Can pruning shears improve your creativity? – Is it possible to increase your creative ability?

I was talking to an HR Director at an international Broadcaster’s office recently.  She said they didn’t invest in creative training because people either have creative ideas or they don’t.  You can’t teach it.

To some extent she’s right.  We all think differently and as the millions of synapses in our brain merged into fewer superhighways, we began to show a preference for facts, reality and precision, or for ambiguity, possibilities and patterns.

Maybe it’s not possible to improve someone’s creative zeitgeist but it is certainly possible to dim it. 

Every company wants to get more work done more quickly.  With little time to come up with a creative idea that is truly original, what happens if that time isn’t productive? 

Say you’ve gleaned a couple of hours to think about a project, but instead find that you’re chewing over a difficult conversation or wondering why you just can’t click with your client. Maybe you start questioning how good you are and if you still have your creative mojo… all those intruding thoughts dim your creative light.

Perhaps creative training isn’t about teaching someone to have creative ideas, but rather learning how to eliminate the things that cloud your thinking.  This could change the purpose of training, but lands you with the same result – better creative ideas. 

How great would it be if you could learn to manage difficult people or eliminate insecurity, find ways to maximise your efficiency or eradicate presentation nerves? 

Whether you choose coaching or training to tackle these issues, its worth the effort.  These problems rarely wither away, they’re more likely to grow until they overshadow everything else.

The goal is to prune away all the things that get in the way of your imagination so you’re left with the headspace to conceive ideas that are unique. 

I love coaching with creative thinkers because they’re quick to tackle the big things that have grown up, the problems that frequently pop up when they have time to focus.  They’re generally aware of the things that protrude into their creative space and are anxious to find solutions that work for the long run.

With the bigger distractions resolved, it just takes some regular pruning to keep things clear, allowing air and light to shine on your creative space.