Ten + skills linked to imagination

Did you know ‘imagination skills’ are increasingly recommended as criteria for recruitment and promotion purposes? And yet, how often have you been told you were 'wasting time' when you gazed out a window to go on a mind adventure?

Here's what you were really doing; gaining more than 10 skills that can be developed through an imagination practice. For me, that was a joyous discovery!

Today, I'm sharing them with you.

HOW TO SUSTAIN IMAGINATION IN A BUSINESS

Recruit and promote talent based on imaginatIon skills. This recommendation comes from BCG Henderson Institute chairman Martin Reeves and Casati Health founder Jack Fuller in their Harvard Business Review Press publication, The Imagination Machine.

The skills to look for when recruiting and promoting include:

• the ability to notice, care about and analyse surprises

• the capacity to rethink mental models while considering multiple perspectives

• a willingness to improvise and experiment, to test and play with new ideas

• the capacity to encourage collective imagination by becoming a broker across groups

• the ability to take an imaginative idea further and turn it into an ‘institutional script’, in other words, articulate its essence

• the ability to demonstrate a career history of ‘serial imagination’, repeatedly chasing after and leading 'journeys of imagination'.

IMAGINATION: MORE SKILLS IDENTIFIED

Lincoln Center Institute executive director Scott Noppe-Brandon and educator Eric Liu identify 10 “capacities” earnt through imagination in their book Imagination First.

“Can you attend to the complexity of things beneath the surface?” they ask. “Do you know how to listen with your full body? How to notice recurring patterns? How to interpret them and act on them? Do you know how to reflect back on what you experienced.”

The capacities they identify are:

• noticing deeply

• embodying: experiencing a work through your senses and emotions, as well as physically

• questioning

• making connections

• identifying patterns

• exhibiting empathy

• living in ambiguity: accepting multiple points of view while having the patience required to find solutions

• creating meaning

• taking action

• reflecting and assessing

SKILLS GAINED FROM AN Imagination Session®

With our focus on collective imagination, an Imagination Session® works towards developing the skills already mentioned, and more. 

Capabilities also enhanced include:

• the ability to work as part of a team

• the confidence to share ideas

• the skill of imaginative listening and encouraging participation

• the skill of accessing the source of all creativity and innovation, your imagination

• in immersive courses, a deeper knowledge of the process from imagination to idea to execution, making change happen

• and in courses where two or more teams attend, the ability to work collaboratively with other teams to promote the cross-pollination of ideas.

For more about Imagination Session® contact dawn@imaginationsession.com