148 THE CREATIVE INVESTMENT TEAM
Exercises: Creating a Safe Place
An exercise that helps create safety involves talking about personal
heroes. When I deliver workshops on creativity, I start the day with
a round of introductions that includes the question, “Who is a
creative hero [or “shero”] of yours?” Sometimes I will explain a
brainstorming tool like mindmapping first and let the participants
use it to collect their thoughts about their heroes. In any case, I will
ask participants to stand, give their name, role, and some other
basics and then talk about their creative hero. The choices range
from mothers to fathers, children, favorite teachers, spouses, cur-
rent and former bosses, and some unusual ones like music or na-
ture. The latter are cited as inspiration for creativity. In one work-
shop, an African-American man with a stutter told us that his
mother had been a creative inspiration to him. Why? Because each
Christmas, despite the family’s poverty, she had managed to create
wonderful homemade gifts for each of the nine children. In his
words, she had performed magic, something from nothing. And
that was his definition of creativity: the ability to produce some-
thing from thin air. Another man, neatly dressed, from the account-
ing department, told the group that his hero was Jesus Christ, who
was creating all things anew, to quote the New Testament. This
man saw the essence of creativity as the ability to continually bring
new things into being.
The beauty of this exercise, I’ve found, is that it asks people to
be revealing in a safe and positive way. Newly formed groups aren’t
ready to have members reveal their most embarrassing moment.
The creative-hero exercise is an effective way to get participants to
“go deep” and reveal some of their passion almost immediately
after the workshop begins. With a dozen participants, the exercise
will take nearly half an hour, so it is time-consuming. But because
I believe that safety is the number one contributor to creativity, I
take the time. At the end of the workshop, participants often14-25 ware 148 1/19/01, 1:14 PM