5 Quotes About Creativity You Need To Read

By Kathryn P. Haydon

Books We Love, Grow Your Creativity

I have thought often about how grateful I am for the support of those involved in this book launch. From my family who have supported me along every step of the way, to those who have generously volunteered their time to be a part of our book launch team, to every single individual that I interviewed during the writing process. I am eternally grateful for each and every one of you. As a small token of my appreciation, and to kick off our launch, I wanted to share five insightful quotes from the book with you below. 

What are the high costs of not using creativity? We become irrelevant, disrupted, stuck, frustrated, unable to be flexible as the factors around us shift. 

Why is this more important now than ever? Change is happening at such a fast pace. Technology is obsolete almost before it’s invented. Every new invention that we incorporate into our lives and work causes us to change. 

Since creativity is about seeking new possibilities and finding valuable solutions, we can’t do without it. We need to be able to constantly  adjust and recalibrate. 

For at least a decade, creativity has topped the lists of skills that leaders say employees need to be successful. In 2019, this was reflected in data shared by LinkedIn Learning: out of more than 20 million job postings on the site, creativity was the number one skill in demand. 

We are looking for creativity in new hires and putting the words into our mission statements, yet we are still unclear as to what creativity exactly is when it comes to work. It’s hard for us to get over our concept that creativity is about the arts. We are also predisposed to resisting new ideas and the people who suggest them. It is critical that we learn to support and nurture potential and actual change agents. 

To be more creative at work, we must first understand what creativity is, the principles behind it, and the deliberate strategies we can use to draw it out. Only then will we create the possibility ecosystems that we need to support sustainable creative thinking at work. Only then will we reap the resulting rewards.  

Creativity at work is not only valuable to businesses. It helps each individual worker tap his or her personal strengths and most powerful thinking. It leads to more meaningful work. It helps us grow. 

How do you take responsibility for other people’s creativity? You begin with your own. There are four steps, actually: 

1. Understand what creativity really is.
2. Learn how you already think creatively and do it more deliberately.
3. Improve your interactions with others on the basis of the science of creativity.
4. Learn and use creative process.

Want to start and complete these steps? Pick up your copy of The Non-Obvious Guide to Being More Creative.