WEBVTT 00:00:03.300 --> 00:00:08.707 Let's now talk a little bit about roles in creativity, taking on a role. 00:00:13.680 --> 00:00:17.930 We'll start off by looking at de Bono again and the thinking hats. 00:00:17.930 --> 00:00:22.641 So, I think the two things if you've heard of de Bono will be lateral thinking and thinking hats. 00:00:22.641 --> 00:00:25.711 So, de Bono talks about *six hats*. 00:00:25.711 --> 00:00:30.160 One of the hats, what he calls the *white hat* is the information-seeking hat. 00:00:30.202 --> 00:00:34.002 I think the white is supposed to be like the blank slate, blank piece of paper you write on. 00:00:34.002 --> 00:00:38.705 So, you're seeking information – you're finding  out about things that are similar and related, 00:00:38.804 --> 00:00:41.410 and doing that kind of thing; it's a gathering stage. 00:00:41.410 --> 00:00:46.500 Then there's the *yellow hat*, which is the positive, bright, looking for the pros in everything, 00:00:46.500 --> 00:00:52.360 as opposed to the *black hat*, where you look at all the negative things, all the cons, all the reasons 00:00:52.360 --> 00:00:57.339 why something is bad. So, with those positive and negative, again – with the bad ideas, 00:00:57.339 --> 00:01:02.985 recall deliberately how do you think about what are the positive things about this idea? 00:01:02.985 --> 00:01:05.760 What are the bad things about this idea? 00:01:05.760 --> 00:01:10.000 And then actually, once you've thought of the good things to critique those; 00:01:10.000 --> 00:01:14.120 so, alternating you between taking this sort of positive, active 00:01:14.120 --> 00:01:17.993 role of thinking what are good things, and taking the negative role. 00:01:17.993 --> 00:01:21.809 Then there's this *red hat*, which is about listening to your feelings, 00:01:21.809 --> 00:01:25.853 trying to get that gut reaction to something, getting that out 00:01:25.853 --> 00:01:29.388 without necessarily thinking about why you think that, just getting it out there. 00:01:29.388 --> 00:01:33.393 You can use some of these others to question it. The *green hat*, which is all about bright ideas, 00:01:33.393 --> 00:01:36.447 thinking of just lots and lots and lots of ideas. 00:01:36.447 --> 00:01:40.940 And then, finally, and possibly most important 00:01:41.040 --> 00:01:45.000 the *blue hat* – the role management hat, actually looking back and saying, 00:01:45.000 --> 00:01:50.466 'Have I actually thought about all of the (inaud.)? Have I spent time thinking about the positive 00:01:50.466 --> 00:01:56.058 aspects of this? Have I spent time listening to what I feel about this?' 00:01:56.371 --> 00:01:59.849 Actually, I'm going to pop back to that feeling one because I've 00:01:59.849 --> 00:02:04.987 – one of the techniques that I often suggest people use when they do qualitative research is 00:02:04.987 --> 00:02:09.713 to deliberately do things that incite  those gut feelings. 00:02:09.713 --> 00:02:13.835 So, what I suggest doing is if they've got some sort of model, 00:02:13.835 --> 00:02:17.040 some sort of vocabulary, is to look back to the original data 00:02:17.040 --> 00:02:22.380 to use their model to describe their data  or use their vocabulary to describe their data. 00:02:22.380 --> 00:02:25.951 Perhaps it's something that somebody said,  something that somebody did, 00:02:25.951 --> 00:02:30.338 and then say, 'it's just a...' – you know – so, 'it's just a...' 00:02:30.338 --> 00:02:35.763 and then the words will be vocabulary. And see how much that rankles inside. 00:02:36.480 --> 00:02:41.100 So, effectively what you can do is create  situations. And this is the role management thing; 00:02:41.100 --> 00:02:44.881 it's saying, 'Can I create a situation where 00:02:44.881 --> 00:02:48.761 I can apply the red hat, where I can generate feelings?' 00:02:49.320 --> 00:02:53.408 So, I think it's a quite useful set of –  they're not the only things you could have. 00:02:53.408 --> 00:02:58.155 And there are different roles you can have; you might have roles which are perhaps more 00:02:58.155 --> 00:03:02.038 to do with – should we say – customer-focus or client-focus roles. 00:03:02.038 --> 00:03:06.473 You know – so, one of you might say, 'I'm going to be thinking about – I'm going to be the problem owner.' 00:03:06.473 --> 00:03:10.302 And another person might decide to act as the technology provider, 00:03:10.302 --> 00:03:13.856 another person as perhaps the management role, 00:03:13.856 --> 00:03:19.446 and then think about each, taking that viewpoint to look at a problem. 00:03:19.446 --> 00:03:22.456 So, there are different ways you might choose roles. 00:03:23.880 --> 00:03:28.587 So, why are roles useful – taking a role on at times? 00:03:28.587 --> 00:03:33.705 Sometimes it's to help you *notice that you've neglected something*. 00:03:33.705 --> 00:03:38.697 So, for instance, I mentioned the feeling one or it might be that you spent so much time thinking 00:03:38.697 --> 00:03:42.485 about positive things, you've not actually considered some of the negative features. 00:03:42.485 --> 00:03:48.284 So, by thinking about the roles, by putting a role hat on, you force yourself to 00:03:48.284 --> 00:03:52.967 think about things from *different  viewpoints* and to not neglect some aspect. 00:03:53.820 --> 00:03:57.884 Particularly on that positive and negative hat, if you say, 'I am going to be the devil's 00:03:57.884 --> 00:04:00.914 advocate for a period,' 00:04:00.914 --> 00:04:06.386 by stating that, by saying 'I am  putting that hat on, I am taking that role on,' 00:04:06.720 --> 00:04:10.620 it can avoid a level of rancor in groups. So, if you're doing a group, if you're working together 00:04:10.620 --> 00:04:14.760 and somebody's being the proponent's idea,  if you start saying negative things about it, 00:04:14.760 --> 00:04:20.223 everybody gets upset. If you say, 'Not because I think it's a bad idea, 00:04:20.400 --> 00:04:24.583 but because I'm going to take this negative role,  I'm going to try and think of all the negative 00:04:24.583 --> 00:04:28.808 aspects about it,' it can make it a little bit easier. I mean, they still might hate you if you do it. 00:04:28.808 --> 00:04:32.844 So, it's a good idea to rotate the negative hat  around. Everyone will love you while you're taking 00:04:32.844 --> 00:04:37.975 the positive hat on; they'll hate you when you have the negative hat on, but by *knowing* it's a hat, 00:04:37.975 --> 00:04:45.900 it can help allow you to be – particularly in this critical role – without causing ill will. 00:04:46.629 --> 00:04:51.694 It might also help you to *go beyond your norms of behavior*. 00:04:51.694 --> 00:04:55.720 So, if you tend to be the sort of person who always sees the negative aspect, 00:04:55.740 --> 00:04:59.804 then actually deliberately taking the positive role, or vice versa, if you're the person who 00:04:59.804 --> 00:05:03.456 just, particularly if you don't like hurting people's feelings, 00:05:03.456 --> 00:05:06.921 you might tend to encourage people. 00:05:06.921 --> 00:05:10.984 Think of all the positive things, think of things that help them, but actually sometimes it's 00:05:10.984 --> 00:05:14.191 *more* helpful to be critical, 00:05:14.191 --> 00:05:17.786 and so actually saying,  'Okay, just for a moment, I'm going to 00:05:17.880 --> 00:05:22.207 take that devil's advocate role, take that negative role and see where that leads me.' 00:05:22.207 --> 00:05:26.214 And it can help you to escape the patternings that you have. 00:05:26.997 --> 00:05:31.646 And particularly we mentioned the stepping back, the way that roles, actually thinking 00:05:31.646 --> 00:05:35.798 'I am taking on a role' helps you think about the role. 00:05:35.798 --> 00:05:39.660 It makes you think that there are different roles you can take and that they can apply. 00:05:39.660 --> 00:05:44.259 So... thinking about roles helps you to step back from the problem, 00:05:44.259 --> 00:05:49.138 step back from you as a solution (inaud.)— whether it's a team or it's you as an individual, you might 00:05:49.138 --> 00:05:54.540 alternate roles yourself within a project; you might choose to take roles if you're working as a group. 00:05:54.540 --> 00:05:58.849 But that stepping back is quite an important bit and *seeing that it's a role* 00:05:58.849 --> 00:06:02.171 and therefore helping you to adopt them. 00:06:02.171 --> 00:06:04.514 And they really make a difference. 00:06:04.514 --> 00:06:08.345 Taking on roles helps you think in *different* ways. 00:06:08.345 --> 00:06:11.971 So, this is seen particularly in  work on gender studies 00:06:11.971 --> 00:06:15.480 and also work on issues 00:06:15.540 --> 00:06:19.640 to do with racial bias in 00:06:19.640 --> 00:06:23.549 things like job markets and examinations and things like that. 00:06:24.060 --> 00:06:28.565 And this is partly about the bias – we  talked about bias earlier – but also about 00:06:28.565 --> 00:06:33.804 the way in which you tell stories to yourself. So, I come from a working-class background. 00:06:33.804 --> 00:06:39.068 So, one of the stories I might tell myself if I'm not careful is – you know – 00:06:39.068 --> 00:06:44.455 'Working-class boys don't do this' – as a child going to university or whatever it was. 00:06:44.455 --> 00:06:49.799 And I went to Cambridge University. You know – 'Working-class boys don't go to Cambridge University. 00:06:49.799 --> 00:06:53.125 Posh kids go there, not working-class boys.' 00:06:53.280 --> 00:06:59.520 We tell ourselves stories. What you find is when you do experiments and you get people to think 00:06:59.520 --> 00:07:04.918 just before an examination or a test about  different kinds of roles 00:07:04.918 --> 00:07:09.855 – now, that might be gender-reversal roles, it might be trying to think – of boys to think about 00:07:09.855 --> 00:07:15.429 more female things and vice versa. It might be about social background, a variety of things. 00:07:15.429 --> 00:07:20.408 You find it actually makes a substantial difference in the test scores. 00:07:20.506 --> 00:07:24.083 So, by just having people *think about different roles*, 00:07:24.240 --> 00:07:27.253 they suddenly *behave differently* 00:07:27.253 --> 00:07:32.800 because it's so easy to get trapped in the expectations we have of ourselves 00:07:32.947 --> 00:07:38.719 built up individually over time;  sometimes it's about our social situation. 00:07:39.600 --> 00:07:45.191 This also works for creativity. So, if you ask people to think about things that, shall we say, 00:07:45.191 --> 00:07:50.712 are creative things (inaud.), and it might be you spend time thinking about Einstein or DeRidder or Picasso, 00:07:51.060 --> 00:07:56.256 as opposed to, say, thinking about  a foot soldier who's ordered what to do all the time 00:07:56.256 --> 00:07:58.482 or somebody who's sleeping – you know. 00:07:58.482 --> 00:08:03.583 So, if you think about creative things and then go into a creative situation, 00:08:03.583 --> 00:08:06.722 that can actually help you be more creative. 00:08:07.680 --> 00:08:14.421 Throughout these videos, I constantly emphasize that we're all individual and different, 00:08:14.421 --> 00:08:21.392 and one of the most powerful things you could do  is understand the way you are and then use it. 00:08:21.720 --> 00:08:25.404 But part of that is also – it's a bit like seeing outside the box – 00:08:25.404 --> 00:08:30.555 by understanding that, sometimes you can create these things and roles, and building these roles 00:08:30.555 --> 00:08:34.855 for yourself is one of the mechanisms that allows you to 00:08:34.855 --> 00:08:39.798 for a period, for a purpose to actually reinvent yourself 00:08:39.798 --> 00:08:43.991 so that when you're addressing a particular problem sometimes you can literally address it 00:08:43.991 --> 00:08:46.315 as a different person.