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How to Spot Creative Potential in Others - Part 6

In beginning your rule-of-thumb testing and observations, there are a few pitfalls to avoid. Any person, understandably, tends to favor persons he considers like himself. For example, a college-educated executive might have an inclination to "look down on" a worker who may not have finished high school. But when it comes to creative ability, the actual educational level attained by a person may not be too important. A basically cre­ative mind will have enough drive to acquire the equivalent knowl­edge of a college education in other ways. At the same time, a college degree, even from the same school as the screening executive's, is no guarantee of high creative potential.

Executives, being human, also tend to like the person most who is most cooperative in following company procedures, and who gets along with other people. This kind of person, in many cases, makes the executive's or supervisor's job much easier. A creatively gifted person, on the other hand, tends to be independent in thought and in his actions. He may occasionally ask embarrassing questions of an executive. He may prefer his own ways of doing things and his own methods of solving problems. In short, he may be a true nonconformist. If this nonconformity has ever been at the expense of the screening executive, he may, inadvertently, not do the best job of judging the creative worth of the person.

Although most creative persons usually know or sense where they are going, there are many who perform erratically. The executive who happens to observe such a person when he is in a "low" may make the mistake of underestimating that person's potential. This is another argument for constant observation of a worker for signs of creative potential.

Most suggestions for informal observing and testing to spot creative potential are based on the outward signs of the basic creative characteristics and the thinking patterns of creative peo­ple. This puts quite a responsibility upon anyone trying to screen people for creative potential, because so much is dependent upon the observation and correct interpretation of the basic "signs." However, here are some general personality traits to look for:

The Observant Person. Generally, a person who is highly alert to what is around him, who sees details and relationships that others miss, has a great advantage in developing creative potential.

Knowledge. New ideas are usually combinations of old ideas, or old ideas in new forms. The greater a person's knowledge about his field, the greater his potential creativeness. Remember that field knowledge may be acquired through related experience or on-the-job instruction—it does not necessarily have to be from schooling. It is relatively easy to determine a person's knowledge of his job, field, company, or industry.

A Good Memory. This is a part of the acquisition of knowl­edge, but becomes more important in the less formal types of knowledge. The man who can remember an odd-shaped piece of metal he saw in the storage room at just the time such a piece is needed, may be indicating the kind of "odds-and-ends" memory that frequently typifies a creative mind.

Drive. This is a relatively easy factor to observe. It shows itself by a man's dogged determination to see a job through—or his insistence on finishing a task before letting something else inter­fere. Such persistence, however, may easily be confused with stubbornness or obstinacy. The determining factor will usually be the reason or motivation for persisting.

Ability to Concentrate. This is more difficult to determine. Some persons, when they concentrate, are literally in a world of their own. Nothing can bother or distract them. Others, how­ever, can just as easily develop a high degree of concentration in the midst of relative calamity, and may even be contributing to the calamity. But the ability to concentrate on a problem, or the solution to it, to the exclusion of other irrelevant and distracting factors, is usually a mark of a creative personality.

Reasoning Power. The ability to discipline thinking into logical reasoning patterns is another prime creative characteristic. Re­member the creative mind's ability to be thoroughly organized and methodical in seeking solutions to problems, regardless of its ability to be the same with ordinary conventions such as dress, work schedules, etc. It is important, of course, to determine the quality of a person's reasoning, along with his methods of reason­ing. It is perfectly possible for a man to follow a sound, logical, well-thought-out approach to a problem and arrive at a com­pletely erroneous conclusion.

Communicative Ability. This is not a basic creative characteris­tic, but it is a highly valuable one for a creative person to have. It is mentioned here as a possible cause of misjudging a person in attempting to determine whether or not he is creative. Some crea­tive persons can communicate their ideas and thoughts with ease. Others, of a more introverted type, may have trouble putting their ideas and thoughts into words, either written or spoken. Furthermore, it is easy to overlook the importance or significance hidden in a short memo or a quick answer by a person who has thought a proposition through in all its ramifications, and then "netted" it down to a short explanation. Communication, then, may or may not be a tip-off to creative potential; the important caution is that you do not let its lack "throw you" in your evalu­ation.

The Curious Person. This is an easy-to-spot trait and a key one to be alert for in another person. Chances are anyone without curiosity will not have a very high degree of creative potential. It is important, however, to distinguish between true creative curiosity and the idle type of questioning that only serves as con­versation. ("How's the weather outside?" or "Where did you have lunch today?")

The Skeptic. In evaluating this quality, it is important to evaluate the quality or motivation of the skepticism. The creative skeptic doubts many things—particularly the obvious things that everyone else accepts perhaps too readily. The noncreative skeptic has destruction or belittlement as his motivation. The two can usually be distinguished by an adroit question or two. The non-creative skeptic will usually assume that things are going from bad to worse and nothing can be done about it, so why try? The crea­tive skeptic normally feels that no matter how bad or how wrong something is, it can always be made better. He may even have some ready suggestions for betterment.

Ready Suggestions. There is a type of person who, no matter what kind of problem is presented to him, usually has several sug­gestions for solving it. Regardless of the value of the ideas, such a person is giving a strong indication of idea fluency. If his ideas are all hopelessly off-target, or inconceivable in the light of the limitations of the problem, it may indicate a need for some in­doctrination in problems per se. But generally speaking, idea fluency is one of the most valuable traits in a creative person.

Pace Changes. Nobody can be creative who loses the ability to change his mental pace occasionally. This is manifested in a really creative person by his knowledge of, and interest in, many things. The ability to be "wrapped up" in a problem one minute, and then relax the mind completely with something else the next minute, is a key characteristic of the person who has developed the ability to discipline his thinking and change his mental pace. This type of person, however, should not be confused with the "activity boys"—the types who belong to every club they can join; participate in every social activity they can fit in; and man­age always to keep themselves surrounded by people every min­ute of the waking day. Far from being a manifestation of creative ability, this frenzied activity may be just the opposite: a revelation of deep-seated feelings of inadequacy and inferiority which the individual attempts to compensate for by an enforced sched­ule of activities with other people. He is, in short, trying to prove to himself that other people do accept him. The really creative person may not care whether other people accept him or not.

Specification Fighting. The person who is held down to a single routine job has his horizons compressed to the point where his creative ability may not be able to exercise itself. If the creative urge is strong enough, it may show up as a constant battle to "get in on" other jobs or other functions, or at least to broaden the horizons into a knowledge of other people's work. It may also, of course, be a mere objection to authority of any kind when a person refuses to follow instructions or stick to the specifications of his job. But a persistent resistance to a narrow job specification may indicate an imagination that is not being given the freedom to imagine.

Routine Bucking. The routine bucker is closely related to the specification fighter. But in the case of the person who hates routine, it may be more an indication of a strong sense of curiosity at work—the kind of curiosity that burns at the person to explore and to venture. Routine, of course, means repetition. But the really creative mind, when it has been over a problem course once, rapidly loses interest in repeating that trip. It much prefers to go on to something new.

It can be seen from just this cursory study of the ways creative potential can show itself that creative ability can announce itself in ways which a company or an executive might not like. It is necessary to have job specifications; some people have to put up with routine; a strict "lone wolf" may be a detriment to certain operations or functions. Yet each of these may have potential as an idea man for your company. Many of the organizational and operational problems raised by the presence of such people can be solved to a large degree by the placement of them in the com­pany. This is one of the basic aims of properly locating your creative potential in the first place. Just as it would be sheer waste of talent to put a physicist into a storeroom as a clerk, so it is also highly wasteful to put a person with problem-solving abilities in a routine job where he never has any problem greater than should he take sugar in his coffee today.

It should also be remembered that few of these "types" of per­sonalities will ever be found in a "pure" state. They have been set out as individuals here to make it easier to distinguish among them. But many people will be mixtures and composites of any or all of these to varying degrees. The mere presence of one such trait, then, is probably not enough to immediately classify a person as "potentially creative." The detection of several or many such traits, however, should at least give the executive cause to go out of his "way to really get acquainted with the worker. The result of further acquaintance may be the happy discovery of still an­other mind capable of coping with the company's problems in an imaginative way.

Related terms include organizing business and small business management an entrepreneurial emphasis.