Chapter 22

The Combination of Preferences Within People

Understanding your preferences and those of your team members is essential for increasing your ability to provide innovative solutions to key issues. Taking the time to reflect on your own and your team's preferences within the stages of the creative process can save you untold hours and dollars in wasted effort and failed implementation. It can be the difference between creating the “Next Big Thing” or the next “New Coke.”

Although we have just described the four main preferences as if people fit neatly into one of these categories, let's take a moment to recognize that human thinking is a little more complex than that. It would be nice if it were that easy but it's rare to find people who have only one completely dominant preference that guides their thinking while working on solving problems or using their creativity.

You may see yourself as clearly drawn to one stage in the process. But look a little closer; you may find you're pretty comfortable with other stages, too. There are implications for having more than one preference. For example, if you really like to generate ideas and also feel adept at clarifying the challenges, you are probably full of energy out of the starting gate, identifying and solving issues with ease, coming up with targeted ideas that you feel perfectly (and instantly!) solve the problem at hand. But because you do not devote much energy to later stages in the process, you might find that these solutions ultimately fall short of their mark because they are not properly developed or implemented.

Let's look at the opposite set of preferences. What if you really liked developing an idea and putting it into action but had no energy for clarifying the challenge or generating a bunch of potential options for it? This would mean that you enjoy the final steps of the process—seeing well-thought-out ideas come to fruition, and watching people welcome and readily adapt to the new solutions thanks to how thoroughly they were developed to fit the situation. When your ideas have failed, it's often not the fault of how well they were developed but because they were not well targeted. They may have solved a problem or met a need, just not the right one.

Some people may have nearly equal preferences for three of the four stages. For example, they may like clarifying, ideating, and developing but not implementation. These people would be comfortable analyzing, coming up with ideas, and tinkering with them toward perfection, but they often can overestimate how much they can get done and you may see them step back when it's time to put the ideas into action.

There are of course many other combinations of types, each with their potential plusses and negatives. In our story, the character Maya represents one of the more common combinations of preferences—the integrator. She was comfortable with all the stages in the process with no clear preference for one stage or another. Integrators are indeed a special group. If you are leading a team and are lucky enough to have an integrator in the mix, you may be able to leverage that person's abilities strategically to move the team on to the next phase of the process or to act as a mediator between team members of different preferences.

If you are an integrator yourself, you will likely sail through the process with ease and thoughtfulness. Because of this natural flexibility, you may be able to see both sides of a disagreement. You may also let others with strong preferences dominate the conversation rather than challenge them.

You can recognize integrators on your team because they

• Easily relate to each preference
• Give even energy across the four stages of the process
• Are concerned about group harmony
• Mediate style differences between others and plug gaps
• Are team players
• Can be a stabilizing influence on the team
• May lose their own voice by pleasing others

Integrators have the gift of being able to tell when the party is over and not overstay their welcome. When a particular phase of the process is completed to their satisfaction, they are ready to move on, often seamlessly and with the rest of the group in tow.

Similarly, integrators can also sense when a stage in the process has not been completed thoroughly. For instance, let's say a group has no one with a preference for developing. An integrator may be able to rein in the group's momentum long enough to properly test and refine a solution that would otherwise be implemented prematurely.

There are some things integrators should watch out for, of course. Their tendency to create harmony within a team may lead to conflicts being avoided rather than dealt with effectively. Without resolving conflict, the problem may fester among team members and ultimately become a bigger problem down the road. Another consequence of being centered on creating harmony can be not speaking out when they think an idea or direction is the wrong way to go. Fearing that others may be offended by their feedback, the group could lose a valuable contribution from the integrator.

If you are like Maya in our story, you may not see how much you contribute to the team. Check yourself for how you've helped team members reach closure at different parts of the process. See how you may have held others back when necessary to make sure a part of the process is complete. Two final bits of advice to you, integrator: be sure that your desire for harmony within the group does not get in the way of tackling important issues, and make sure you contribute. You bring a valuable perspective—that's why you're on the team.