Module 4

Coaching and Creative

Problem Solving
MGMT5100
Welcome to Module 4
Coaching and
Creative Problem Solving
MGMT 5100
3

Road Map for Module 4

3.0 Welcome to Coaching and Creative Problem
Solving

3.1 Coaching and Development

• What is coaching?
• Problem solving vs Appreciative Inquiry
• Feedback

3.2 Creative Problem Solving

• Supporting goals
• Problem solving
• Creative thinking
• Developing creative solutions
Module 4 Learning Objectives and MPO Challenge
At the end of this module students will be able
to: Managing People and Organizations
• Identify the fundamental theories related to Discussion of Challenges
coaching and development of employees
(C01, CO4) Who is the best coach or mentor you
• Describe a challenge related to coaching and have ever worked with?
creative problem solving in organizations that
is relevant to your career (CO1, CO2)
• Distinguish between problem solving and
appreciative inquiry approach to coaching
and development (C01, CO2, CO3)
• Identify strategies to support a creative
approach to solving real world managerial
challenges using theories related to
communication (CO2, CO3)
Module 4.2
Creative and Collaborative
Problem Solving
First you need to acknowledge the problem Problems
are
Managers typical response everywhere
to handling problems
1. Problem Avoiders ignore
signals that a problem exists
Desired
2. Problem solvers react to a Situation
defined problem

3. Problem seekers look for

problem to solve before Actual
negative results occur
Situation
The Problem Solving Process
Trust
1. Problem Awareness Clear objectives
Identify problems

Analyze problems
2. Define the Problem
Agree on problem

establish criteria
3. Decision Making evaluate alternatives
decide on a plan
reality testing
4. Action Plan
Establish implementation schedule
Implementation
Reinforce commitment
Establish criteria
5. Follow-Through Monitor results
Take corrective actions
Adaptors vs Innovators
• Kirton’s Adaptation-Innovation
Theory
– Explains differences in our
approach to creativity

• How do you approach problems?

– Innovators do things
differently.
– Adaptors do things better.
Divergent vs Convergent Thinking
• Convergent: Idea analysis
(best answer)
• Divergent: Idea generation
(multiple answers)
• Metacognition: thinking about
how you think.
• Janus Face: Two opposite
ideas can both be correct.
Lateral Thinking
Lateral Thinking: a manner of solving
problems using an indirect and creative
approach via reasoning that is not immediately
obvious.
– Allows us to restructure mental patterns
– Avoids getting stuck in old loops.
– Analogies
– Comedy as lateral thinking!
Creative People
• In general, creatives tend to be…
– Open to experience
– Less conventional
– Less conscientious
– More self-confident
– Self-accepting
– Driven & ambitious
– Dominant, hostile
– Impulsive
• Feist (1998)
– Creative Self-Efficacy
Componential Theory of Creativity
• We can all be creative!
• We need to understand what conditions are needed to
help make us creative.
• The componential theory of creativity is a
comprehensive model of the social and psychological
components necessary for an individual to produce
creative work.
– The theory is grounded in a definition of creativity as
the production of ideas or outcomes that are both
novel and appropriate to some goal (Amabile,
2012).

• Listen: Eat, Sleep, Work Podcast

• Watch: Creativity and motivation

• Read:
Teresa Amabile (2017) The Medici Effect: What Elephant
s and Epidemics Can Teach Us About Innovation Book
Multiple Intelligences
• 8 Types of Intelligence (Gardner)
– School= Logic/Reasoning & Word/Linguistic
Smart

• Traditional views of intelligence will impact our

perception of creative ideas.
– Take the Test: What is your MI profile?
– Watch:
Howard Gardner on Multiple Intelligences
Flow
• The positive mental state of being
completely absorbed, focused, and
involved in your activities at a certain
point in time, as well as deriving
enjoyment from being engaged in that
activity.
– Aka. In the Zone!
– Autotelic experience (self-rewarding)
– Video games, web design, marketing,
pedagogy

• Read:
Positive Psychology: What is Flow?
Stages of Creative Thought
•The Art of Thought
• You need to be open to experience
• You need time and patience
• You need GRIT
– Grit is passion and sustained persistence applied toward long-term
achievement, with no particular concern for rewards or recognition
along the way. It combines resilience, ambition, and self-control in the
pursuit of goals that take months, years, or even decades.
(Duckworth, 2016)
• You need the right mindset
– Fixed: striving for success and avoiding failure at all costs become a
way of maintaining the sense of being smart or skilled.
– Growth Mindset: thrives on challenge and sees failure not as
evidence of unintelligence but as a heartening springboard for growth
and for stretching our existing abilities.
• You need to Prototype
– Critical to UX (user experience) design.
The Creative Workplace
JOB DESIGN
• Job Complexity
• Autonomy
• Creative design (Shopify)
– Spontaneous interactions
– Teamwork
– Communication flow
– Face 2 Face
– Unpredictable

PEOPLE
• Screening for creativity (traits, experience)
• Supportive supervision
– Participation
– Diversity
– Interaction
– Psychological safety
– Culture
– Structural factors
– Customers (end users)
The Power of Teaming for Creativity
Group Genius (Keith Sawyer, 2017)
– The individual genius and the lighting bolt creative idea are myths that can harm your organizations creativity.
– Creativity is a daily habit and comes from quality interaction

Group Flow: the spontaneous collaboration of group creativity and improvisation actions.
– Ideal Conditions for Group Flow
1. Group Goal
2. Close Listening
3. Complete Concentration
4. Being in Control
5. Blending Egos
6. Equal participation
7. Knowing your teammates (familiarity)
8. Communication skill
9. Process orientation (move it forward)
10. The potential for failure

Interactions matter!
 Destructive Conflict: passive aggression discourages the sharing of ideas.
 Constructive Conflict: active sharing of ideas moving toward a goal.

Listen: The Second City Works Getting to Yes, And Podcast, Tapping Group Genius with Dr. Keith Sawyer
Conceptual Blocks
• Mental obstacles that constrain the way problems are defined, and hey can inhibit us from being effective creatively.
– Limit the number of alternative solutions we consider.
– Four types of conceptual blocks
 Constancy (Cialdini, 2001)
• we value consistency. What works gets repeated.
• Vertical thinking (de Bono, 2000)
• Single thinking language
 Commitment
• Perceptual stereotyping
• Sunk cost fallacy
• Ignoring commonalities
 Compression
• Artificial constraints
• Narrow spectrum (need for a solution)
• Separating figure from ground
• (perception problem – bigger objects appear closer)
 Complacency
• Bias against thinking
• Right brain vs left brain (default to preference).

Pohl (2004) Cognitive Illusions: a handbook on fallacies and biases in thinking, judgement and memory
Collaborative Problem Solving
• Group goal to solve a novel problem (no preexisting script)
• Solution quality is visible and can be evaluated by members as
they design.
• Members are interconnected
• Member have specified roles and bring different resources to the
group. No one member can solve the problem alone.

• Common Tools
– Brainstorming
– Brainwriting
– Mind mapping
– Nominal Group Technique
– Synectic Technique
– Design Thinking Approach
The Reframing Matrix
• A technique for generating more ideas
through the adoption of different
viewpoints.
– Identify the different
stakeholders/specialists impacted
by your problem
• (note: people with different
experiences approach
problems differently)
– Fill out your reframing matrix –
problem in the middle
Synectic Technique
This technique emphasizes metaphor, imagery, emotion and energy.
“make the familiar strange and the strange familiar”

• Analogies
– Personal analogies: emphasizes empathic involvement by having
subjects try to identify with the object of the analogy
 E.g. If you were a song what song would you be?
– Direct Analogies: focuses on making connections between the object
of the analogy and external facts/knowledge
 E.g. This shampoo smells like?
– Symbolic Analogies: is a two-word description of the object of the
analogy in which the words appear to contradict each other (Griffith,
1987).
 E.g. Going through organizational change is like losing a loved
one.
– Fantasy analogies: encourages outlandish, fantastic or bizarre
solutions which may lead to original and ground-breaking idea.
 E.g. How would Ant-Man solve this problem?
End of Module 4.2
Thank you!