First comes a picture. My mentor Uwe Kruger is a very visual guy, especially for such an auditory business (he is a musician). He and I were discussing creativity and innovation, and many of his observations carried a common verbal theme; “Don, what do you see?”; “Every musical key has a different color”; “start with a vision of what you want”; “when I cook, I start with a vision of a flavor.” It’s obvious that, for Uwe, everything starts with what he sees … with creativity for him, first comes a picture.
Now, early in my studies of the applied behavioral sciences I learned of a useful concept called Neuro-Linguistic Programming, or NLP. One component within NLP helps to explain how each of us prefers to take in, process and communicate information. Accordingly, there are four distinct “systems” in NLP: visual, auditory, kinesthetic and digital. When you have a conversation with someone and they prefer a visual representation system you’ll hear words like we do from Uwe; “see,” “look,” “watch,” “vision,” “color.” If the individual prefers an auditory system of processing the world as I do, you might repeatedly hear words such as “listen,” “hear,” “sounds good” or “sounds like” to communicate one’s perspective. Now, I’m not going any further into NLP than that. I only bring it up in response to a question that has been nagging at the back of my mind; is Uwe’s use of such terms just coincidental to his more visual preference – or is the creative process itself visually related, for all of us, regardless of whether we are visual, auditory, kinesthetic or digital in preference? Here is what I found out.
According to the latest brain science, reality and imagination seem to flow inversely along the same paths within our brains, across what they call our “mental workspace”. Visual information that your eyes take in flows from the bottom up across the brain’s lobes, and images that you imagine travel top down, but across that same area. This “flow” I’m talking about just means the general direction of electrical signaling within our brains – the way the current moves. I begin to believe there really could be a visual correlation then to the creative process; a foundation of imagining, or forming an image in our mind’s eye (a “vision” in Uwe’s words) of things that cannot yet be perceived through any of our senses. Perhaps creativity begins visually, whether we’re aware of it or not.
First comes a picture. What a profound statement. And, those of us with a different style preference might want to start exploring that “visual” side of life. In fact, as a kinesthetic and auditory person that always tends to process information via feelings and sounds, I think I’m actually limiting my own creative potential.
Let’s do something different – we can’t help but get better:
- Learn – study a little about NLP and about yourself and how you prefer to communicate with others and process information (visual, auditory, feelings or data)
- Build a new muscle – try to grow the ‘visual’ side of you … it just might accelerate your creativity and innovation. At the very least, you learn a new language!
-Don Brown
don@donbrown.org
Don Brown dedicates his career to ‘helping people with people’ in leadership, sales and customer service. Bilingual and experienced at the executive and line-level alike, you see the results of his work across dozens of industries, including brewing, automotive, airline, banking and medical equipment.
Speaking, writing, coaching and selling to the best – Ford Motor Company, Anheuser-Busch, United Airlines, Harley-Davidson, Jaguar Cars, Hilton Hotels and many, many more – Don takes great pride in long-standing customer relationships (some running well over twenty years).
