Creative Streak

Verbal vs Non-Verbal Communications

You may not recognise the name, but Albert Mehrabian authored some of the most famous studies in communications research. His most well-known hypothesis: When two people communicate face-to-face, how much of the meaning is communicated verbally, and how much is communicated non-verbally?

First published in 1971, his research is almost a quaint idea today, considering that a lot of organisational and personal communications uses decidedly non-face-to-face methods of social media.

Despite using Twitter, Facebook, blogs to communicate (and I’m as guilty of it as anyone), there's something in Mehrabian’s research that continues to fascinate.

 He concluded there are three parts to face-to-face communications – sometimes called the 3 V’s – and these three elements determine how much a receiver “likes” the speaker:

• Visual, or body and facial expressions, accounting for 55% of the liking
• Vocal, or tone of voice, accounting for 38% of the liking
• Verbal, or words, accounting for 7% of the liking

Categories of Questions

Preparing questions in advance of research or an interview is vital for a variety of reasons. First, it means you’ve thought of all possible questions in advance. This in turn means any follow-up interview will focus on drilling deeper instead of playing catch-up.

During the interview itself, you can genuinely listen to the respondent’s answers instead of thinking up the next question. (Similar to handling a crisis or negotiating a deal, most people’s creativity disintegrates during tense situations.) Most important, it universally improves creative sessions because it ensures your brainstormers have the information they need to generate new ideas.

ost questions fall into ten different categories. The list below isn’t meant to be definitive, but I’ve often it’s a good place for teams to adapt and expand to fit a particular situation or client. (It probably goes without saying, but depending upon the organisation or the topic, you may need to sign a non-disclosure agreement to get the information you need.)

The easy method: begin by brainstorming all possible questions in each area. A friend uses a slightly more elaborate method. She begins by developing questions in each area by listing a) what information she knows for sure, b) what assumptions she has (what she think she knows), and c) what she doesn’t know. After you have plenty of questions in each group, finish by using R-O-P-E.

• Remove any questions that doesn’t make sense in context with the others.
• Organise similar questions together.
• Prioritise the questions.
• Evaluate the questions one last time – just to make sure you haven’t missed anything.

A last piece of advice: divide the questions among team members so one person isn’t doing all the work.

Group 1. Background, or Facts of Establishment

Using creativity for more than brainstorming

Outside of generating ideas - in and of itself, an important task - a surprising number of people have admitted to me that they don't know why they need to be creative at work. And, a good number of these people admitted further that they didn't have any interest or need for creativity.

It’s not surprising. After all, being creative has historically described someone who’s subversive and rebellious, or a person who falls outside of the traditional, normal or accepted path. For many cultures and societies, creativity (also known as ‘being different’) is an unwelcome attribute for a variety of reasons. I’ve even encountered people who believe being creative is somehow incompatible with being professional.

Regardless, creativity is as paramount to work as any other skill. Outside of brainstorming, here are the four tasks where people absolutely need creative skills in a business environment.

1. Strategic Planning

One element of strategic planning involves investigating all of the ways an organisation might grow in a particular industry or category, or transcend into new areas. Researching and developing any possible plans of action demands creativity, particularly in ways which are new, different or unusual. The phrase “You can’t expect new solutions from doing the same thing and over” demonstrates this point perfectly.

One of my favourite books on this subject is The Mind of the Strategist: The Art of Japanese Businessby Kenichi Ohmae.

2. Message Development

Every good corporate spokesperson knows this mantra, if not be heart, then by intuition: Know what you say, not say what you know. Determining what you're going to say requires the speaker to develop, re-write and edit a variety of statements into the perfect one. Similarly, branding or re-branding an organization or product means investigating all of its potential positions when compared with its existing or potential competition, with message development to follow. Positioning a company or service also means creating ideal messages which resonate with its target audiences, their influencers and the media.

3. Negotiation Skills

One of the basic elements of effective negotiation is to know all of your options before you get to the table. Knowing the range of options between what you need versus what you want is often the difference between successful and poor negotiations. It’s difficult to negotiate and be creative at the same time. Creativity allows the negotiator to develop all of options well in advance of the meeting with the other side.

One of the most accessible books on this subject is Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In, by Roger Fisher, William L. Ury and Bruce Patton.

4. Risk and Crisis Management

An important principle of risk management and crisis communications is considering all worst case scenarios. A common phrase in planning workshops is “What if?” - not unlike the question used in most brainstorms. The creation of potential hypotheses is particularly vital to do in advance of the crisis because – like negotiating – one’s creativity disintegrates in tense situations.

In their Harvard Business Review article ”Preparing for Evil” (April 2003), Ian Mitroff and Murat Alpaslan outline how the best companies prevent and contain crisis and issues, often with creativity.