Creative Thinking - the inevitable ingredient of HR! 7 effective ways to enhance it

Effective ways to enhance Creative Thinking in HR Professionals

If you ask me, why creative thinking is an inevitable ingredient of HR qualities? I can only say if it is not there, HR fails. HR being an important function of any organization creates, introduces and sustains processes which are vital for the growth of any firm. So if the creator is not creative, chances are its creation will be shredded. If being creative is the best way to take HR to the next level, we should know methods to enhance creativity in us. Here are rapid seven ways that will help an HR to act creatively.

1. Socializing & sharing thoughts 2. Empathy in action 3. Be Imaginative 4. Pragmatism in life 5. Correlation among vivid events 6. Watch Your Ingenious Thoughts 7. Sometimes it is good to be Stupid

1. Socializing & sharing thoughts

Being HR if we are not mixing around and sharing our thoughts with others then we are curtailing our creativity. Yes, socializing & sharing thoughts boost creativity a lot. Sharing thoughts swings our mood to the directions which were not possible if we are alone. A mix of ample thoughts from different perspectives can lead to the construction of a new set of thoughts for our mind to process on.

Well, it highly depends on an individual’s ability, how to see the things or accept the viewpoints of others. Sometimes, during a conversation with another fellow, we don’t easily go with the flow and argue a lot on a topic. These talks and arguments in the form of thoughts are stored in our sub-conscious mind and reflected back again & again in conscious mind when we think something similar or try to concentrate on some HR issues like employee grievance, recruitment challenges or any personal problem. As thought process deepens, we can find that our problems do have some correlation with those talks and arguments and surprisingly, we see some new ideas popping up in our mind, framed out of those talks and these new ideas are usually solutions to our problems. This is how creative thinking works.

Truly, it depends mostly on the thought process of a person, but creativity does need some raw material to work on. No doubt, socializing and sharing thoughts give the best easily available platform to go ahead.

2. Empathy in Action

Being HR, we tend to meet people with problems. It is our emphatic capacity to place ourselves in another’s shoe and feel & experience the same pain which other person is facing. Now the question is what has it to do with creativity? Well, driven by empathy, if we are ready to understand and solve other’s problem we can act creatively.

Solving problem with emphatic approach requires great caring and understanding, and our subconscious mind keeps calculating the shortest route to reach the solution. Our thought process moves to higher consciousness state, and we are desperate to look for creative ideas that can make a significant move towards healing the person.

3. Be Imaginative

It is always good to go ahead with an analytical mind to take important decisions in life. But it is also good to blend our analytical thinking with some ‘out of cage’ thinking. Sometimes thinking some things are happening as in fantasy or daydreaming can trigger our mind in a surprising way, and we can find easy answers to impossible appearing problems.

As an HR specialist, we tend to come across diverse personalities in our life. Dealing with all, in the same way, can cause chaos and disturbance among us. We deal with different people differently, so it is better to keep changing the approach with some dreamy or artistic efforts with creative thinking to get the impossible change that is not possible with the normal analytical approach.

4. Pragmatism in Life

Pragmatism means doing things based on concepts and experience rather just mere ideas and thoughts. Yes, it is important to think deeper and act faster. If you are to act on one thing, make sure to plan out things very wisely and then act so. This is what pragmatism is all out. Keeping in mind the ins and outs of action is what being practically mean. We often hear from our dear one, “Man, think practically, is it possible in life?”

The now question is, how being pragmatic in life will enhance creative thinking in us. Being realistic triggers new thoughts that lead to actionable priorities and build creative thinking.

5. Correlation among vivid events

Well, talking about these things in public can trigger some controversies and arguments. But to get the real soup out of this idea, one has to practice it independently with full faith and confidence in it. Correlating few incidents, moments and thoughts can revamp your flashbulb memory- A flashbulb memory is a highly detailed, exceptionally vivid 'snapshot' of the moment and availability heuristic- is a mental shortcut that relies on immediate examples. The rapid assimilation of thoughts can bring out new ideas and creative thinking that you are looking for.

6. Watch Your Ingenious Thoughts

If you wonder what ingenious has to do with our creativity, then you are not alone. Even I didn’t know it. So I referred Oxford Dictionary and got what exactly ingenious means.

The meaning of ingenious amazes me. This word defines the real you. This word substantiates the capacity and attitude to become more creative by embracing your ideas resulting out of several ideas around you. If you are a type of person, who has the tendency to have different ideas or solutions to any problems at any time in your life. You are an ingenious person.

The good news is this quality is found in everyone. Just you don’t focus it creatively. Yeah, sometimes, there is no other option left but being and acting creatively. If you keep a watch on your tentative actions triggered by random ideas, you are already on track to become a more creative thinker. Now you need to keep it up.

7. Sometimes it is good to be Stupid

Ah~ Every time you don’t need to be a wise man. Forget about being a wise man. Nobody is always right and wise. So it is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.

That said, sometimes you need not focus on everything around you. At certain times, when you don’t get relevant ideas by putting all your efforts and applying all methods, then it is time to keep your eyes open and mouth shut. Let the subconscious mind keep working until it gets a solution. Loosen your thought process, loosen your action, let mind calm and rest and fall in a meditative state. Hope you will get the solution to that problem, but it is up to you to decide if it is worthy to speak thoughts that can remove all doubt or if it is still better to be stupid.

How do you think creatively? Share your methods in the comment box below.