Bringing Intuitive Creative Skills to Work Environments: New Beginnings, New Creativity in Old Environments by Niela Miller

Bringing Intuitive Creative Skills to Work Environments: New Beginnings, New Creativity in Old Environments
by Niela Miller

The face of business is changing from patriarchal and hierarchical to a more horizontal model where everybody's input is valued and needed. But, alas, most training for business is exceedingly left-brained and only slowly is the business world recognizing the need to introduce non-analytic, non-linear emotional and creative intelligences as complementary to analytic processes for the greatest capability in rapid-change environments.

Of course, business leaders and visionaries have always been intuitive and able to make leaps in understanding and imagination, but they haven't always known how to pass these visions and skills to those in their organizations as value added to their whole enterprise.

External professionals are often afraid to make use of their more intuitive and expressive sides in business settings because they do not know how to overcome the imagined resistance they will face. In my experience, this has not been a problem when I have focused on the needs and objectives of the organization and have built good relationships with the purse string holders. I do not sell intuition; I sell my ability to meet the client's objectives. Once I am with the work group, I can be my whole self and model that possibility for others. It becomes apparent that I am having so much fun that it is catching! The challenge, however, is to have the self-confidence and fluidity it takes to make it seem easy and valuable.

My work in recent years has been to offer these possibilities and skills to people professionals wishing to enhance organizational and client processes. I introduce a set of tools and methods not usually associated with business settings and connect up the joy of this [serious play] with the value added.

These tools produce the benefits and meet the types of objectives stated below. (Note: They can also be applied to any one-on-one helping relationship or non-business venues like family relationships).

I use arts processes and approaches drawn from a wide range of human potential technologies. In training coaches and others who work with business clients and groups, I help them integrate what is already in their background which is not being used, as well as introduce them to new possibilities.

They, in turn, can pass some of these tools on to their clients and organizational groups.

Examples of Workplace Objectives & Benefits

Improving work environments (morale, commitment, etc.)
Increasing communication abilities and flow
Doing creative assessments, reviews, and evaluations
Making meetings more productive
Building teams that go beyond what they thought they could do
Developing more effective planners and problem-solvers
Improving decision-making strategies
Using innovative approaches to career development
Focusing on the alignment of personal process with career choices

Examples of Benefits in Sensory Channels
Visual (Drawing, collage, photographs, fantasy, dream images)

Expanding ways of collecting data
Discovering personal and problem-solving symbols
Finding new meanings and insights with visual metaphors
Generating innovative solutions to problems
Altering perspective in stuck situations and work relationships
Becoming a more comprehensive observer and feedback giver

Auditory (Music, text, poetry, sounds, dialogue)

Investigating how sound affects mood, atmosphere
Increasing ability to communicate effectively and hear more
Stretching perception of available information in a situation
Many of the benefits listed above in Visual

Kinesthetic/Proprioceptive (Body movement and placement, internal sensations and feelings)

Learning to "think" with the body
Loosening up and having more of one's creative intelligence available for discovering new possibilities
Increasing energy and presence
Finding new approaches from subtle body messages
Becoming more conscious of the major role non-verbal communication plays in conveying information
Using the body as a metaphor for collecting and processing information

Contemplative/Meditative

Holding still with a question and allowing an answer to appear in a sensory channel
Finding inner guidance to challenging situations by consulting one's highest, most aware Self as the repository of new ideas, solutions, possibilities

These are some of the many values and benefits for those who experiment with discovering new information in various sensory channels. You will also tailor your choice of tools and channels to the type of client with whom you are working.

Niela Miller (BA Creative Arts, MS Ed & Communications, CSW, LMHC) is a coach and trainer whose business, PeopleSystems Potential, is located in Acton, MA. Neila is offering a training/supervision group in the fall for people professionals with established practices and/or client organizations who want to learn how to use more intuitive creative processes in their work. To find out more (including how to order her manual, Being Alive! Creative and Emotional Intelligence Tools for People Professionals), visit her website at www.peoplesystemspotential.com.