Once people get to know me, they start to realize that I’m a people watcher. I am also extremely creative. I spend a lot of my time trying to find new and innovative ways to approach a situation and solve problems. That can be both really cool, or really annoying, depending on your perspective. I like to sit and watch how people interact with the world around them, and how they behave. I find it really fascinating.
I find that for me, to be an effective leader, it is very useful to be creative, since I have the ability to (usually) step back and analyze the situation, and the people involved, and figure out multiple approaches to solving the problem. I then do an analysis of the situation, doing a pro-con analysis, or a simple SWOT analysis to figure out if I’ve achieved an answer that I’m happy with, or whether I need to go back and keep working on it.
Creativity and thought are key to that process. I think that it is super important to have the ability to be creative under stress, and under fire, to figure out what some of the possible outcomes are, and what we’re trying to achieve, and then do an analysis. It is a skill that I foster in my team, and in others in my life. My kids probably want to whack me upside the head, when we’re in the middle of something, and I ask them to start verbalizing why something is going wrong, and what the choices are, and why we have them. I think that is important though. Analysis + creativity = problem. In short, be creatively analytical. I’m pretty sure that is my inner MBA surfacing, but it is a great skill for leaders to possess, whether they have their MBA’s or not.
