence someone says, a melody we hear, a picture we see – document every moment no matter where we are so we can remember the insanity of that moment. Capturing these moments is like catching dreams – they allow us to revert back to that specific time when we can actually follow through on some of these opportunities. We need to document them as thoroughly as possible.

2. Rehearse. Sanders has convinced me that more important than scheduling is rehearsing. Everything we create: words, images, sounds, speeches, documents – they all represent us; they carry our DNA. Rehearsing our act of creating is more important than scheduling the time to attempt to work on something that might not be ready. Take the time to rehearse your art. What will you say? How will you write? When you open illustrator what will you create? Visualize the stage. Rehearse your part so that when you sit down to exercise the work, you actually have already begun the process.

I will still keep time on my calendar to be reserved for creativity, but I will shift it from creating to preparing to create. I am, however, going to be intentional in rehearsing more often and never apologizing for documenting every moment inspiration strikes so that I can steward the gift of creativity that lives around us every day.

Do you rehearse before you create?

Great artists and creative people understand the power of the “creative instinct” – that sick, gnawing feeling we have when we know something is very right or very wrong. The only way to develop our instincts is to continue to trust them, regardless of outcome and refusing to compromise when we know we are right.

This is a dangerous position.

We risk failure. We risk a loss of equity. We risk embarrassment.

But if we don’t follow our instinct and stand up for our what we know, what we feel, what will prove itself to be right, that’s a worse failure than compromising. Never taking a risk emasculates our art.

Author Jeffrey Hayzlett says: “A good litmus test for the value of your idea, no matter how big or small it may be: it cannot compromise your principles of who or what you are, even if it violates the procedures you have in place.”

That’s the key. Never compromise your principles while following your instincts.

Mission and art. Creativity and purpose. Principles and risk. All necessary for creative impact.

Your instincts matter. Don’t compromise great art, art that will have an impact, because of fear. You are creative and your organization needs your instincts if it’s going to grow and innovate. Allow your mission and principles to be your guide as you create art that will scare and be uncomfortable for others.

Have you learned to trust your creative instinct?
Do you know the principles of your organization well enough to not violate the principles when you refuse to compromise on your art and instincts?

Photo Props:

We are creative. No secret there. But, have we ever taken the time to process how our creativity actually works? In a recent article on the development of creative plans, the Harvard Business Review developed the “Essential Five-Step Processes For Creativity”:

1. Identification -
What is the problem?
How do we define the problem?
What is the data that surrounds this problem that will allow us to be our creative best?
Are there alternative methods, messages, or ideas around this problem?
In the identification stage, creative people thrive because we’re able to move more nimbly through the data, collect better data – due to the approaches and lens from which we view the issues. We offer uncommon and not normal view points of the problem and approach the issues far different than those who are more rationally wired.

2. Mapping -

The process of consciously and unconsciously connecting thoughts, related or otherwise. This is where our ideas are born. We pull on experience, history, imagery, and imagination to attempt to find commonality and connections between things that may not naturally connect. The more obscure these things are, the more creative we become.

3. Connecting -

The moment where the connections begin to galvanize. This is where the equation begins to make sense and the pieces of our creative plan start to come together.

4. Evaluation -

The attempt to grade and prioritize the ideas. Will these ideas work? Are they good enough to solve the problem? Do they have holes or potential error zones that will cause new problems?

5. Improvement -

This stage separates the professionals from the weekend warriors. The more creative, innovative, or inventive the artist, the more time they spend in this stage. Repeating, editing, refining, and sometimes scrapping and returning to stage 1 in order to ensure the best idea – the idea that uniquely solves our problem, when possible, like no one else has thought of before and without imitation.

Once we have mapped how we actually come up with ideas, it can help us become better at being our creative best.

Do you notice these steps in how you process creatively?

We often hear how success changes people.

You know the story: someone we know is super cool, and then they find success or get a little power in their position and suddenly become a jerk.

It’s not true.

Success does not change us, it only magnifies what has always existed inside of us.

See, when we start out, we have zero equity. With zero equity comes zero influence. No one has to put up with us because they have nothing to lose by blowing us off and we usually have nothing to offer them that will improve their situation. Over time, our talent and creativity start to develop. We start to get a little better at what we do and people notice. As people notice, we start to have more opportunity. When we dominate our new opportunities we get more “successful”. Now, the same people who would pay us little attention desire to get all of our attention.

So how are we going to act?

We talk a ton about developing our creative gifts. We work hard to study and refine our skills. But how much time are we talking to make sure we are capable of handling any success that may come our way?

• Start by serving others every day. Find a way to serve others rather than being served by others.
• Remember what got you here. Then, repeat it every day. Don’t change the reason why you do what you’ve always done.
• Imagine what life is like in “their” shoes. Others’ opinions and perspective is based on the baggage they bring into our relationships, just like our perspective is based on our baggage.
• Accept the blame but give away the praise. It will keep us grounded and remind us how important it is to have other great people in our lives.
• Don’t read your press. It’s dangerous and when you start to believe it, it will kill you.
• Avoid the highs and lows. We’re never as good as our successful moments. But we’re also never as bad as our failures. Understand that life is going to bring us both. Our identity is not found in what we do but in who we are.
• Have someone who can stop you in your tracks. We all need one person who can be the voice of reason in our lives – the person who loves us enough to tell us the truth, even when we don’t want to hear it, that can stop us dead in our tracks.
• Never ask anyone to do something you would not do. Plain and simple.
• Be someone’s champion. Finding other talented and up-and-coming people helps us remember how we arrived. At some point, someone took a chance on us. Who are we willing to take a chance on?
• Remember who you are. You. Not your art. Not your song. Not your message. Not your gift or your talent. Who are you. The person your kids knows. That person your Mom calls on Saturdays…stay connected to that girl/guy.

And never forget…

Success does not change us, it only magnifies what has always existed inside of us.

How do you stay grounded?