- Challenges status quo: Dissatisfied with current reality, questions authority and routine and confronts assumptions.
- Curious: Actively explores the environment, investigates new possibilities, and honours the sense of awe and wonder.
- Self-motivated: Responds to deep inner needs, proactively initiates new projects, intrinsically rewarded for efforts.
- Visionary: Highly imaginative, maintains a future orientation, thinks in mental pictures.
- Entertains the fantastic: Conjures outrageous scenarios, sees possibilities within the seemingly impossible, honours dreams and daydreams.
- Takes risks: Goes beyond the comfort zone, experimental and nonconforming, courageously willing to “fail”.
- Peripatetic: Changes work environments as needed; wanders, walks or travels to inspire fresh thinking; given to movement and interaction.
- Playful/humorous: Appreciates incongruities and surprise, able to appear foolish and child-like,
laughs easily and often.
- Self-accepting: Withholds compulsive criticism of their own ideas, understands “perfection is the enemy of the good” unattached to “looking good” in the eyes of others.
- Flexible/adaptive: Open to serendipity and change, able to adjust “game plan” as needed, entertains multiple ideas and solutions.
- Makes new connections: Sees relationships between seemingly disconnected elements, synthesizes odd combinations, distills unusual ideas down to their underlying principles.
- Reflective: Incubates on problems and challenges; seeks out states of immersion; ponders, muses and contemplates.
- Recognizes (and re-cognizes) patterns: Perceptive and discriminating, notices organizing principles and trends, sees (and challenges) the “Big Picture.”
- Tolerates ambiguity: Comfortable with chaos, able to entertain paradox, doesn’t settle for the first “right idea”.
- Committed to learning: Continually seeks knowledge, synthesizes new input quickly, balances information gathering and action.
- Balances intuition and analysis: Alternates between divergent and convergent thinking; entertains hunches before analyzing them; trusts their gut, uses their head.
- Situationally collaborative: Balances rugged individualism with political savvy, open to coaching and support, rallies organizational support as needed.
- Formally articulate: Communicates ideas effectively, translates abstract concepts into meaningful language, creates prototypes with ease.
- Resilient: Bounces back from disappointment, learns quickly from feedback, will
ing to “try, try again”.
- Persevering: Hardworking and persistent, champions new ideas with tenacity, committed to follow-through and bottom-line results.
Source: “Free the Genie” series, a set of 12 creative thinking booklets, by Mitchell Ditkoff, President, Idea Champions.
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