Book Review by Jack Falt
This booklet emphasises that all people are creative. Temperament helps look at the different styles of creativity. Many people do not think of themselves as being creative. However, if looked at in the broadest context, everyone can be and already is creative.
The two main creative styles are: evolutionary and revolutionary. The evolutionary creative style is making changes that sometimes are quite minor but over a period of time can bring about significant change. The revolutionary creative style can come up with totally different ways of solving a problem, changing a product, doing something different.
While the first book, Creativity and Personality Type, devoted a good portion to understanding temperament and cognitive function theory and their relationship to creativity, this booklet just looks at creativity and innovation with an emphasis on temperament. The exercises that are temperament related are used to show how all the temperaments are creative and how all four are creative in their own ways. The Guardians are often the temperament who view themselves as the least creative. This booklet shows how they too have a valuable contribution to make. Also, if working alone or if one or more temperaments are missing from a group, it is useful to make a conscious effort to try to imagine what the missing temperaments might bring to the process.
This booklet could be a useful handout for someone leading a creativity session where temperament and personality type are not mentioned at all. When used in conjunction with temperament, it is even more valuable. Often groups are presented with a problem and they just blindly discuss the issue until they can come up with some kind of solution. It would be so much to their advantage to understand the process of creativity and actively use methods to make their session more productive. While it would be more effective to have someone trained in creativity leading such a session, I think that someone reading this booklet and applying a few of these ideas within the group could help it become more effective. The booklet has a number of exercises to help get the creative juices going. A few of the exercises were included in Creativity and Personality Type.
Marci Segal is very passionate about creativity and has spent many years honing her skills. She is very thorough and concise in her writings on creativity and innovation in this booklet. In today’s world, change is happening at an accelerated rate and we all need to use our creative skills to cope with the modern work world as well as in our daily lives. We need all the help we can get.