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CHAPTER
25
Getting Personal
I will tell you what I have learned myself. For me, a long five- or
six-mile walk helps. And one must go alone and every day.
—Brenda Ueland, Tips on the Creative Life (Graywolf 1938)Perhaps the most important rule about the creative process is that
it will differ for each person. The premise of this book is that di-
versity is real: Different personality styles demonstrate different
communication, conflict, and creative patterns. And the differences
matter, both for individual efforts and for group effectiveness.
This premise is highlighted when I have workshop participants
draw their creative processes. This simple exercise (see the exercise
at the end of this chapter) is the most powerful way I know of to
show the group that everyone’s process is unique. One person draws
a tornado, indicating that when she is in the midst of creating, it
is like a whirlwind, with all kinds of ideas flying, chaotic, ener-
getic, and exciting. Another draws an oil well, indicating that some
efforts were like dry holes with nothing coming out of them, whereas
other efforts hit rich geysers of oil. Other visual metaphors include
pieces of a puzzle that have to be interlocked and file drawers with
all kinds of odd information stored away, waiting to be used.
When I first did the exercise, I surprised myself and drew a
spider on a web. I hate spiders, and yet the image of storing infor-14-25 ware 213 1/19/01, 1:16 PM