How to harness your emotions to fuel creativity
Fast Company recently interviewed Dr. Zorana Ivcevic Pringle, a senior researcher at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, on what it means to lead a creative life. In this essay, she shares one of her top tips for fueling creativity.
Creativity is the powerhouse that differentiates good organizations from great ones. It goes beyond generating ideas. It is about the long process of developing ideas for more effective performance and the process of building abstract notions into concrete products.
Creativity is full of emotions—the reputational risk of not knowing how an idea will be received by stakeholders, the frustration of dealing with constraints and obstacles, conflict about directions to take, and elation when you finally develop a product. Successful creativity does not depend on the kinds of emotions experienced. Rather, it depends on your ability to harness the power of emotions and manage them when they get in the way of progress. In my book, The Creativity Choice: The Science of Making Decisions To Turn Ideas Into Action, I write about how to use emotional intelligence to manage the creative process, regardless of industry or job role.
Notice emotions to identify opportunities
A traditional (and outdated) idea of professionalism demands that emotions be left at the doorstep. But that is neither possible, nor desirable. Emotions contain messages about the state of our minds and the situations around us. This is valuable information that can spark inspiration and help us identify opportunities ripe for innovation. Is something frustrating you? This might point to a problem that can be solved.
Entrepreneurs are skilled at identifying opportunities by reading their own and others' feelings. Hate everything about the grocery shopping experience? Apoorva Mehta did not ignore this feeling, he used it to found Instacart. He created a way to shop for groceries from one's phone, which completely bypassed all the frustrations of going to the store, searching for items, and waiting in lines. Frustrated about the state of the beauty industry? Melissa Butler founded Lip Bar. Its products are vegan and cruelty-free and offer a wide variety of vibrant lipstick colors and complexion products.
Innovators inside organizations do the same. For example, when a supervisor in a food services unit of a major hospital realizes his workers are exhausted, he's identifying a problem in need of a creative solution. As a result, the hospital redesigned the workflow, removing the need to bend or stretch to reach far away items. This reduced worker burnout and improved their accuracy on the job.
Take advantage of thinking/feeling connections
Emotion scientists have discovered moods boost different kinds of thinking.
There are times when we feel positive, energized, and enthusiastic. These times are best for brainstorming and charting new ideas. At other times we are subdued or even sullen. At these times we are best at critical thinking. These moods make us see all that is wrong or not quite right.
Creativity is not just a spark of inspiration or what we call 'feeling creative.' Inspired ideas have to be developed and improved upon. To optimize creative work, it takes skill to match different moods to tasks which benefit from them. Feeling playful? Come up with new ideas for a project. Feeling down? Review and revise.
Generate emotions
What if you have to attend an ideation meeting, but are feeling down? Remember that we have more power over emotions than we might realize. You can create the mood that is most helpful in the moment. Recall a past win. Put on a song that gets you going. Reach out to a colleague whose enthusiasm is infectious. Just as athletes pump themselves up or find calm focus when needed, you can find a workplace equivalent of getting pumped up.
Another skill is generating emotions to communicate and inspire. Leaders skilled at communicating their passion inspire others and end up having workers who are clear about their responsibilities and goals. Similarly, when pitching creative ideas, those who project fiery determination are perceived as both passionate and well prepared. And communicating these feelings is related to higher funding pledges.
Use emotional intelligence to build a climate for creativity and innovation
Leaders set the emotional tone in their teams and serve as models for what is expected and accepted. A Yale study including more than 14,000 people across industries in the U.S. asked workers to describe how their supervisors act in emotionally fraught situations. Emotionally intelligent supervisors do four specific things:
They are skilled at reading emotions and acknowledge them. They realize when people are upset or worried about organizational or industry changes.
They inspire enthusiasm and model decision-making that takes into account both optimistic and cautious voices.
Emotionally intelligent supervisors understand how their decisions or other events affect people.
They are able to successfully manage their own emotions, and also help their team members when they are upset or frustrated.
Employees whose supervisors acted in emotionally intelligent ways were motivated, challenged, and fulfilled at work. However, employees whose supervisors did not act in emotionally intelligent ways felt unappreciated and angry. And this emotional climate had consequences. Having an emotionally intelligent supervisor makes workers see opportunities for growth and act in more creative and innovative ways.
If the goal is creativity and innovation, leaders should develop emotional intelligence skills. A review of dozens of studies shows that training programs—either in higher education or through workplace professional development—make people better at accurately perceiving, using, understanding, and managing emotions, regardless of their industry. When leaders develop these skills, they notice how their team members feel, demonstrate understanding of how their decisions impact others, and help people deal with challenges of work. Investment in leadership development will pay off in capacity for innovation.
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