I think you'll find this issue quite interesting - I enjoyed writing it!
I have focused on a specific subject this time - creativity and communication.
Please send me any comments or suggestions that you have.
Pleasant reading,
Amir
In this issue:
(a) Special Offer - Free Ideas
(b) Creative ideas for...
(c) Creative tool - Children...
(d) New on Best100Ideas.com
(e) Recommendation of the month
(a) Special Offer - Get Your Free Creative Ideas!
Do you need creative ideas right now?
Well, how about getting some professional creative ideas for free?
All you have to do is forward this newsletter to a friend or co-worker and then contact me through your instant messaging software and tell me what ideas you need, and I'll come up with up to 5 Creative Ideas on the spot - ABSOLUTELY FREE!!!
Here is how you can contact me instantly:
MSN Messenger: info@best100ideas.com
Yahoo! Messenger: amirzooz@yahoo.com
Gmail Chat: amir.elion@gmail.com
If you are not using any of the above, just send an email to info@best100ideas.com so we may communicate.
(b) Creative Ideas for Improving Personal Communication
Personal communication is one of the most fundamental of human activities. It is of vital importance in our personal life, as well as in nearly all the organizational and business settings. Improving the way we communicate with our spouses, children, colleagues, customers and suppliers may often lead to better results, an empowering sense of cooperation, and a general good atmosphere.
There are lots of conventional and well-established rules and advice for improving personal communication (see the Recommendation of the month section for one such reference). However, since this newsletter is focused on Creativity, the following section offers some unconventional - yet extremely powerful - ideas for making the most out of your daily interactions with other people.
- Silence: Sometime, in order to communicate better, you actually have to keep quiet for a while! When we are busy talking, debating, arguing or simply chatting we often fail to stop and consider the meaning of the words being said, and may take the conversation in general for granted. There are several ways you can use silence in your communication. For instance - in a meeting where you would normally participate and make your opinion well-known, train yourself into not uttering a single word. This is not an easy exercise, but it would let you concentrate on the dynamics of the meeting, on the participants' body language, on the possibilities or dangers of the ideas that arise (without being occupied with supporting or disputing the ideas verbally). If you wish to practice this idea with a friend or family member, you may find out how peaceful it may be to simply walk silently in the park together, or just watch each other and "talk with your eyes".
- Back-to-Back Conversation : This idea stresses the importance of body language, as well as make you pay more attention to the content and tone of the things that are being said. Instead of sitting facing the person you are talking to, turn your backs to each other, and try to discuss a subject as you normally would. You will find out you need to listen very carefully in order to determine if the other person has finished their sentence. Also, since a lot of information is revealed through facial expressions, so you will be forced to find other clues in the way thing are being said to compensate for the lack of eye contact. It will also train you into making your own messages clearer for the other person to understand.
- Color-coded "Mood Cards": A basic truth of communication is that the mood of listeners often affects what and how they hear and interpret the messages. An anxious listener may tend to hear the things being said as more threatening than they were meant to be, while someone in a good mood may misinterpret a polite reprimand even as a compliment. Communication may be a lot more efficient if we could decipher the mood of those we talk to and adapt our communication to fit it. In your family or your workplace you may use the following approach to the issue: agree on a color code to represent the mood of the participants of a conversation or a discussion (e.g. Red for angry or anxious, Blue for energetic, Green for relaxed, etc.). Every person gets cards with the different colors, and may use those cards before joining a talk, or when they feel a dialog fails to take into consideration their mood. The speaker in a meeting, for instance, may request the participants to hold up their mood card at the beginning of a session, and may get a colorful map of the group's mood. Similar uses are bound to improve the quality of interactions.
- Six Hats of Communication: This is a more sophisticated method for managing dialogs or meetings. Basically, it involves the direction of the type of thinking dedicated to each part of a conversation in order to make the speech or discussion clearer and more focused. For a detailed description of the method you may read the new article on the website called The Six Hats of Creative Communication (also mentioned in the New on Best100Ideas.com section below).
(c) Creative Tool: Children...
The last thing I think of children is that they are a "tool", of course. However, it is possible to harness the natural creativity and curiosity of children in order to come up with creative ideas or for raising possibilities for new paths of investigation. In a way (a good way, I believe), this would make our children an interesting "creative tool".
Here are a few suggestions for an appropriate use of children's creativity. None of the ideas are offensive or harmful to the children. Still, all of these ideas should be applied with the proper consent of parents and in my opinion of the children as well. In most cases, I believe the children would actually enjoy helping out, and would love to be praised for their help afterwards:
- Let the children play it out: Children have their own ways for solving problems, resolving conflicts or balancing seemingly opposite requirements. They also love to play pretend. Try to symbolize the major concepts of the issue you are facing, and present it to a group of children as if it were a game. Watch carefully how they interpret the reality of the situation, and after they are finished, you may also talk to the children to deepen your understanding of the way they see the problem and how they think it may be overcome. If you are able to repeat this exercise with several groups of children, you may discover a number of suggestions or solutions by each different group. In many cases, the solution might seem too simplified or basic - but that may just be the bottom line of the situation - and the children may actually serve as a strong reminder that a basic and simple decision must be made.
- Children's drawings: Although children's verbal expression skills may be less developed than those of adults, many of them can express a great deal of creativity through drawings. This ability may be of special value when you are looking for original directions for designing products, spaces, buildings, etc. Describe to the children in a simple way what the product, machine, or place is used for, and then ask them to draw new features for the product or space. Later, talk to them about what they've drawn and understand what they imagined and why. Their initial ideas or concepts might be a bit simplistic or half-baked, yet some ideas may include basic truths about what and how the product or space should look and function. Even if the change they offer is a multitude of colors on an otherwise gray design, this might be a refreshing approach that is worth checking out.
- Simply ask their opinion: It is amazing how often we forget to simply ask our children's opinion (actually, we often forget to ask the opinion of adults as well). If you have something on your mind, and need to hear other opinions and suggestions, simply describe the situation the a child, and ask them what should be done. If possible, take them on a tour of the location where the problem or need exists and use them as a consultant. Be sure to let them do all the talking they want, and do not disqualify any of the suggestions they make. You should rather try to investigate how they think their suggestion would solve the issue, and present them with more questions that arise from their direction of thinking.
An interesting new article has been added to Best100Ideas.com.
Its is called "The Six Hats of Creative Communication". The article details a method for coming up with creative communication ideas, using De Bono's Six Thinking Hats method. The interesting thing about the article is that it uses the method suggested in the article itself to communicate the message in an original article structure.
Check out the article "The Six Hats of Creative Communication"
www.inc.com is a professional source of information for managers, business owners and innovators. It is packed with well-written articles, advice, resources, and tools on various subjects - from managing start-ups, to online marketing, leadership, retail, business travel and many more.
I particularly recommend the very practical and well organized tool section. Here is just one example tool related to the subject discussed on the creative ideas for improving communication above. This downloadable tool is a comprehensive communications checklist, offering lots of ways and ideas for you to communicate any kind of message - to clients, employees, suppliers, the general community, etc.
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