78. Cultures Of Creativity Require The Courage To Fail
Summary
As entrepreneurs we categorize ourselves as “creatives” and “non-creatives,” equating our creative potential with our job title. That begs the question: are creativity and artistry the same thing and can we all learn to be more creative as adults?
Erica and India are joined by Genein Letford, best-selling author and global speaker on creative and financial literacies. She believes creative thinking, paired with financial entrepreneurship education, are critical skills for everyone in the workforce.
In this episode they discuss:
Why inclusion is critical to creativity,
What happens when people tell us to “be realistic,”
The physiological connection between fear and excitement, and
Why we must have the courage to fail in order to fulfill our creative potential.
Quoted
GENEIN LETFORD
“I believe creativity is the process of problem finding and problem solving with relevance, value, and novelty.”
“You develop your belief system as a child, so if you grow up knowing how to adapt and pivot even when tempo changes up on you, you can transfer those to your adult life and your business.”
“There are a lot of multi-million dollar ideas sitting in peoples’ hearts because they don’t feel they are included or fear their ideas will get stolen or won’t be credited back to them.”
“Be very mindful of who’s in your sphere. Influence is more important than you know.”
“Look at all of the things that were invented by mistakes".”
“Courage like creativity is a skill; all skills can be developed.”
ERICA COURDAE
“Can you imagine doing something differently? Can you imagine yourself being rich/accumulating wealth? Can you imagine yourself starting a movement? For so many of us we’re told these things aren’t possible...and maybe even frivolous.”
INDIA JACKSON
“We’re missing the whole human. We have families. We have jobs we enjoy. We have hobbies. We have creative ideas. We contribute to culture and the arts and you aren’t seeing these as much.”
After the Episode
Follow Genein: Caffee Strategies and Genein Letford; Podcast
Check out the book, Hustle and Float
Episode Notes
REDEFINING CREATIVITY
Genein Letford was once an elementary educator with $100k in debt and no plan to get out. She read every book and learned finances to figure out how to pay off her debt faster. It was in this moment that she realized even though she wasn’t trained in entrepreneurship, she has an entrepreneurial spirit.
Using a multitude of strategies to pay down her debt, she wanted to help others gain creative thinking skills that would help them in business and life.
Rather than thinking, “I’m not creative because I can’t sing or dance,” Genein has helped to reframe creativity as the process of problem finding and problem solving with relevance, value, and novelty.
She says that high creative thinkers are looking for issues. They understand that what they’re creating has value for themselves but others too.
Genein says that when you really look at what creative thinking is, it’s a cognitive skill that we can all learn just like we learned how to multiply.
In her work she’s created a framework around 16 diamonds, which breaks apart the components of what creative thinkers share and do. The first of such is belief. You have to first believe that you’re a creative and hold potential for immense creativity. Another diamond is observation — creativity is all about observing and connecting ideas.
CREATIVE INCLUSION
Genein shares that we develop our belief system as a child, so if you grow up knowing how to adapt and pivot even when the tempo changes up on you, you can transfer those to your adult life and your business.
Erica chimes in saying that she notices people often saying they’re not creative, believing that skill is something they don’t have access to or are unable to do. She says that even though we were likely good at those things as a child, as adults we’re deficient.
She asks Genein, “Is everyone an artist? Are we trained to not be artistic as we grow up and lose the expression of our thoughts?”
Genein replies by saying that in her mind the arts are just forms of communicating thought.
There are a lot of multi-million dollar ideas sitting in peoples’ hearts because they don’t feel they are included. You can include more people when you honor their ideas and ways of communicating.
For people of color especially, it’s less common to see strong creative examples that look like you, Genein says. She gave the example of her brother working at NASA and never hearing of Katherine Johnson before the movie Hidden Figures came out. She says young people aren’t getting pointed toward those who have already done big things — they’re only seeing the struggle.
India says that the image of Black struggle has overcrowded and overshadowed Black joy. When you’re only seeing a certain section of culture that’s constantly in pain and suffering — even when this is part of the truth — we’re missing the whole person.
THE TROUBLE WITH BEING REALISTIC
As adults, there are certain narratives telling us to be realistic limit our beliefs about our own potential.
When we aren’t doing what we want to do we impose self limitations. For instance, Genein says, if she told herself she shouldn’t write a book because she doesn’t think she’s enough she would have robbed all of the people who have told her the book changed their life.
Another key component affecting our creativity is the company we keep. Genein says we should be very mindful of who’s in our sphere. Influence is more important than we know.
India furthers this idea by saying that when building a culture of innovation, mistakes are okay as long as we pull out the lessons. Unfortunately, we stigmatize mistakes instead of normalizing them. As adults we have to learn another way.
Genein describes cultures of creativity as spaces where there is freedom to experiment where we can learn from our successes and failures. Failing shows we attempted something we weren’t sure of but still gave it our all. In fact, throughout history many things were invented due to mistakes.
FEAR + EXCITEMENT: UNEXPECTED TWINS
Genein says that courage, like creativity, is a skill and skills can be developed.
An example she shares is when she saw the application to TEDx without the expectation that she’d be accepted. Then when she got the email back she thought, “Ohhhh man, what am I going to say?” Then quickly she realized, as a woman with a speech impediment, it was important for people to hear her.
There’s a reframe needed — from I’m so scared to I’m so excited. After all, our bodies have the same physical reaction to fear as excitement. They just have different emotional titles.
When we train our brains to take on courageous activities on a regular basis, when our brain is beating out of control, we train our courage muscles.
Doing something creative every day can look different, from playing the xylophone to just gazing at trees in nature. If you’re working all the time there isn’t the ability to let your ideas simmer.
If you get stuck implementing, Genein suggests capturing your ideas and then asking, “What’s most important right now?”
UNCONSCIOUS BIAS LIMITS CREATIVITY
Our ability to create and think creativity is highly dependent on having multiple perspectives. Someone who is unwilling to transcend boundaries, go outside of their comfort zone and see things from different points of view are just shooting themselves in the foot.
Genein says that having intercultural competency and reimagining how you look at things in your life is important to unleash creativity around us.
Her parting thoughts were that if you look around you, everything you see came from someone’s creative spirit. The diamond of your creative gifts are within you. The first step is to believe that you can. The last step is to have the courage to contribute.