Last week, carbonhouse had the pleasure of hosting creativity guru Carlos Salum, president of global consulting firm Salum International.

Carlos personally studied with the world’s noted master on creativity, Dr. Edward de Bono, author of the Six Thinking Hats and other bestsellers. He coaches companies and star athletes worldwide on how to achieve breakthrough creativity and performance.

Over the course of several hours, Carlos revealed the problems most of us encounter in terms of “group think” and other barriers to creativity. We are taught, for example, to defend our ideas—often in a very competitive and even arrogant manner.

Breaking the Barriers to Creativity

This all stems from centuries-old practices, notably passed down from the Greeks and their debating style of philosophy and discourse. To this day, we live in a terribly litigious society that rewards staunch positions.

Unfortunately, the end result is that many people either jump to conclusions, believe they are “not creative,” choose to sit on the sidelines, or see everything in a very linear, black-and-white way.

The key to getting rids of these roadblocks in our thinking is exploration vs. argument. Ironically, Carlos used the analogy of the “blind men and the elephant.” from which we derived the title of our blog.

“Most people still stand in one place beside the elephant, insisting that their viewpoint is the truth,” Carlos explained. “The real moral of the story is: Walk around!”

In others words, you have to find ways to move beyond the comfortable grooves or your experience, embrace stress and systematically bring new ideas to the table.

The Six Thinking Hats method is ideal for understanding the process of provoking different paths of thought, particularly in a group setting. Thinking, Carlos said, is in fact a skill that can be taught, and that everyone can do.

Posted in Creativity