Focus on the creative and intuitive to enhance your work performance

The corporate world looks much different today than in the suit and tie world of the mid-20^th century. Now, you’re seeing chefs, yoga teachers and foosball tables around the office, aiming to bring a healthy work-life balance, and to providing new ways for employees and managers to grow. Offices are bringing different art forms into the space to help employees learn how to better strategize and lead with improv classes, painting classes and more.

Some of the benefits of bringing art into the workplace include:

• Awakening the intuitive mind and quieting the rational mind with drawing, painting and carving.
• Seeing more details and nuances. Artists, and innovators have superb observation skills.
• Learning how to listen more deeply, especially for managers. Music especially helps with this.

Learning how to think and act like an artist means employees are learning how to: reframe problems to create new viewpoints; observe data to decipher its intricacy, and make sense of it while predicting future outcomes; find connections between unrelated thoughts and occurences; use imagination to originate ideas; work at the edge of their ability; take conceptual chances and use all five senses to develop insights and turn ideas into action.

In addition, participating in an art-related activity is a unique way to allow teams to meet and bond with one another outside of their roles – thus, engaging a friendlier, more relaxed, work-relationship dynamic.

In addition to participating in art, simply having fine art in the office can boost productivity. According to Dr Craig Knight, a psychologist who studies working spaces at the University of Exeter:

“There is a real tendency to opt for sanitised, lean workspaces, designed to encourage staff to just get on with their work and avoid distraction,” But Knight claims no branch of science supports the idea that workers in this kind of environment are happier or more productive. “If you enrich a space people feel much happier and work better; a very good way of doing this is by using art.”

 

If you’re ready to look at classes and art programs for your office, consider the following:

• Improv classes
• Acting classes
• Painting or drawing classes
• Field trip to see a ballet, opera, play or musical
• Group guitar lessons
• Pottery classes
• An hour of drawing

To spark your creativity, join our workshop: Self-Discovery Through the Lens of a Camera, an opportunity to put your innate creativity to practice and to learn what motivates you, on November 11. Book before August 25 and save $30!