When my daughter was 7 years old, we went to Meet the Teacher Night at her school. While being given the rundown, her teacher told us that if a child was going to have to miss a class for an appointment, then it should be either music or art class because those weren’t as important. At the time my husband was working as an oil painter, and I was a children’s story writer. We were dumbfounded.
While I don’t think everyone has the innate imagination to be Picasso or Hemingway, everyone is born creative. But then we begin our education, where we are taught conformity. Think about it…young children are spilling with ideas. We go from dinosaurs wearing roller skates, mountains made of ice cream and invisibility potions to being taught to color in the lines and the skill of passing exams. Are we trained to be good workers as opposed to creative thinkers? Why is it that the arts are not as supported and valued as science and math?
I think there is also a level of uncertainty about the creative industry. That is why later on while kids are deciding what they will major in, many parents don’t see the value of a creative profession. They push their children towards other professions.
Creativity is one of the most powerful competitive advantages a company can have. A business needs to sparkle with new ideas and fresh thinking. But that’s where there’s a problem. Sometimes that sparkly creativity just isn’t present in the conference room.
What would happen if we worked to build creative leaders who were equally business and creatively minded…utilizing both the right and left sides of the brain. Gaining mental muscle with both sides can offer left-brainers comfort in thinking outside the box and more creatively in your problem solving, marketing and team management efforts. And as a right-sider, developing your left-side can give you confidence in negotiating business terms, crunching numbers, raising capital and building projections. If we stopped treating creativity and intelligence as separate cognitive processes, the student benefits most.