How to Help People Release Their Creative Potential
“Doubt is the precursor to fear”, says solo rock climber Alex Honnold, after finally climbing the El Capitan vertical rock formation without a rope after more than a decade of mental and physical preparation.
As an amateur rock climber, I often look to those that do so professionally with awe. Outdoor climbing without a rope is something I have never been able to do because I have always assumed that I wasn’t strong enough. Once I’m thousands of feet in the air with zero support and my strength wears out, that would probably (no, most definitely) be the end of me.
Design on the other hand, is relatively non-life threatening (as far as I know). Yet, time and time again, I’m struck by how much people stay in the safe zone.
Ideation (what many refer to as brainstorming) is my favorite stage in the design thinking process. It is the bridge between “what is” and “what could be”. Creative ideas bring about a new world that excites me. There are no rules or failures in this process, only crazy ideas and learning experiences. The possibilities are endless!
When I first started teaching students design, I was taken back by how many stayed in the safe zone. I have taught students from just about every age group by now, starting from junior and senior kindergarten all the way to industry professionals. One thing that consistently strikes me is how much I can learn from the kids and how safe and set industry professionals are in their ways of thinking.
A few months ago, while working with a bunch of kindergarten kids, I watched a little girl play with a Mr. Potato Head toy during playtime. She was about five years old, sitting quietly by herself, with all the components of Mr. Potato Head’s face on the floor around her. She had casually started assembling his face back together and I couldn’t help but laugh. She had put one of Mr. Potato Head’s ears where the mouth should have been. The lips were in place of the eye, and one eye was on the side. It was a freakishly looking creature. Yet, she was enjoying herself. She then moved onto Mrs. Potato Head, and proceeded to do similar things. Mrs. Potato Head’s arm was now in the middle of her face. It was a sobering learning moment for me. I thought about all the Mr. Potato Heads in our lives, and how many people laughed at our Mr. Potato Heads and how many authority figures in our lives tried to get us to put Mr. Potato Head together the “correct” way. What we don’t realize is that the “correct” way is just the “normal” way, and if we keep creating what’s normal, how would that allow room for creativity?
As I reflected on my own journey, I realized that I wasn’t always that creative either. I delved into science early, and overtime, equated that with a lack of creativity. In high school, I entered a special arts program, and being new to the program, I didn’t get enough time to learn the “conventions”. I started creating art that was considered strange by others. My portfolio was a physical, “infinite” box with layers of increasingly smaller pieces of artwork. My sketchbook turned into a 3D person with a pencil holder. I often drew using media that were incompatible with paper, in turn creating interesting results. My art teacher loved them and encouraged me to create more. The encouragements made me believe in myself, and overtime, as I believed in the narrative that I was a creative person, I stopped suppressing my crazy ideas and naturally became more creative. I also realized that STEM, which I loved, did not supress creativity in favor of logic as I once thought, but is very much in desperate need of creativity to find solutions to some of our biggest challenges.
“Learn the rules, then break them.” My high school art teacher would often say.
One thing I love about MIT is the way it encourages students to try out wild ideas. It dares to ask the question what if and work together to find the answers. It encourages collaboration, and values different skill sets across a multitude of disciplines. It shouts — you matter, and you have something to contribute— possibly one of the most important messages of all times. MIT is where I found my confidence and my voice after years of gloomy engineering after the said arts program that once made me feel alive. MIT is where I told people my crazy ideas and expected a bunch of smart people to tell me how all these were impossible because of this or that, but instead were met with — that’s an interesting idea, let’s try it out! The worst thing that could happen is it doesn’t work out and we will learn something from it.
I wish all schools were like this, and I wish every person that expressed creativity was encouraged instead of shot down by others. But since this clearly isn’t the case, how do we help people to release their creative potential? Believe in them. Tell them their contributions matter. Tell them the ridiculous ideas that people used to laugh at them for aren’t actually bad. People laugh because they conform to the norm. Once we get rid of their doubt, we can get rid of their fears. Once that fear is gone, creativity can flourish again. No, it’s not easy, but it’s possible. We do this through incremental successes and allowing people to get used to failures.
At the end of the day, believing in people really does make a difference, so let’s do that together.
