If you’ve hung around Decoding Creativity long, you know I offer the Creative Selfie – which is three creativity assessments designed to give you insight into how you are creative, how creative you are and where you might be most valued for your creativity. It is a full 360-degree view. One of those assessments is FourSight, the primary creativity assessment in use today. This assessment tells you not whether you’re creative (because we all are) where your creative energy lies, and where it is sapped. This conversation with Sarah Thurber, managing partner of FourSight, reveals much of the bedrock on which I base my working tools and theories for my writing clients.
Notably, Sarah describes creativity as a living breathing entity, that like all natural beings must expand and contract. Breathe. In creativity, those outward and inward movements are called Divergence and Convergence.
- We diverge first. We diverge with confidence. We let our brains range far and wide and we think up silly, crazy and random ideas. We work as if no one will put us down (including our inner critics.) Sarah considers diverging like the building a ladder of ideas to reach new heights. So a “bad” idea might just be one rung, that helps bridge you to new ideas, and new heights. Let it all flow out. Each idea builds on the last.
- And then we converge with courage. When we converge, we select and perfect. It’s important to give serious consideration to the risky choices. We don’t converge back into the same shape we were. We work toward something new and useful. We look at the ideas with affirmative judgement. We ask: “How might that idea work?”
Sarah and co-author Dorte Nielsen also recently published the book: The Secret of the Highly Creative Thinker: How to Make Connections Others Don’t.
In our Storytellers Summit conversation, Sarah stretches our half hour into a full 45 minutes – because she has a lot to share and truly wants everyone listening to learn something about themselves and their thinking style. Listen in to learn more about the Foursight thinking styles:
- Clarifying
- Ideating
- Developing
- Implementing
When I was getting my Masters in Creativity, the Foursight assessment opened my eyes to my own creative strengths (which didn’t surprise me) but also to my struggles – which I was wholly unaware of. Others may have been able to see it, but it was a blindspot for me. I was utterly liberated by this new self-understanding, and literally, almost immediately my life started working! I began using the tools and seeking help, and I was delivered from the part of the process that had been hamstringing me.
There is great power in knowing specifically how you are great, but there is also great progress in knowing specifically when you need help. This is why I include Foursight in the Creative Selfie one of three assessments that help you see your creativity objectively, and fully. How well do you think you understand your creativity? If you’re interested in learning more about the Creative Selfie, why not schedule a Free Creative Clarity Call with me today? It’s an eye-opener.