How Creative Are You?: (2024)

How Creative Are You?: (1)

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CatLane

Anyone can be creative!

If the idea of being creative at work makes you think of artistic talent, don't worry!

Business creativity is all about finding fresh and innovative solutions to problems, and identifying opportunities to improve the way that we do things.

As such, anyone can be creative, just as long as they have the right mindset and use the right tools.

This test helps you to think about how creative you are right now. Take it, and then use the tools and discussions that follow to bring intense creativity to your everyday work.

How Creative Are You?

Instructions

For each statement, click the button in the column that best describes you. Please answer questions as you actually are (rather than how you think you should be), and don't worry if some questions seem to score in the 'wrong direction'. When you are finished, please click the 'Calculate My Total' button at the bottom of the test.

Your last quiz results are shown.

You last completed this quiz on , at .

16 Statements to Answer

Not at All Rarely Sometimes Often Very Often
1 Creative people should specialize in coming up with lots of ideas. Other people should then implement these.
2 If I have a problem, I allow myself to back off active problem solving, and I create some mental distance between myself and the issue.
3 When I'm coming up with ideas, I find myself using phrases like "we can't" or "we don't."
4 I'm busy. As soon as I have a good idea, I move forward with implementation.
5 I gather information from a wide variety of sources to stay current with what's happening in my field of work.
6 I see problems, complaints, and bottlenecks as opportunities rather than as issues.
7 When solving a problem, I try to rethink my current understanding of an issue to develop a deeper insight into it.
8 I often ignore good ideas because I don't have the resources to implement them.
9 I find problems and issues distracting. They cause me to lose focus on my real work.
10 I'm confident that I can develop creative ideas to solve problems, and I'm motivated to implement solutions.
11 I take time to investigate how things are working, even when there are no current problems.
12 I always look for the causes of problems, so that I can understand what's really going on.
13 I look for things in my environment to inspire me to find new interpretations of problems.
14 I focus on issues that are important right now, preferring to worry about future problems as they arise.
15 When gathering information about an issue, I explore solutions that have worked elsewhere in the past.
16 When I generate ideas, I evaluate them and I quickly discard ideas that I don't like.
Score Comment
16-36

You're unsure of your creative talent. Maybe you haven't been given opportunities to be creative, or maybe you're convinced that you're simply not a creative person. Either way, look for opportunities to improve how you do things, even if you don't have any current problems. Use the discussion and resources below to be more creative – you'll be surprised by how creative you can be if you give yourself a chance! (Read below to start.)

37-58

Your creativity is a "work in progress." You've had some successes, so now it's time to let loose and stretch yourself. Share your ideas and perspectives with others, and ask them how they view problems. Adopt a collaborative approach to problem finding, and work actively with others to create and innovate. The tools and resources below will help you get to the next level of creativity. (Read below to start.)

59-80

Creativity is one of your strengths, and innovative and creative minds are highly sought after. So don't hide your ability! Look for ways to share your creativity process with others. Engage colleagues and teammates in creative pursuits, and promote creativity in your team and organization. And remember that you can always be more creative – so use the tools and discussion below to fulfill your creative potential! (Read below to start.)

Boosting Your Creativity Ability

In his well-respected book, "Creativity," Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi says that an effective creative process usually consists of five steps. These are:

  1. Preparation – becoming immersed in problems and issues that are interesting and that arouse curiosity.
  2. Incubation – allowing ideas to turn around in your mind without thinking about them consciously.
  3. Insight – experiencing the moment when the problem makes sense, and you understand the fundamental issue.
  4. Evaluation – taking time to make sure that the insight provides sufficient value to outweigh the various costs involved in implementation.
  5. Elaboration – creating a plan to implement the solution, and following through.

We've mapped these five steps onto the process below. This provides a clear and practical way for you to think about creativity, and to use it in your everyday life at work.

(Questions 6, 9, 11, 14, 15)

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Creative people don't sit and allow problems to surface. Instead, they scan their environment for potential issues, and they see this as time well spent. Also, they're excited by the opportunity to change things. They aren't intimidated by change; they embrace it.

To develop your creative skills, you need to adopt a positive attitude towards change, and take an active role in identifying opportunities and looking for potential issues. To do this, challenge your business processes using Failure Modes and Effects Analysis, and look for bottlenecks in these processes. Carry out SWOT and PEST analyses on a regular basis. Keep up-to-date with customer experiences and expectations, and try to spot problems from other people's perspectives.

Also, engage in benchmarking to find out how well others are addressing similar issues, and look at the issue from a wide range of perspectives. Then, analyze your findings to ensure that a real problem does exist. This fact-finding activity can save you a great deal of time later on, and will help ensure that you only act on the most relevant problems and issues.

Look first for problems and potential issues that interest you. These are the things you'll be most motivated to pursue when you're learning to solve problems creatively. Then, as you become more confident, challenge yourself to investigate issues that are more complex.

(Questions 2, 5)

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When you have a potential issue or problem, gather as much information about it as you can. As part of this, investigate solutions that have been tried previously (both in your own organization, and in other areas), and identify ideas that might have surfaced, but were never acted on.

At this stage it's also a good idea to step away from the problem for a while, and allow new thoughts and ideas to enter your mind. When we concentrate on one issue for too long there is a tendency to latch onto one or two ideas, and this can block other good ideas. (One of the benefits of being proactive in your problem-finding is that you have time to incubate ideas, rather than being pressurized to find an immediate solution to a problem.)

(Questions 3, 7, 12)

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Once you've identified and verified your problem, you can figure out what's really going on. Often, the initial problem that you identified will turn out to be a symptom of a deeper problem. Therefore, identifying the root cause of the problem is extremely important.

When you do this, you'll find that techniques like CATWOE, Drill Down, the 5 Whys, Cause and Effect Analysis, and Root Cause Analysis are all very effective. While creativity may invoke ideas of spontaneous insight and far-out inspiration, the truth is that being creative in the workplace is rooted in a practical understanding of the situation at hand.

Don't, however, be so practical that you become negative. What often separates creative people from others is the ability to see past potential barriers, and believe in their insights. For instance, you could easily dismiss a great insight by saying, "Oh that could never be the problem!" But, you won't ever know if something is contributing to a problem unless you allow yourself to explore the possibility. That's what creative problem exploration is all about – being open to all ideas and possibilities.

(Questions 4, 13, 16)

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When you have clear insight into the cause of the issue, you can move onto generating ideas for a solution. Here you want to look for as many ways to inspire ideas as possible. Brainstorming, Reverse Brainstorming and Starbursting are popular for this, however these can be undermined by problems with group dynamics. Techniques like Brainwriting, Round-Robin Brainstorming and the Charette Procedure can help you circumvent common problems.

You can also enrich your ideas by using tools like the Six Thinking Hats, Random Input, the Reframing Matrix and Metaphorical Thinking to look at problems from different perspectives.

Obviously not all of the ideas you have will be practical or possible. So, as part of this step in the creativity process, you need to decide which criteria you'll use to evaluate your ideas. (Without a solid evaluation process, you'll be prone to choosing a solution that is perhaps too cautious.)

There are a wide range of tools you can use for the evaluation, including:

  • Risk Analysis: This helps you explore where things could go wrong.
  • Impact Analysis: This gives you a framework for exploring the full consequences of your decision.
  • Force Field Analysis: This helps you explore the pressures for and against change.
  • Decision Tree Analysis: This shows you how to evaluate different options from a financial perspective.
  • Paired Comparison Analysis: This helps you work out the relative importance of various factors.
  • Decision Matrix Analysis: This allows you to weigh many different financial and non-financial factors.

(Questions 1, 8, 10)

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A common misconception is that creative people spend all their time thinking of new and interesting ideas. In fact, truly creative people recognize a good idea and run with it.

For this final step, you need to be committed to taking your ideas and making them happen, and you need to be confident that you can, indeed, propose innovative ideas and inspire change.

To implement your ideas successfully, develop a solid plan, using action plans for simple projects, and more formal project management techniques for larger, more complex projects. You'll also need to be able to sell your idea to others in your organization. If your idea is likely to affect other people, you'll want to develop strong change management skills so that the people around you accept and use the products of your creativity.

Once you bring one idea through to successful implementation, you'll be motivated and inspired to repeat the process again and again!

Key Points

In the workplace, some people are naturally more creative than others. However, that doesn't mean that we can't all learn to be more creative, and use creativity enhancing tools and techniques in our daily lives.

At its core, creativity is the ability to see familiar things in a new light, and the first step to being more creative is training yourself to look for opportunities to improve the systems and processes around you.

Then gather information, find the main cause of issues and problems, and generate and evaluate your ideas. And don't forget that the mundane work of implementing your ideas is key to being genuinely creative!

Note:

This assessment has not been validated and is intended for illustrative purposes only. It is just one of many that help you evaluate your abilities in a wide range of important career skills. Click here for other self-tests.

How Creative Are You?: (2024)

FAQs

How can you say that you are creative? ›

A creative person has the ability to invent and develop original ideas, especially in the arts.

How is someone so creative? ›

So, if you want to boost your creativity, try out a new creative outlet or a totally different medium of expression, or take a new route home from work, or seek out a new group of people with different interests or values that you might learn from.

What does it mean if you are very creative? ›

Being creative means solving a problem in a new way. It means changing your perspective. Being creative means taking risks and ignoring doubt and facing fears. It means breaking with routine and doing something different for the sake of doing something different.

In what way are you creative? ›

When you are creative, you find connections between different ideas and use those connections to solve problems. Often these connections happen when you aren't actively thinking about the problem or task. Something you read or something someone says connects with the problem and you see it in a new way.

Can you give example of your creativity? ›

There are plenty of examples of creative thinking/doing skills in a work situation, from devising a social media strategy for a new product; to arranging an in-store display for maximum impact; to devising a new way of processing reimbursements; to strengthening the quality of customer service (with proven results).

How do you answer creative interview questions? ›

Here are some steps you can use to respond to interview questions asking for examples of creativity:
  1. Find an appropriate example. Brainstorm to think of examples of times that you came up with creative solutions in the workplace. ...
  2. Use the STAR method. ...
  3. Focus on the creative process. ...
  4. Highlight collaboration and communication.

Are you creative interview questions? ›

Other interview questions you could be asked about innovation
  • Tell me about a time when you were innovative.
  • Tell me about a time when you took an innovative approach to solving a problem.
  • Tell me about a time when you thought of a better way to do something.

Do you think you are a creative person Why? ›

Do you think you are a creative person? Yes, I would say that overall I'm a creative person. I'm always coming up with new ideas and new ways to do things, because I think that is a good way to keep work interesting. I also really like making art.

What is a creative person called? ›

A creative person can be referred to as an innovator, or a creator of new ideas. Here's a list of synonyms for innovator. Contexts. A person who introduces new methods, ideas or concepts. A person who creates or invents new things or products.

What are 10 ways to be creative? ›

10 Ways to Boost Your Creativity
  1. Step outside. And go for a walk. ...
  2. Step out of your comfort zone. ...
  3. Create psychological distance. ...
  4. Read (widely) ...
  5. Listen to music. ...
  6. Write (or draw) ...
  7. Make a healthy snack. ...
  8. Break your routine.
2 Nov 2018

How would you be more creative? ›

9 Ways to Become a More Creative Person
  1. Draw, paint, doodle, watercolor. ...
  2. Do something physical. ...
  3. Embrace boredom. ...
  4. Watch a TED talk or listen to a podcast. ...
  5. Generate way more ideas than you think you actually need. ...
  6. Make time for play. ...
  7. Journal. ...
  8. Get outside.
24 Aug 2022

Is creativity a skill? ›

Creativity is a skill that can be developed and a process that can be managed. Creativity begins with a foundation of knowledge, learning a discipline, and mastering a way of thinking. We learn to be creative by experimenting, exploring, questioning assumptions, using imagination and synthesizing information.

What are some examples of creativity at work? ›

A good example might be to open meetings with a personal or otherwise novel touch. A leader might go around the meeting and ask for a personal detail as well as a business-related development. In doing so, they send the message that they care about the employee in a broader sense than a purely revenue-related one.

How do you use creativity in your everyday life? ›

Creativity in Everyday Life
  1. Make your immediate surroundings as beautiful or eccentric as you can. ...
  2. Go somewhere new-as close as a restaurant you've never tried or as far as China. ...
  3. Spend 10 minutes a day dreaming out the window.
  4. Don't censor yourself.
  5. Do something new or something old in a brand new way.

How do you explain creativity as a strength? ›

Creativity is a strength within the virtue category of wisdom, one of six virtues that subcategorize the 24 strengths. Wisdom describes strengths that help you gather and use knowledge. The other strengths in Wisdom are creativity , curiosity , judgment , love of learning , and perspective .

What is being creative at work? ›

A creative workplace gives employees the ability to come up with unique solutions to challenges instead of simply being told what to do. Many employees will gladly offer up ideas to improve processes and help make the business more efficient if they're given the option.

How do you say you are creative in a resume? ›

How to demonstrate creative thinking on your resume
  1. Think of times when you were faced with what looked like an unsolvable problem and the path you took that led to its resolution.
  2. Share examples of original or unexpected ideas you've had that got you out of nail biter situations at work.

What is your greatest strength answer creativity? ›

Creativity. If you apply for a job where you come up with original ideas, products or processes, creativity is likely a key skill desired by the hiring manager. Naturally, you should have the skill to get the job, but also to enjoy your work. If so, you might say "Creativity is one of my greatest strengths.

Why is creativity so important? ›

Creativity allows us to view and solve problems more openly and with innovation. Creativity opens the mind. A society that has lost touch with its creative side is an imprisoned society, in that generations of people may be closed minded. It broadens our perspectives and can help us overcome prejudices.

What is an example of creative problem solving? ›

Solving current problems by considering what would have happened if the past had been slightly different. For example, considering a current career choice by thinking about your choices up to this point and the universe of paths not taken.

What is an example of creativity and innovation? ›

The invention of the motorcycle make them realize that they can also ride bikes without making any extra efforts, they just have to click the switch and its starts automatically. In this example, the thought of creation of a new traveling motorcycle is creativity, but the actual invention of it is innovation.

Why do I like being creative? ›

Creativity is one way to express what kind of human being you are, what you love, and who you are. Creativity lets you see who you are, what you're interested in, the values and standards you set, and how you want people to get to know you. Being creative you can show what life means for you.

Do you think you are a creative person ielts? ›

Do you think you are a creative person? Yes, I am a creative person, but all my creativity is for myself only. Every day I creatively mix and match my old dresses and make them look new. I also like to make pencil sketches out of my imagination and create different characters.

Are you more creative when your happy? ›

Happiness increases your performance and level of creativity. Happiness has a ton of positive effects. One of them is that is makes you more creative.

What word means creative? ›

  • artful,
  • clever,
  • imaginative,
  • ingenious,
  • innovative,
  • inventive.

What is another word for creative thinking? ›

inventiveness ingenuity ingeniousness cleverness design creativity creativeness creative t...

What type of word is creative? ›

Adjective She's a very creative person. She has one of the most creative minds in the business. They've come up with some creative new ways to make money.

How can you say that an artist is creative? ›

That, if you can't paint or draw, you're not creative. But, isn't necessarily true. Artistic ability includes skills and talent to create works of art: painting, drawing, sculpting, musical composition, etc. Creativity ability is the skill and talent to use our imagination to create and solve.

Can you call yourself creative? ›

Calling yourself “creative” is certainly a popular thing to do. Creativity is – after-all – a much-needed resource. But when everyone believes they're creative, the word becomes diluted. Confusion sets in.

How do you say you're creative on a resume? ›

How to demonstrate creative thinking on your resume
  1. Think of times when you were faced with what looked like an unsolvable problem and the path you took that led to its resolution.
  2. Share examples of original or unexpected ideas you've had that got you out of nail biter situations at work.

What is creativity simple words? ›

Creativity is defined as the tendency to generate or recognize ideas, alternatives, or possibilities that may be useful in solving problems, communicating with others, and entertaining ourselves and others.

Are you creative or artistic? ›

A creative person uses their imagination to formulate ideas and solve problems. An artistic person, however, uses one of many physical processes to create tangible works of art. Artists require creativity to further their craft. While only some people have artistic abilities, everyone is, or can be creative.

Is creativity a talent or skill? ›

Lynda Weinman, founder of Lynda.com: Creativity is a soft skill. Other soft skills include critical thinking, collaboration, and negotiation. It is a skill because it can be learned.

What type of people are creative? ›

12 common characteristics of creative people
  • Curious. Creative people enjoy learning new things, so their free time may include reading books or watching videos about topics they find interesting. ...
  • Playful. ...
  • Open-minded. ...
  • Flexible. ...
  • Sensitive. ...
  • Independent. ...
  • Risk-taking. ...
  • Intuitive.

How do you call yourself an artist? ›

a person who practises or performs any of the creative arts, such as a sculptor, film-maker, actor, or dancer. There is no mention if qualifications, how much money you make or the years of experience you have. It's quite acceptable to call yourself an artist even if you don't make a living, or trained.

What do you call a very artistic person? ›

A socially unconventional person, especially one who is involved in the arts. bohemian. nonconformist. maverick. individualist.

How do you explain creativity as a strength? ›

Creativity is a strength within the virtue category of wisdom, one of six virtues that subcategorize the 24 strengths. Wisdom describes strengths that help you gather and use knowledge. The other strengths in Wisdom are creativity , curiosity , judgment , love of learning , and perspective .

What are some examples of creativity at work? ›

A good example might be to open meetings with a personal or otherwise novel touch. A leader might go around the meeting and ask for a personal detail as well as a business-related development. In doing so, they send the message that they care about the employee in a broader sense than a purely revenue-related one.

What are the 5 creative thinking skills? ›

Aesthetic thinking, divergent thinking, lateral thinking, convergent thinking, and inspirational thinking are five types of innovative thinking to get the ball rolling. Divergent and convergent thinking are the most common ways to foster more creative thought.

How do you express yourself examples? ›

Express yourself creatively. Writing, dancing, music, and fashion are fantastic outlets to express inner emotions and make you happy. For example, if you're feeling sad, you might choose a dull outfit, or if you're feeling happy, you might choose to wear bright colours to portray that feeling.

Do you agree that through art we can express our ideas and feeling? ›

Doing art is a wonderful way to express ourselves! Art is a wonderful way of expressing ourselves. Writing is another good way of expressing ourselves as well. Those two mediums of self-expression is what I use personally to help express not only myself, but my emotions and my thoughts, especially during this pandemic.

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