Inspirational Leadership-Part 2

This is Part 2 of a session presented by Brene Brown that I attended at the Texas Conference for Women. If you haven’t had a chance to read Part 1-check it out here. It’s not critical, but I think you would enjoy it and well, it would make me happy to know you read it. And it is, of course, all about me.

OK, so what do you think about this statement?

Creativity is dead!

Agree? Disagree? Rather know what everyone else thinks before you decide?

OK, so maybe it isn’t dead. But it is dying. What am I talking about?

Check out this Newsweek article for the whole story, but here is the gist:

Enriched environments are making kids smarter. With creativity, a reverse trend has just been identified and is being reported for the first time here: American creativity scores are falling. Kyung Hee Kim at the College of William & Mary discovered this in May, after analyzing almost 300,000 Torrance scores of children and adults. Kim found creativity scores had been steadily rising, just like IQ scores, until 1990. Since then, creativity scores have consistently inched downward. “It’s very clear, and the decrease is very significant,” Kim says. It is the scores of younger children in America—from kindergarten through sixth grade—for whom the decline is “most serious.”

What’s it all about? According to Brene Brown, PHD it has a tie to that shame thing we covered in my last post. More specifically, our aversion to vulnerability that results from our attempt at avoiding shame.

Not convinced? Let’s look at vulnerability. It could be summed up as uncertainty plus risk plus emotional exposure. We avoid it because it is at the center of; fear, scarcity, anxiety and shame. Makes sense right. Who wants any of that? Not me! But here’s the thing, vulnerability is also the birthplace of; love, belonging, inspiration, accountability, authenticity, joy and creativity. And who doesn’t want more of all of those things?

In fact, Brown contends that innovation and creativity are born of vulnerability.

Some of the most successful people know this. Thomas Edison is quoted as saying: I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.

Michael Jordan, arguable one of basketball’s greatest talks about failure in this great 30 second commercial.

Michael-Jordan-Failure

“I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the game winning shot, and I missed. I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” ~Michael Jordan

Here are a few more “failures”.

Famous-Failures

So, what’s the lesson here?

Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook is known for encouraging his team to “fail often and fail fast”. Seems like good advice for all of us. And advice that we should share with those who matter to us.

Encourage kids to make mistakes, encourage employees to take chances, encourage friends to explore new opportunities, encourage spouses and partners to live their dreams. What’s the worst that can happen?

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor, catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”~ Mark Twain

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