Is a partner a creative or critical thinker? | Clear Business
Creativity is a sought-after skill. It helps in finding a way out of even deadlocked situations and reacting quickly. A creative person is able to come up with an original solution to an issue that no one knows how to solve. And this person can offer something new in a situation when all the tricks have been tried. Such people always have ideas, there are no boring tasks for them to tackle. A creative partner won't take a ready-made presentation of the project, but will rather create their own or make the ready-made one non-standard. They have a special offer for every customer, even when they don't have the full information themselves.
Developing creative thinking is easier than it seems. The first thing that will help: disregard criticism. Of course, no one can achieve this 100%. You don't need 100%, because feedback, including negative comments, is a tool for creative tasks, it's any creator's modus operandi. To get over criticism more more easily, it's helpful to focus on the fact that your idea is good anyway, it just could be improved and supplemented. And so, when you have your mind set positively, you can train creative thinking with the help of:
• searching for associations;
• role-playing;
• imagination (imagining yourself in the shoes of someone or something);
• left hand (literally: try to use not your dominant hand for habitual actions, most often it is the right hand);
• writing down your ideas;
• finding a new use for an old thing;
• learning something new;
• a new job, etc.
There are so many ways and trainings out there! That's far from being everything. Most importantly, the skill of creative thinking can definitely be acquired.
Great! So creative thinking is what a partner needs.
Thus, a partner develops creative thinking and sees new opportunities where others fail to spot them. He or she is brimming with brilliant ideas, but for some reason none of them can be put into practice, there is still no result. One fails to realistically assess the situation, focus on one thing and eliminate unnecessary things. One can't choose the best idea from all the ideas, wanting everything at once. It turns out it's time to develop critical thinking.
The ability to think critically is also a sought-after skill. It will help one distinguish facts from fakes, pick a working strategy from the pool of many offered ones, etc.
And it's not hard to develop critical thinking either. For example, like this:
• ask 6 questions when getting any information: what happened? why? where? when? how? can the source be trusted?
• master SWOT analysis: being interested in the influence of external and internal factors on a process or phenomenon;
• get rid of stereotypes and clichés, form one's own opinions independently, etc.
These are also by no means all methods of developing critical thinking, only the primary ones. The main point is that it is achievable, you can learn to think critically. This means that it will be easier for you to communicate the offer to the customer: you will find proof of your words, make arguments and check the information.
Awesome! Critical thinking is something a partner really needs.
But isn't it a bit too complicated? Developing two conflicting skills at once? Is partner business really that hard?
Not at all. If you are not at all creative and not used to checking information, if on the contrary you are creative and used to checking information, if you are strong in one thing, you can get results in partner business with any initial set of abilities. Utilise your strengths at the beginning of your activity and then communication and teamwork skills will help. When dealing with people and interacting with your team, you are bound to meet those who either have creativity or critical thinking as their asset. And you'll help each other grow.
To acquire the skill of communication...
Stop. Just start talking to people and telling them about the project. A partner hones all useful skills as part of the process 😊