Coaching with creativity

Have you ever tried the 'Marshmallow Challenge' with your team? It's an often referenced design task, conducted in small teams, using sticks of dried spaghetti, tape, string and a single marshmallow. Check it out if you aren't familiar: https://www.marshmallowchallenge.com/

With the basic premise being that you need to work together to design a tall structure that will hold the weight of your marshmallow, it is surprising to many that the rate of failure in corporate teams is high.

Most find this creative challenge difficult because they don't understand how to collaborate effectively. Successful tower builders approach the challenge together. No egos jostling for leadership, no set plan from the outset. And importantly, they to use play and prototyping to achieve their result. Their creative problem solving success comes from testing hidden assumptions along the way and effectively collaborating.

This Ted Talk (Build a tower, build a team) explains this challenge further.

Collaboration is a learned skill. Just like understanding the geometry principals required to build a structurally sound marshmallow tower.

Creative thinking is inherent in all of us. But it gets squashed out and the space to explore freely is replaced by text books, time pressures and conformity (Usually around age 10 - you can read more on this here)

When we practice collaboration and creativity together, we build neural pathways and strengthen muscle memory that is vital for our everyday occupations and life beyond the desk.

Facilitated arts-based learning or creativity workshops are not just playtime for little kids. It's serious business (but fun at the same time). Fostering a culture of creativity enables people to move from established and entrenched behavioural patterns, to safely explore the emotional causation of an event or relationship, use a whole-brain thinking approach to re-frame thinking, gain new insights and incubate new ideas.

Creative engagement has the power and potential to cultivate change in your organisation. You can improve the well-being, productivity and innovation capacity of your employees with a facilitated creativity workshop. https://www.cubicada.co.nz/workshops