Creative Caffeine

How creative thinking skills transform work and home life.

Author: Celia Falkenberg

 We all have that person.
The colleague who drives you up the wall.
The partner who keeps shutting down.
The child who explodes, or implodes, when things don’t go their way.

And if we’re honest, sometimes we are that person.

We’ve been conditioned to respond to challenging behaviour with rewards, punishments and lectures. If they don’t behave? Give consequences. Withhold privileges. Get tougher. That’ll give them the willpower and motivation to do better.

But… what if everything we’ve been taught is dead wrong?

What if the key to helping people behave better—at work, at home, in life—isn’t about control or motivation? What if it’s about connection and a set of creative thinking skills?

I’ve been diving into the work of Dr Stuart Ablon, an award-winning psychologist, Harvard Medical School professor and author of the bestselling book Changeable: The Surprising Science Behind Helping Anyone Change....

The creative power of multidisciplinary teams

Do you tend to stick with ‘your kind’ in the workplace?

Birds of a feather flock together. This is often true both of avian creatures and of working professionals. We tend to stick with our own kind, preferring to work and fraternise with colleagues we relate easiest to, within our own profession, department or even our own specialisation. This is understandable and is explained by neuroscience which shows how unfamiliar territory can trigger fear and uncertainty.

Yet working with people from different disciplines is where the creative gold lies... in mingling with, learning from and being open to dissimilar and unfamiliar perspectives.

A non-lawyer wins Europe’s Most Innovative Legal Practitioner Award

Every year the Financial Times index features ten individuals for Europe Innovative Lawyers Awards. I was interested to see that this year, in the latest European report, the winning individual is Marion Palmer from Hogan Lovells. Wh...