Want Creativity? Start by Using Your Social Brain.

People power organizations. This isn’t a provocative statement or anything new. Whether a few in a cramped start-up office or a few hundred-thousand around the world, it’s the people behind the initiatives, brands and companies that advance things forward.

So if this is so obvious, why do companies continually have the same issues related to talent? We can’t find the right people, keep the best people or push our full workforce to drive the kinds of results we need—increased creativity and innovation, higher productivity, faster development.

Maybe it’s because of the way we see these results…let’s look at creativity:

• When you think of creativity and pushing that out as an organization, do you think of your accounting team?
• Do you think of harnessing collaboration in real and meaningful ways?
• Do you look to your Social thinkers—the people who connect with others naturally?

Everyone in an organization has the power to think relationally and to access their social brain. This is the part of the brain that craves collaboration, wants to involve others and comes up with ideas based on how they’ll affect people. It’s also how you can tap into creativity you may not even knew existed.

Ensure everyone’s opinion is heard and taken into account to see how different perspectives can be applied to the goal you are working toward.

You start doing this…looking at creativity not as an end result of brainstorming by your big-picture, Conceptual thinkers only, but rather as a byproduct of increased social thinking and collaboration—then, and only then, does the organization function at its highest level.