You may not believe that you are especially creative, but you probably possess various skills and attributes that will help in creative projects. If you are going to enhance your creative performance and potential, you need to know what skills you already have, and what areas you need to build on.
To do this, you need to determine skills that are essential to organizations seeking to fill creative positions. You also need to be mindful of desirable skills contributing to your ability to be creative. While some may feel communication and technical skills to be essential, others may emphasize open-mindedness, shaping skills, or a willingness to take risks.
Essential creative personality attributes
Generally, the experts agree that communication skills, a willingness to take risks, open-mindedness, and persistence are essential attributes for creativity.
- Communication skills—Being able to communicate your idea to team members, stakeholders, and consumers is essential for any innovator. Explaining your idea, and the benefits of it, is vital for securing buy-in. Without this, no innovator would get far.
- Risk-taking—A willingness to take risks is an essential attribute for anyone being creative and innovative at work. New ideas and innovations can only be found if you are prepared to push against conventions, challenge others, and do things in a different way.
- Open-mindedness—Being open-minded is an essential attribute for being creative and innovative. Being open-minded makes you receptive to new ideas, and you are able to look at organizational problems and processes in a different way.
- Persistence—Innovators claim that their ideas have succeeded through sheer persistence and tenacity. They have refused to let an idea fizzle out, and often kept working away despite the reluctance shown by their organizations.
Desirable creative personality attributes
You may think that analytical skills—the ability to back up your ideas and prove their worth—would be essential. Or that without technical ability, it's unlikely that you can make useful contributions. But provided that your team has a mix of these attributes, they are not essential in any single person.
- Technical ability—A specific technical ability or gift is certainly a desirable attribute. However, it is not just the technically gifted who can have creative ideas. You can have insight without this.
- Shaping skills—Having the skills to shape ideas into workable and implementable solutions is desirable in any creative team. But often there are other contributors in a team who can do this. It is not essential for every creative person to possess this skill.
- Analytical skills—Good analytical skills can certainly back up your ideas in any creative assignment. But since many creative tasks require teamwork, it is not essential that every creative contributor in the group has the ability to back up their ideas with analysis.
People who are good at communication, taking risks, and being perceptive and determined have all of the essential attributes, whereas those who are analytical, are technically able, or can mold ideas have desirable attributes.
Your personal attributes clearly play an important role in determining how creative or innovative you are. Remember that you can learn many of the attributes that can help you to be more creative and innovative. If you are committed to the development of new skills, you can become more creative in your working life.