The Pygmalion effect, or Rosenthal effect, is a psychological phenomenon wherein high expectations lead to improved performance in a given area.  Traditionally this has been a phenomenon in which the high expectations come from others as opposed to ourselves, but recent research from INSEAD highlights how high self-expectations can be similarly powerful.

The research focused especially on creativity and found that we’re all capable of improving our creativity if we adopt the right mindset and have the right encouragement.

“To ensure a constant stream of high-quality ideas, managers need to help employees recognize that creativity is an acquired skill and provide opportunities for learning from creative experiences,” the researchers explain.

Creative manufacturing

The researchers conducted their work in a manufacturing firm that makes advanced electro-optic technologies.  The average age of each employee was 50, with many of the workers having been at the plant for over 20 years.  In other words, they were old hands.

In 2007 the company launched an ideation platform that encouraged employees to suggest ideas for improving the workplace.  Each idea was reviewed by managers, with feedback offered.  Additionally, the ideas were rated by a panel of experts for their originality, feasibility, and usefulness.

This feedback offered up an obvious opportunity for learning and improving one’s creativity, and the researchers wanted to examine if this actually happened, and if so, were particular circumstances most conducive to facilitating such an improvement.

Becoming more creative

The results suggest that there was a clear division among the workforce, with some employees able to improve their creativity consistently over time, whereas others lagged behind.

The authors suggest that whereas attempts to boost creativity within organizations, such as the launch of ideation platforms, can provide an initial spike of activity before settling into consistent patterns again.  These patterns often coalesce around ideas and approaches that have worked in the past.

After tracking the creative trajectory of employees over a seven-year period in terms of the number of ideas they proposed and the general quality of them some clear trends began to emerge.

A learning orientation

Central to our success with creativity is a learning orientation.  In other words, when we believe that our creative skills can grow with effort, then we do indeed tend to become better at creativity, both in terms of the speed and quality of the ideas we generate.  What’s more, this endures even when it becomes that bit harder to gravitate away from tried-and-tested solutions.

When people had a performance orientation, however, which the researchers define as being more focused on how you appear to others, there tended to be an initial surge of creativity, which then waned over time as their creativity withered.

The researchers suggest that the performance and learning orientations fit nicely onto the fixed and growth mindset so notably proposed by Stanford’s Carol Dweck, with performance-oriented individuals believing their creativity was largely fixed, whereas learning-oriented people thought it was malleable.

Persistence is key

Tapping into this exploration of our creative mindset was a second study from the Kellogg School, which explored how our beliefs about the longevity of creativity can undermine our efforts.

“People think their best ideas are coming fast and early,” the researchers say. “In fact, you’re either not seeing any drop-off in quality, or your ideas get better.”

Perhaps a reason for our belief in the creativity cliff is that we assume that creativity is the process of generating completely unique ideas.  The reality is that creativity and innovation are far more likely to be “recombinative”, or a process whereby we are constantly tinkering and building on what has gone before.

While the Kellogg research was conducted over a very short timeframe, this process is even more prevalent when innovation is viewed in the longer term.  As Edison famously remarked, “I have not failed, I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

While following our instincts can be hugely beneficial, this is a good example of how they can cause us to stop trying when persistence can yield excellent results.  If we’re striving to be creative, therefore, it’s crucial that we resist the urge to quit and keep plugging away.

The INSEAD team believes this is also a crucial factor in recruiting for creative positions, as we often rely on past performances as an indicator and worry that someone may have exhausted their supply of creativity.  The research, thankfully, suggests this is very far from the case, and with the right combination of learning mindset and determination, we can very much improve our creativity over a prolonged period of time.

The importance of creativity

Getting this right is so important as creativity is something we all rely on at work.  Research from the University of Jyväskylä underlines just how important it is.  The research finds that creativity isn’t just important to dedicated professions that are involved in innovation, design and traditionally ‘creative’ tasks, but is indeed important for all of us.

“The starting point of our study was that anyone can act creatively at work, and it could even be a desired activity, at least for the experts,” the researchers explain. “Creativity is not dependent only on an individual’s will or the decision to be creative though. Instead, many other factors outside of the individual affect the creative process.”

The authors urge employers not simply to try and recruit creative people, but to explore the circumstances and frame of mind of employees too.  Factors such as the supervision and culture of the firm are crucial, and employees should be given the freedom to make key decisions about their work, and indeed have flexibility and autonomy in how they schedule and organize their work.

They believe that the importance of creativity in the workplace is only likely to increase, especially as technology takes on more of the more routine aspects of our work.  Understanding how to enable and support creativity among workers is therefore likely to be crucial.

“It is fortunate that there are many kinds of people in the workplace: both inquisitive young people who are used to Googling to find solutions and more experienced employees who are familiar with sparring and guiding others,” the researchers conclude. “When these younger and more experienced practitioners are part of the same team, the possibilities for creative and successful outcomes increase.”