The latest report from the World Economic Forum highlights creative thinking as the second main skill of today’s professional in 2023. The current environment, with variables as powerful as fragility, anxiety, non-linear events and the incomprehensible create the need to have creative professionals in organizations. For all these reasons, in this article we are going to propose 25 individual creative skills of today’s professional.
Why is it essential to know the 25 individual creative competencies of today’s professional?
Creativity is everywhere. It is essential in any business process and in any organization it is necessary to create or resolve specific situations. Based on information from great authors in the creative field, such as Edward de Bono, Michael Michalko, Ken Robinson, Adam Grant or David Kelley, among others, we have built this list.
At the same time, this process has been fed back by my own experience in Spain and Latin America from my applied creativity sessions, both in postgraduate studies and in specific in-company workshops. In addition, creating your own methodology such as “The 7 Lateral Sins: 42 creative techniques that generate innovation” is another item that provides consistency to the list.
Identifying the creative competencies of the current professional is very useful to understand what the creation processes are like. In them, the creative thinking of each person is valued to generate disruptive ideas capable of reaching innovation milestones. At the same time, it serves to create organizational environments where individuals can express themselves and develop. It is, without a doubt, a great help in introspective, which helps to be aware of the individual creative potential that you can contribute to a work team and the organization.
Individual creative skills of a technical nature
Next, we are going to explain the 10 creative skills at a technical and personal level, essential to develop a successful creative process. It is very likely that, on a personal level, we will not meet all of them, but the key lies in the diversity of competencies that a team can have. Every member counts and every member contributes. Synergies and the degree of complementarity are differential elements in a creative process.
These are the 5 technical creative competencies at the individual level appropriate to an innovation process:
- Empathy: It is about perceiving things from the perspective of another. Only in this way are we able to understand their problems, interests, emotions and/or sensations in order to solve them.
- Observation: Refers to the ability to analyze the latent needs of clients. People don’t usually tell us what they think, because they simply almost never know. Understanding this ability is essential to create.
- Repetitive questions: A great way to analyze situations is by asking appropriate questions. The closer the question to be solved is to the user’s latent reality, the more likely the creator will be to succeed. In addition, the right questions help us greatly to avoid cognitive biases that affect the creative process.
- Exploration: Comparing, understanding what works and what doesn’t, why it works and why it doesn’t, and having the ability to contextualize are key tools for the creative professional. In this way, high-quality insights can be found among all the existing information.
- Synthesis: the ability to concentrate what is important given the enormous amount of existing information is another key. Focusing increases the quality of ideas during the creative process. Without a clear focus, creative processes become diffuse and complex.
They are all important, but surely one of them predominates in you
- Lateral thinking: perhaps the best way to carry out creative problem solving in an imaginative way. All this, thanks to a GOD of creativity like Edward de Bono.
- Conceptualization: it is the ability to make ideas tangible in the form of concepts, which will undoubtedly make them easier to understand by the target audience.
- Execution: Creative individuals must also be able to execute and not just pose. Knowing how to plan and carry out tasks to achieve the objective is essential.
- Change management: It is the ability to face constant contextual movements in the current environment. They can come from the users themselves, from the market in particular or in general, from competitors, etc.
- Communication: A creative idea is as important as the way we tell it. That is, communication must be, at least, at the same level of creativity as the idea itself. The idea narrative is absolutely essential for the final process to achieve success in the market. Furthermore, we must not forget that internal communication (selling the idea within the company) is as important as external communication (launching the idea on the market).
In the next post, we will see another 10 creative skills. in this case, psychological in nature.
Photo credit: SJ
