Creative confidence and the power to change the world around us

This week I've been working with senior education folk in Brisbane to show, through a set of stories and discussions, how their own creative confidence is so important to bring about a sense of self-efficacy in their teachers and students. Self-efficacy is that feeling that whatever you do can have an impact on the world around you. Creative confidence is not feeling uncomfortable when people start to approach things in ways that rock the status quo.

Self efficacy is pretty much at the core of motivation to learn, the motivation to do anything! After all, we don't tend to undertake tasks that we feel we'll never manage to complete or get good at: learning Arabic, cooking a soufflé... Students in school can have self-efficacy and see how to complete the "game" of doing well at school, while others assume they'll never score highly in that game and just disengage. Some have self-efficacy in spades, and others have little.

The talk above from IDEO and d.school founder David Kelley contains a powerful trio of stories about how self-efficacy has moved on from its origins with Albert Bandura in seeing how phobics can overcome their phobias, to a set of understandings about how humans measure their progress towards goals and decide on their next steps based on those measurements, sentiments and reactions. 

Kelley's bias is on creative confidence and turning the tide on the number of people who, from the moment they're institutionalised in school through to adulthood, decide to tell people "I'm not creative". His belief is that, in the same way snake phobics can be trained to get themselves out of that phobia, creative-phobics can be trained to get themselves out of that hole, too. It all starts with a basic set of assumptions and processes like design thinking that turn that scary creative journey into a familiar well-trodden path:

Much in the same way the snake phobic can see other people are not phobic, and must have found the means within themselves to be that way, we can realise that people we see as creative found a set of processes, steps and attitudes that allow them to think in that way.

Comments

[paul martin]

How creative was the US MRI man's hospital redecoration. The UK man (Sir Godfrey Hounsfield) who creatively invented the machine and carried the test body parts around with creative answers to various security guards key skill was that he was always always focused on his work.

[Building Self Confidence]

I was surprised to learn the same about your blog--- I loved it.I am a big fan of your blog.i am so excited by read of your blog's content.really great post.Thanks for sharing.

Building Self Confidence

[Warren]

BRILLIANT! Thank you for sharing.

[SF]

Great ways to stay motivated. Everyone has times when they feel down and demotivated. h

[Deccansoft]

I was very much surprised to learn about your blog---
I am a big fan of your blog.i am so excited by read of your blog's content. really great post.
Thanks for sharing.

[Get Creative]

Inspiring students to be creatively confident should be paramount in our education. Thanks for the great video.