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Getty Images Leader’s Self-Insight 15.3

Do You Have a Creative Personality?

In the list below, check each adjective that you believe The average score for a set of 256 assessed
accurately describes your personality. Be very honest. males on this creativity scale was 3.57, and for
Check all the words that fit your personality.
126 females was 4.4. A group of 45 male research
1. affected ___ 16. intelligent ___ scientists and a group of 530 male psychology gradu-
ate students both had average scores of 6.0, and 124
2. capable ___ 17. narrow interests ___
male architects received an average score of 5.3. A
3. cautious ___ 18. wide interests___
group of 335 female psychology students had an aver-
4. clever ___ 19. inventive ___
age score of 3.34. If you received a score above 6.0,
5. commonplace ___ 20. mannerly ___ your personality would be considered above average
6. confident ___ 21. original ___ in creativity.
7. conservative ___ 22. reflective ___ The adjective checklist above was validated by
comparing the respondents’ scores to scores on other
8. conventional ___ 23. resourceful ___
creativity tests and to creativity assessments of respon-
9. egotistical ___ 24. self-confident ___
dents provided by expert judges of creativity. This scale
10. dissatisfied ___ 25. sexy ___
does not provide perfect prediction of creativity, but it is
11. honest ___ 26. snobbish ___ reliable and has moderate validity. Your score probably
12. humorous ___ 27. sincere ___ indicates something about your creative personality com-
13. individualistic ___ 28. submissive ___ pared to other people.
To what extent do you think your score reflects
14. informal ___ 29. suspicious ___
your true creativity? Compare your score to others in
15. insightful ___ 30. unconventional ___
your class. What is the range of scores among other
students? Which adjectives were most important for
Scoring and Interpretation
your score compared to other students? Can you think
Add one point for checking each of the following words:
of types of creativity this test might not measure? How
2, 4, 6, 9, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25,
about situations where the creativity reflected on this
26, and 30. Subtract one point for checking each of the
test might not be very important?
following words: 1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 10, 11, 17, 20, 27, 28, and
29. The highest possible score is 18 and the lowest Source: Harrison G. Gough, “A Creative Personality Scale for the
Adjective Check List,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
possible score is 12.
37, no. 8 (1979), pp. 1398–1405.
Leading Creative People
Leaders of today’s organizations have powerful reasons to encourage creativity.
As we discussed in Chapter 1, many organizations are undergoing fundamental
transformations to respond to new challenges. They need employees to contribute
new ideas. In addition, people can be more creative when they are helped to be
open-minded, curious, and willing to take risks. Leaders can increase individual
creativity by facilitating brainstorming, lateral thinking, and creative intuition.

Brainstorming One good way leaders encourage creativity is to set up brain-
storming sessions. Assume your organization faces a problem such as how to
reduce losses from shoplifting, speed up checkout, reduce food waste, or lessen
Brainstorming
Brainstorming noise from a machine room. Brainstorming uses a face-to-face interactive group to
a technique that uses a face- spontaneously suggest a wide range of creative ideas to solve the problem. The
a technique that uses a face-
to-face group to spontaneously
to-face group to spontaneously
suggest a broad range of ideas
suggest a broad range of ideas keys to effective brainstorming are:
to solve a problem
to solve a problem
1. No Criticism. Group members should not criticize or evaluate ideas in any
way during the spontaneous generation of ideas. All ideas are considered
valuable.
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