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46 The Creative Training Idea Book
reativity is a state of mind. For you to be adept at training others in a challeng-
ing and successful manner takes thought on your part and sometimes requires
Cthinking outside the box or from a different perspective. Taking such an ap-
proach can separate you from the average trainer who follows a standard format and
rarely makes changes to his or her content or delivery style.
The ability to be creative is not innate, but rather is a skill that can be learned and
improved upon through the use of various systems and strategies. There are certainly
facets of the brain at work influencing the approach that you and your participants use
as you strive to develop answers or solutions to issues. As you read in Chapter 1, how-
ever, creativity is not simply a right-brain function, as was once believed. It is a whole
brain process in which creative ideas are the result of many factors. Creativity also re-
quires competency in the areas of divergent (generating a quantity of diverse ideas) and
convergent (selecting the most appropriate idea) thinking.
From a creativity standpoint, the average person exhibits a variety of innovative ideas
and talents throughout any given day without sometimes labeling such behavior as
creative. For example, whenever someone offers a different perspective to a point you
or someone else makes, in a training session, he or she is creatively looking at an alter-
native. In addition, when participants brainstorm potential issues and solutions to prob-
lems, they are being creative. Likewise, when someone begins to daydream and starts
doodling on a piece of paper, he or she is creating.
Luckily, true creativity can come from a childlike approach to training. Children
often are unaware that something cannot be done because they have not previously at-
tempted it. The challenge for many children, who later recall early experiences as they
grow older, is that teachers, parents, and other adults teach them not to be creative, by
requiring them to “color within the lines,” “speak when spoken to,” “shut up and listen,”
and in a variety of other ways.
Adults can regress to that childlike simplicity by experimenting and
thinking freely. Too often creativity is limited by a person’s
attitude or motivation. For example, participants can
actually inhibit their own potential creativity by
making statements similar to the following:

I’m just not a creative person.
I never have any good ideas.
I don’t have time to be creative.
I don’t know where to get creative ideas.
I don’t know how people come up with all
their creative ideas.

Of all those statements, the one that is
probably closest to the truth is that they do not
know how to come up with creative ideas. That is what