By Steven Kowalski, Ph.D.
Author, Creative Together: Sparking Innovation in the New World of Work
President and Founder, Creative LicenseTM Consulting Services
Now that you’ve completed reading Creative Together: Sparking Innovation in the New World of Work, it’s time to stand at the threshold of whatever lies ahead—together with your colleagues, allies, and partners—and step into the intersection of purpose, possibility, and constraint as a daily, ongoing practice.
Practicing every day is about continuing to learn who you are in this intersection, noticing what wants to emerge when you are there, and learning how to return there if you find yourself outside of the center.
As the challenges of life and work pull your conscious awareness out of the intersection, find ways to return to the center.
- What might have to shift and evolve in your way of being so that you can live in the center more often and with a fuller sense of responsibility for the influence you have in the world?
- How might you build skill at being both “on the dance floor” and “in the balcony”—both acting and observing at the same time?
- What would it be like to allow yourself to be “lost” and “not know”—even while you stand firmly in the center? Or learn to find a kind of emptiness and spaciousness in the center and see what enters?
- What might you learn as a lifelong student of the dance between Me and We?
I invite you to discover what is possible if you keep at it over time: embedding a potential-based approach in your day-to-day life; deepening and honing how you engage your SuperPowers; and meeting the tests that come your way with a deep and enduring faith in your creativity. Learn to leverage the strength that comes from communing, co-creating, and sharing leadership with others to address the challenges you face together.
Practice exploring, experimenting, and rewriting the rules through easy as well as challenging times—through successes and failures. And, as you progress, you will discover new ways of being that support what’s next as you venture forth.
- Surrender to what is emergent and to what wants to happen through you—even as it may be different than what you think should happen or different from the vision you have been holding. When emergent, conscious creativity flows through you, there is access to sources of ideas and inspiration that you may or may not even understand. This kind of surrender requires that you let go of ego, pride, and righteousness—even as you honor and celebrate the unique contribution you bring to the act of creating. Surrender to allow more of the Collaborator to come into the front row and onto the stage. Attune to the emergent as you face both the simplest and the most formidable obstacles, like when powerful forces collide or when you seek solutions for deeply entrenched, systemic problems that have yet to be solved. Remember: three truths coexist in any given moment: 1) there are multiple possible futures ahead of us; 2) we have agency in helping shape what happens, but we are not in control; and 3) the futures we imagine are reaching back to help us realize them. Together, these three truths generate creative tension—an energetic field where infinite possibility, self-aware co-creation, and vulnerable receptivity spark together to bring forward what wants to emerge.
- Stay off the “Drama Triangle.i ” This is one of our most deeply engrained human patterns of interaction where—in the story you hear in your head and tell out in the world—there is a Victim, a Villain, and a Rescuer. As we’ve explored, this is a story that originates in our families and can play out within social and organizational contexts. Succumbing to this insidious pattern of interaction will lock you into existing mindsets, assumptions, and habits of behavior, and limit the scope and impact of your creative potential.
- Think beyond your remit. Always look beyond the boundaries of what you believe is your defined scope of work to see how you can contribute to the bigger picture. That means seeking out connections and impact beyond your current view, out in the broader ecosystem beyond your defined circle of influence. This requires that you move past self-serving motivations, link things together, see across boundaries, and ask, “Who else?” to include others. It means building connections across broader systems and networks and practicing joining with others. This small shift—expanding your view beyond your remit—will become one of your most powerful tools for learning faster than you are making mistakes. It will help you change your world when you see and feel a need—and are called to start a movement, join a movement, and work with others to address urgent and important imperatives.
- Share courageously and vulnerably. You have access to a deep well of trust that is vital to truly co-create and share leadership. Share yourself with others. Open your heart to the people you partner with. Practice experimenting and playing together. Let go of your need for controlling, protecting, and complying as strategies for survival. Leave behind the burdensome vestiges of ownership and territory, and the fear of giving yourself away. Practice this with close allies, and also with people you don’t know and have yet to meet. It can be hard enough to live within this kind of trust with the people around you. Elevating the impact of your creative potential into broader horizons requires you to scale this kind of trust across networks, geographic regions, and with people who have different beliefs, values, cultural norms and customs than you—in order to make progress on shared goals that are bigger than any one part of your network.
- Make conscious choices every day. Your choices can support your deeper purposes, dreams and aspirations—or they can inhibit them. The former requires you to pause more often to reflect, or even stop certain activities that don’t represent a responsible approach toward what you are creating. Remember: you are in a lifelong process of discovery and of learning how to create. In moments of choice, you demonstrate all you have learned about creative accountability and creative leadership. Choice signals intention and alignment with shared goals and aspirations. Every decision you make about how to invest your creative energies and your care for others has exponential power. I invite you to make these choices consciously, with compassion and care for yourself, and in service to the systems in which you work and live.
At your core, you are a creative being on a shared journey of discovering your life. Continue to become a conscious, self-aware student on that journey. Get creative together. Lean into the collective strength that emerges when you move past the familiar routines of execution to spark innovation. Adventure together on journeys of discovery into the unknown. Claim your gift: creativity with no limits. Keep reclaiming it every day. It’s a lifelong quest without a fixed destination.
i The drama triangle is a social model that was conceived by Stephen Karpman, a student studying under Eric Berne, the father of transactional analysis.
© 2021 Steven Kowalski for Creative License Consulting™. All rights reserved.
