Innovation is at the heart of every business success, according to Ginger Grant, a business instructor at Sheridan College in Oakville, Ont., and author of Finding Your Creative Core. Tapping into your “inner artist” can help boost your business.
Whether it’s finding new ways to communicate with a niche market or crafting a financial plan that suits the unique needs of a client, Grant says, creativity is crucial to any financial advisor’s practice.
But creative thinking has to be cultivated. Participating in creative endeavours outside of work can equip you to come up with creative solutions at the office.
Grant, who calls creativity at work “business as an art form,” offers the following ideas to help you improve your creativity — at in life and at work:
> List your favourite films
The old conversation-starter “What’s your favourite movie?” can prompt some genuine insight into your creative side. Listing your own top films, Grant says, may reveal connections and repeated themes that will tell a lot about what’s important to you.
Says Grant: “The story tells the core ideology of the person.”
Grant recommends making an effort to move outside your preferred genre. If you’re an action fanatic, switch to rom-coms, and vice versa. By purposefully watching movies you might otherwise never have watched — and being conscious of your reaction during the process — you’re forcing yourself to play with your own discomfort level, which leads to creative thinking.
> Learn something new
Picking up a new instrument or trying to learn a new language are both great ways to boost creativity, according to Grant.
Music is math, Grant says, so you’re essentially teaching the logical side of your brain to be creative when you start learning to play the guitar or the flute.
Learning a new language, meanwhile, is like a workout for the brain, with bursts of creative understanding. Food and cooking, for example, are important in the French language, and these creative cultural themes often coincide with reaching the next level of proficiency.
> Rekindle old interests
Explore those natural talents you abandoned early in life because you were told you couldn’t make a living out of them, Grant suggests.
“What’s the stuff that you gave up as a kid?” she says. If you loved drawing, take an art class. If you couldn’t get enough of creating mud pies, choose sculpture.
> Get physical
Movement is a natural way to use the creative side of your brain, Grant says. Combining movement with novelty — tackling the tango or tai chi, for example — is the ideal creativity-stimulus, she says.
“Take up anything that’s outside your comfort zone,” Grant says. Financial advisory work keeps you focused mentally; using your body, Grant says, forces the creative side to come out.
You can also try taking a more creative approach to a physical activity you already enjoy, Grant says. Whether it’s rock climbing or hockey, she says, look for the “story” in your sport to stretch your creative prowess. “Try to find metaphors in what you are doing.”