As a mentor, you want to help your mentees grow and thrive in their creative endeavors. But how do you help them develop their own unique voice and style, without imposing your own preferences or expectations? In this article, we'll explore some tips and strategies to foster creativity in your mentees, while respecting their individuality and autonomy.
Creativity is not just a talent or a skill, it's a mindset and a way of being. It allows you to express yourself, solve problems, innovate, and connect with others. Creativity is also essential for your mentees' personal and professional development, as it can boost their confidence, motivation, resilience, and adaptability. By helping your mentees cultivate their creativity, you're not only supporting their current projects, but also preparing them for future challenges and opportunities.
If you take the time to know your mentees, you can better understand how they think. Do they need time to work through a problem? Do they need a relaxing environment or a stimulating one? It's also important to support them when creative solutions don't work. They just found a way not to make a light bulb
Before you can help your mentees develop their own creative voice and style, you need to understand their creative strengths. What are they passionate about? What are they good at? What are their goals and aspirations? How do they learn and work best? By asking these questions, and listening to their answers, you can discover their unique talents, interests, and values. You can also use tools like the VIA Character Strengths Survey, the CliftonStrengths Assessment, or the Creative Problem Solving Profile to help your mentees identify and leverage their creative strengths.
One of the best ways to help your mentees develop their own creative voice and style is to encourage them to experiment and explore different ideas, methods, and perspectives. You can do this by providing them with a safe and supportive environment, where they can try new things, make mistakes, and learn from feedback. You can also challenge them with open-ended questions, prompts, and tasks, that invite them to think outside the box, and generate multiple solutions. You can also expose them to diverse sources of inspiration, such as books, podcasts, art, music, or people, that can spark their curiosity and imagination.
These are some of the questions that I've been asked and I too ask. Reflective Questions: Support deep thinking about their experiences and ideas. Hypothetical Questions: Challenge them to think outside of the box and explore new possibilities. Challenging Questions: Support critical thinking about ideas and refining them. Goal-Oriented Questions: Help identify priorities and focus their creativity. Collaborative Questions: Promote thinking about how their ideas fit into a larger context and encourage them to work with others. Metaphorical Questions: Support creative thinking and forming connections between seemingly unrelated ideas.
Feedback is crucial for your mentees' creative growth, as it can help them improve their skills, refine their ideas, and overcome their challenges. However, feedback can also be tricky, as it can affect your mentees' emotions, confidence, and motivation. That's why you need to offer feedback that is constructive and respectful, not critical or judgmental. You can do this by following the sandwich method, where you start and end with a positive comment, and sandwich a suggestion for improvement in between. You can also use the COIN model, where you state the Context, Observation, Impact, and Next steps of your feedback. Most importantly, you need to focus on the work, not the person, and use feedback as a dialogue, not a monologue.
This one is tricky. Different people respond to different types of feedback. It all depends on their insight on how they're doing. The more aware they are, the more direct you can be. Some people need mor whelp to understand that they're falling short, and it's important to be supportive, but all to make sure they leave the conversation understanding the situation, and ideally you would discuss strategies to move forward. Treat people like professionals, don't lie to them, and support them. But also know this, you can't help someone who doesn't want to be helped, or who doesn't acknowledge the feedback.
Another way to help your mentees develop their own creative voice and style is to empower them to take charge of their own learning and projects. You can do this by giving them choices and options, rather than directions and instructions. You can also ask them to set their own goals and milestones, and monitor their own progress and performance. You can also support them to find their own resources and mentors, and to seek feedback from different sources. By doing this, you're helping your mentees become more independent, confident, and responsible for their own creative outcomes.
Finally, you can help your mentees develop their own creative voice and style by celebrating their achievements and diversity. You can do this by acknowledging their efforts and successes, and by giving them recognition and appreciation. You can also do this by valuing their differences and uniqueness, and by encouraging them to embrace their identity and authenticity. You can also do this by creating a culture of inclusion and belonging, where your mentees feel accepted and respected for who they are and what they do. By doing this, you're helping your mentees feel proud and confident of their own creative voice and style.