I’ve been delivering creativity workshops for over 12 years. I’ve been a partner in a big creative agency, run a very successful training business with 20 trainers reporting in to me and am now a partner at Upping Your Elvis. Over that time I’ve consistently had great feedback from bosses, clients and friends on how I show up, my delivery style and my knowledge of the subject. As a result my confidence has built to a point when stepping out in front of 500 cynical people to run an event, or facilitating a dysfunctional leadership team, holds no fears for me. The positive experiences over the years have slowly seeped into my belief system and, up until last week, I’d never questioned my ability.

The reason I’m writing this blog is because I was taken by surprise when one innocuous event managed to slam dunk my confidence and that of my business partner Matt.

It happened recently when we were training a relatively standard workshop, one that we’ve delivered many times before. We were getting excellent feedback throughout the day and as far as we knew, everyone was loving it.

Then, right at the end of the day, just as we were landing the big learnings from the session the senior sponsor became distracted.  We struggled to make eye contact with them and they quickly left the room after we had finished.

Maybe it was because we’d put loads of energy into the day and therefore we were a little bit more emotionally sensitive, but boy oh boy did we start having some negative interpretations and one quickly led to another – “they didn’t like our session”, “they didn’t think the content was relevant”, “they didn’t like us” – and before long we were thinking that we’d done a terrible job and that we were inadequate! We blanked out all the positive and reinforcing feedback we’d had throughout the day and, focussing on this one thing, we went home deflated and depressed.

We checked in with the client the next day and guess what.  They’d loved it.  They’d been using all our techniques and there was a real buzz in their office. The senior sponsor had apparently needed to leave our session to meet the European CEO hence their disconnected demeanour and so all was well with the world again.

It just surprised me how one person’s change in behaviour, even a small one, led to our misguided interpretations and had the knock-on effect of really challenging our self-belief in our ability.

These interactions are happening around us all of the time and, left unchecked, can start to wreak havoc with our self confidence and subsequently how we show up. To quote Henry Ford “whether you think you can or whether you think you can’t, either way you’re probably right”.

Building the right attitude is fundamental if you want any hope of making a difference, especially when it comes to creativity. As a creative leader you need to become far more aware of the experiences you’re creating on a daily basis, because as I’ve highlighted, they can be interpreted in a multitude of ways.

The key to building a creative culture is to change the behaviours of that culture and the only way you can change behaviours is by having an impact on people’s beliefs.  Get smart and start to engineer positive experiences around creativity. Stack the deck in your favour and be there to help people interpret events for themselves to ensure positive outcomes.

And, on a personal note, try not to lose perspective as Matt and I did.  I always find taking a deep breath and stepping back from the event allows you to process and make sense of what went on. The important thing is to face up to it.  If you sweep it under the carpet and ignore it, it will slowly eat away at you. Address it and you will stay in control of your beliefs and your confidence.

The easiest comparisons for how confidence affects performance in the sporting arena. Check out this link from a PARKOUR website that talks about the importance of confidence in the sport and gives some nice top tips around building it: http://www.parkourgenerations.com/article/confidence

Matt and I have had a right old laugh at ourselves and are back on track, and I’m hoping that next time there’s a bump in the road, we manage it a little better!

Jim Lusty, Partner Upping Your Elvis

Can you train people to be more creative? Aren’t some people just more creative than others?

These are questions that I hear often but I’ve been running learning workshops on creativity for over 12 years, and it’s my belief that everyone can learn to be more creative.

It all depends on how you define creativity. If you go down the traditional route that creativity is all about being an artist, composer or actor then I would probably have a different point of view, but I prefer to think of creativity as the simple ability to do ordinary things in new or different ways.

All too often creativity can be put on a pedestal, out of reach for many of us, but if you simply think of creativity as the ability to think flexibly around an issue and then find a new solution, then it’s easier for us to connect with it.  We all have this type of creativity – it’s innate and unique in all of us.

The most creative people I know are children – every 5 year old child I’ve ever met in fact.  They live in that expansionist world.  Theirs is a world of opportunities, where they are unattached to outcomes and not bound by rules and regulations.  They are free spirits and free thinkers, and they can express and experiment without having any hang ups or inhibitions. They’re innately curious, generous with their thoughts and they seek to make everything a game or adventure.  Funnily enough, we were all 5 years old once upon a time so creativity is something we’re all born with.

So why is it that I regularly meet people who have a deep-rooted belief that they’re not creative?  When I question these people they often say things like “Mrs Miggin’s my art teacher in 3B told me I was the least creative child she had come across.”  Education has a lot to answer for in this regard. It pigeon holes creativity into those traditional definitions of art and music and ultimately devalues its merit in other areas of life.

Research has found that a 16 year old child leaving school in the States has had to complete over 3,000 tests or exams which look for the one right answer. This approach represses that childlike way of being, that sense of possibility.  It is replaced and rewarded by a more rigorous and analytical mindset, a much more practical and disciplined approach to thinking, and one where things are black and white, right or wrong.  I would not say that these are not important skills to have. In my last creative agency my team probably spent 90% of their time in this more analytical way of being.  What we were very good at though, was identifying opportunities for creativity and then being explicit about the environment, dynamics, techniques, energy and behaviours that all have massive impact in ensuring successful and productive creative sessions.

I say explicit, because you can’t leave any of this stuff to chance. The worlds of judgement and creativity mix like oil and water and to navigate them effectively you need awareness, confidence and a skill set.  That is where the need for creative training comes in.

I often encounter cynicism when talking about ‘creativity training’.  If, however, I talk about skilling people up to be better flexible thinkers or to help people problem-solve in more exciting and impactful ways, then I tend to find that people want to find out more.  It’s the same thing, just wrapped up differently.

Without giving too much away, here are some guiding principles that we stick to in our approach:

1. Common language.  Knock creativity off that pedestal. Make it relevant and everyday, with some simple common language and real stories to help people connect, and things become way easier.

2. Awareness.  Help people realise that they are creative. Heighten their awareness around what creativity feeds off and when they find ideas easy, and then help them to think about what they need to do to replicate that in their work life. We get a real buzz from helping people realise their true creative potential.

3. Skills.  Arm people with some very simple techniques that make the creative process easy.  These can be anything from some creative tools to help pull apart a brief, to ensure you’re working on the right issue, through to a much more productive way of generating and capturing ideas (these don’t include a flip chart!).  We believe the simpler the technique, the easier it is to remember, and the more likely that it will be to be used back in the office.

4.  Behaviours. Creativity lives or dies based on the behaviours and energy you surround it with. Don’t leave this to chance.  If you label some key creative behaviours, then you can be explicit and manage a group of people through any creative session. We have identified a simple set of behaviours that ensures any creative group dynamic works.

5. Confidence. Make any learning experience safe, fun and interactive and people will play and experiment.  It’s not about creating awkward role plays and putting people ‘on the spot’ in dull training environments.  It’s about rolling your sleeves up, getting your hands dirty and making the learnings real in an informal way.  We design all our training courses so they’d be ones we’d want to go on ourselves.  After the course it’s all about practise. There is no silver bullet and arguably the training is the easy part.  It’s the discipline and bravery to try this stuff out back in the office that will cement the learnings and build people’s confidence.

Ultimately, the best thing about creativity is that it thrives on laughter and having fun and I guess, at our very core, that’s what we’re all about.

I often walk into business events and conferences and have a ponder about how much effort has gone in to bringing it all together. It’s like organising the Olympics! Tireless care and attention put into securing hundreds of flights and hotel rooms, plotting interesting cultural excursions, booking Audio Visual guys dressed in black polo shorts with a poor company logo. I also think of the thousands of pounds gone into making it all happen. However, I am then all too often surprised at seemingly how little care and attention has been put into the real reason why people are there… the CONTENT!  Here are a few tips to make sure your event can sing and drive home the messages people need to hear.

CUT AT LEAST HALF OF YOUR CONTENT
That’s right.  I can guarantee whatever you have in the plan to be delivered will be WAY too much for even bright-minded people to handle. If you truly want people to walk away knowing new things, behaving in new ways back in the business, you need to strip that agenda right back. Whatever you do, don’t think ‘Didn’t we cram a lot in. What great value for money’. This is a completely false belief.

PRODUCE YOUR PRESENTERS
There is a massive assumption that senior people are good at and enjoy presenting. I can assure you most of them dread it! Public speaking was voted the number 1 fear in the US ahead of death at number 2. Jerry Seinfeld makes a good joke about this “So that means at a funeral you would rather be the guy in the box than the one delivering the eulogy!’ You have to be ruthless in prepping all people presenting, make it easy for them, give them a formula to follow, no matter how senior they are. Most people I see go into way too much detail, read along with powerpoint slides (rather than use them as a visual aid) and have no big point to make going down the route of ‘throw enough shit, some will stick’.

ENVIRONMENT IS EVERYTHING
Really think about how the environment will say an awful lot about the atmosphere you want to create. All too often the venue determines this and people just go with it. If you have people in rows and rows looking at the stage it says ‘This is a broadcast. You must listen’ and so collaboration and interactivity is really hard to achieve. If you make it theatrical and dim the lights so people can see your fancy visuals it says ‘You can be passive because we can’t see you!’  I was working with a major bank a couple of years ago who were looking to focus an exec conference on putting the customer at the heart of all major decisions. We decided to put all of the senior people completely in the round with no screen, just real customers and experts talking from the centre, like being at a Shakespeare play. It meant that no-one could escape the subject and people could eyeball each other and have conversations. The environment made it easy and forced a reaction.

INTERACTIVITY IN ANY 30 MINUTES
The human brain craves stimulus from all angles, through different senses and styles… so why do we often see people sat down for 2 sometimes 3 hours on purely receive mode. For people who have a strong verbal style of learning this may work but if you’re highly visual and kinesthetic like me you feel like a trapped animal. Presenters are scared of interactivity because they have a perception of losing control. I think the other way round. If I am purely talking and not allowing input and being able to read the room then that’s the moment I lose control. Interactivity can be so simple. Get people to have a chat about something in pairs and shout out key things, get everyone to vote by sticking their hand up, have people share stories with each other to bring your principle to life. All of these things can be designed in minutes but inject movement and more ownership to the whole group. More importantly, people learn more as they’re in it not just watching it. As Benjamin Franklin once said “Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn”.   I once worked with a big FMCG business who had a new innovation stage gate process which is the filtering system that ideas go through before launched in market. This is a potentially dry process that would take 20 powerpoint slides to deliver. So, we got people to learn by doing, using the process to choose the right holiday for a real family on stage from a shortlist of options. Everyone got it. They still do!

EVERYTHING SHOULD HAVE A POINT
You have to make the most of every moment people are together. You have so many opportunities with any event to land learnings and highlight important messages. Think about the food you have, the welcome at reception, the evening entertainment, the often dry networking sessions and think how can these be more powerful. I was once working with a large pharmaceutical business who were looking to spread the importance of continuous improvement. In the first break we got people to fill out a complex form for which coffee they wanted, we then made them queue to hand in their form and then go into another queue to pick up their coffee where the assistant didn’t know what they had ordered. Yes, it annoyed the hell out of everyone, until they giggled… and realized that this was a reflection of the some of the useless bureaucracy that needed improving back in the business. Point made.

HIRE UPPING YOUR ELVIS!
We thrive on the big event. We have a mantra to design and deliver speeches and events that we would want to be in the audience for ourselves. We think it’s about a combination of high energy delivery, punchy principles, eye catching memorable visuals, big stories and as I have already said, bags of interactivity so people really get it and feel human!

It made me wonder why I did not want to be labeled with this job title?  Firstly, it’s just not very British is it?  Motivational speaking is what the Americans do really well.  The title conjures up images of ex-football players with shiny blue eyes and big teeth saying “You can be whatever you want to be. There’s only you holding you back”.  I’m not that am I?

Secondly, that job title reminds me of Mr Motivator, a spandex-clad fitness freak who got people exercising on morning TV in the early 90s.  I’m not that am I?

Finally, you normally associate motivational speakers with people who have triumphed through adversity; the war veteran, the injured sports star, the entrepreneur from humble beginnings.  I am none of those.

However, after some thought about my initial objection, my opinion has now changed.

Everyone should consider themselves motivational. You need motivation to get things done. If you look into the etymology of the word motivation, then you will see that its essence is all about moving people into action or into behaving in a certain way.

In fact the Medieval Latin motivus means ‘moving, impelling’.

If you were to ask me to boil down what it is that I do for a living, that’s exactly it.  Creative leadership is all about bringing out what is already in people so that they can take responsibility for shaping a new future.  What I do is motivate people to take that step so I now think there should be a lot more motivational speaking going on and I’m happy to put myself in that category.

Here’s my opinion on what makes a good conference speaker, whether they are speaking at a flashy business event with 1000 people or to a small team in a darkened meeting room.

1. It’s Not About Them It’s About The Content

I have seen far too many so-called motivational speakers absorb themselves so much in their own story that it’s hard for the audience to pick out anything useful for themselves.  People remember the person but not the words.

2. It Has To Create Realistic Movement In People

Sometimes the story that people tell is so fairytale that people can leave the event saying, “how amazing, they must be special”. That will have exactly the opposite of the desired effect as it’s the audience putting themselves in a bracket of ‘non-special’ or ‘ordinary’.  You have to give people smaller, more easily digestible things that they can work on realistically in their day-to-day lives.

 3. It Has To Be Relevant

This point sounds obvious but it is often missed. Whatever the big principles are that the speaker is sharing, they have to be what you want to see more of in the business. That doesn’t mean you can’t cast the net wide to speakers from backgrounds that are far different from yours, but it does mean that their message has to have a link back to yours.  If not it’s just a story you’re telling, it won’t motivate and will therefore not lead to different action.

Now that I’m more comfortable with the label of motivational speaker, here is my favourite quote from one of the pioneers of self-improvement and motivation, Dale Carnegie.  He wrote How To Win Friends And Influence People back in 1936 and said “If you want to conquer fear, don’t sit at home and think about it. Go out and get busy”.  Everybody can relate to that!

If you are interested in booking one of the Elvis team for your event then get in touch or watch our Keynote video for a flavour.

Matt

At Upping Your Elvis we’ve seen thousands of brainstorms being run and have the scars to show for it. I’m going to share a few pearls of wisdom that, get ready for this, could very well improve your lives forever! That might be an oversell, but I can promise to improve every creative session you run…until the day you die!

First I’m going to paint a picture of what I’m calling ‘The Classic brainstorm’, to highlight all the bad habits and routines that people fall into.

Imagine the scene…you’re in meeting room 3, all sat around a board room table, everyone’s laptops are out and whirring away, there’s limited daylight, the hum of the air conditioning and nothing to signify that this is anything other than just another meeting. Someone has suggested that what’s needed is a brainstorm and someone is randomly delegated to capture the ideas. This person, in an endeavour to show they know what they’re doing, positions themselves by a flip chart (the more advanced may use post it notes), grabs a pen and prays for ideas to start flowing. When they do start coming they’re eagerly listed down until the page, hopefully, is full. You then get everyone to tick their favourite ideas before promising to type everything up and get it back asap…sound familiar?

The energy in these sessions can feel good but the output is often just a list of words. The problem here is that you’ve only captured thoughts, not ideas. When the email entitled ‘Ideas from the brainstorm’ pops into our inbox we press delete or file away, never to be read again! Not only is this approach a waste of time, worse still is the negative attitude that starts to seep into the culture, round the value of creativity.

So what to do? Upping your Elvis has seven simple top tips;

1.       Stimulating environment = stimulating ideas. New thinking feeds off stimulus and the environment is a great source for inspiration. So why is it we always book a meeting room to run these sessions?  Once you’re clear on what it is you want to have ideas on, choose an environment that could help stimulate you on that subject. At the very least get out of the office. If you can’t, then the only rule I have is NO TABLES, they act as a barrier between people and formalise sessions that feed off informality.

2.       Small is beautiful. 3 maybe 4 people is ideal. It’s easy to manage a small group, keep their focus, energy and everybody contributes. In big team dynamics the facilitator struggles to manage behaviours and as the more vocal people dominate, the rest disconnect and start to misbehave. If you find yourself in a team of 15, simply split everyone out into 5 groups of 3. Everyone is engaged and you get five times the ideas…it’s a no brainer.

3.       Who’s in charge? Even if I’m having ideas with one the Elvis crew we always agree at the start who’s facilitating the session. Never leave it to chance. Creativity has so many unknowns that being explicit about who’s facilitating makes things much easier. It’s the facilitators job to set up the session, make sure everyone is clear on the challenge, what behaviours they want role modelled and then capture ideas down when they get generated.

4.       How do you want people to be? Some behaviours kill ideas dead and others nurture and seek out possibility. Again, be really specific at the start around what behaviours you want from everyone, otherwise chaos ensues. Positivity and fun will get you a long way.

5.       Sit on the pen! You only need stationary when you have an ideas to capture. Why is it that the first thing a facilitator reaches for is a pen. Free up everyone’s thinking by sitting on the pen and allowing an idea to grow and develop before you capture it.

6.       One idea per piece of paper. Make sure you capture the essence of the idea. Idea capture needs to be clear enough that if you gave that piece of paper to someone who was not in that session they’d still understand it.

7.       Visualise it. You don’t need to be an artist, but some kind of visual representation really helps crystalise the idea and also makes it easier to reconnect with all the ideas at the end of the brainstorm.

Now all you need to do is practise, practise, practise. Chuck out those post it notes, burn that flip chart and breathe life back into brainstorms.

You can read more on our training programs that focus on running shiny creative sessions or else just get in touch.

Jim

The leadership aspect is vital in any business context. No longer can we hope to turn up to work and be spoon fed by our boss’s on where and how we should deploy our amazing talents. We all need to be able to take responsibility for improving stuff every day and have the initiative and the drive to never tire of our mission.

When everybody in an organisation feels that they can spot opportunities and has the confidence to be able to do something with them that makes the situation better, then there is no limit to how the business will develop.

Not only will you get amazing commercial success, your people will be way more engaged and bring more of their own unique genius to work every day. When you know that you can own the future and you can bring your own special talents to make it shiny, it’s hard not to jump out of bed every morning loving what you do and loving who you are. That energy is palpable, infectious and incredibly exciting.

As my good buddy, Andy Fennell CMO of the Diageo, says, “ you can’t analyse your way to 10 out of 10. At best if you’re smart you may get to 6 or seven; but that will not win. The only way to get to 10 out of 10 is to take a creative leap and that’s why creative leadership is so important to any company’s success.”

All the rules have changed. The markets are more dynamic and unpredictable than ever before. Consumers are more demanding and insightful than ever before. Change is all around us and it makes this planet a damned exciting place to be.

You cannot however think your way through to success in the way that we used to when things were more predictable. Being smart is essential but is no longer a way to win; it’s just the stake that gets you to sit at the table.

When aiming for a 10 out of 10 by a creatively experimenting, we obviously risk hitting some 3/10 ‘s.  Our job as creative leaders is to navigate that path, to help others have the confidence to walk it with us and to help bring the unique talents of those people around us into the sharp focus of driving a value creatively in our teams.

We will get things wrong as you can never predict, and nor should you try, the future. But each time we bump our knees there is a fabulous lesson of how to be even more brilliant next time.

A Creative Leader relishes this game. They make it fun, energetic and yet deeply impactful. They are the ones who will not settle for anything less than extraordinary and because of them this world is a hell of a lot more shiny.

We assembled with some of our closest buddies from ITV, Mediacom and the School of Communication Arts in Covent Garden on a rainy Friday. The purpose of our experiment was to see if we could become more sensitised to the world around us and use it to answer some fundamental questions that we brought.

It was called “ Street Wisdom”.

We began by warming up and getting ourselves more attuned to the external stimulus and our internal processing. After much fresh mint tea and sharing of experiences we were ready and primed to ask the street for help.

It’s amazing what happens when you slow down and truly listen through all of your senses. Insights come from all angles. Teachers appear from the most unlikely of places. Things appear obvious that had once been hidden and shrouded through the busyness of our lives and our heads down rushing from one place to another.

The street is not just a place to travel through; it is not the bit in between A and and B.

It is a vibrant, magical world that can transform a jaded and confused worker ant into an enlightened, connected and a way too excited bunny who will not settle for anything less than extraordinary.

We all experienced some type of breakthrough; some significant realisation as to what the issue really was or indeed how we can crack it.  But way more importantly, we all felt a little more connected to who we really are and to this amazing and crazy and Technicolor and nuts and beautiful planet we all live on.

We are so smitten by the simplicity of the lessons we were taught and the benefit that we gained that we will soon be helping to bring street wisdom to a place near you.

If you are interested in playing with us on it, call out.

It has the power to change the world, and we will all be the better for that.

Shine On!

We all have creative genius, an inner Elvis if you like, and there are certain conditions which will help let it out.

A couple of themes that will be well known to all Elvis folk are that our logical brain can inhibit creativity and that unexpected and unusual experiences enhance creativity.

There is much more great stuff for creative leaders or anyone else who wants to up their Elvis. Well worth a watch.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01rbynt/Horizon_20132014_The_Creative_Brain_How_Insight_Works/

Jim was just on the tube and spotted an article in everybody’s favourite commuter read, the METRO. It talks about some of the science of laughter.

There is an alarming stat within there. Babies laugh 300 times a day. Adults only 20. That’s no laughing matter!

A fun read with a few good gags at the end.

http://metro.co.uk/2013/03/14/fart-jokes-mrs-browns-boys-or-big-bang-what-your-sense-of-humour-says-about-you-3541357/