Lessons
Class Introduction
06:36 2The Math of Creative Collaboration
25:11 3The Baseline Traits of Dream Collaborators
05:09 4How to Spark and Harness Ultra-Productive Creative Conflict
18:44 5How to do Brainstorming that Actually Works
09:43 6Get Your Enemies to Help You Make Your Ideas Better
08:38 7How to Develop Curiosity in Others
22:48 8Becoming an Inexhaustible Creative Contributor
13:16Lesson Info
Class Introduction
Alright, so we're talking today about becoming an amazing creative collaborator. This is important to me because the last eight or so years of my life has been dedicated to helping creative people succeed in their careers. My background is originally in journalism and then I cofounded a company that helps put journalist and then photographers and videographers together with clients, help them do all the little things so that they can do the work they were meant to do. It turns out, that being good at creative collaboration, being successful as a creative person is not just about the craft, that's only half of it. Being good at what you do, whether it's designing, or writing, or any kind of creative field, how you interact with your clients, with your teammates, with your coworkers, with everyone that you work with, is what makes or brakes a career. And what makes a difference between amazing work and work that's frustrating. And also, creativity is never truly a solo project. Even if, ...
most of what you're doing is sitting by yourself, sort of alone, at a desk, working on stuff, anything that you produce that ends up being amazing is going to be the product of a lot of people, not just you. You might be the person that's putting the final touches on the thing, or writing it on the words, but everything that we do is building on the shoulders of the giants that came before us, that developed our fields, and also the best creative processes are a combination of lots and lots of people. We're gonna talk about that. Our goal is to walk away from this couple of lessons, this class, having more equipment in our toolkit to be better at working together with other people, bringing in the right kinds of people into our creative process. Once again, my name's Shane Snow, this is a picture of my website. Whatever you do do not press this button, if you show up there. My background is in journalism, I'm an explorer. I love exploring things both physical spaces and the world, and then also exploring science and business and writing about them. That led me to start this company that helps creative people called Contently. But also, because I'm just sort of naturally curious and explorer. If you dig around my website, you'll at some point end up here on this to do list, which is basically my list of side quests that I decided many years when I was in college, things that I wanted to do. And, you can see I've done some of them. I won a trophy, I forget exactly why I decided I wanted to win a trophy, I wanted to win a trophy, I wanted to be on Gossip Girl, and I have a few left. So, if you see this and there's any you can help me out with, if anyone knows Ryan Gossling and wants to introduce me, I wanna hang out with him at some point. But, especially, if anyone has any ideas for how we can set the zoo animals free. That's my, I believe is gonna be the hardest one to pull off. I show you this for a couple of reasons, and we'll get back to it. My career has been full of lots of different things that somehow have come back to connect. The last few years one of my big side quests has been this book, Dream Teams, which is about the art and science of becoming incredible together. It's about how teamwork works, and how about when humans when they come together they either fall apart or they do amazing things, which is essentially what creativity is about. That's what we're gonna talk about today. The first little bit we're gonna talk about becoming indispensable, the kind of teammate, the kind of creative collaborator that everyone wants to involve in their projects. That, when there's something that comes up, they think of you. What are the attributes of that kind of person and how can you contribute better to a creative project. Then we'll move on to basically talking about how to become more inexhaustible, more full of ideas and able to contribute not just to be wanted on the teams but to contribute more to your teams. Let's talk about becoming indispensable. The picture in your mind, a 1975 two-tone brown Chevy van. Picturing it? The kind with the little windows in the back with the curtains that you can do. This is the best I could find on Adobe stock, it's not two-tones, but imagine there's a dark brown strip going this way on this van. Now, picture this van dead on the side of the road, in the middle of a place called nowhere Idaho. This is what it looks like, nowhere Idaho, this van is dead. It's kind of twilight, it's starting to get dark. It's a time of year when it's pretty cold and long story short, no one is on this highway with this van. Except for us inside the van. I'm seven years old, with my little brother who's a year younger than me, and just as tall as me, so I hated him. We're in the back seat fighting. My father, my grandfather in the front seat tryin' to figure out what's wrong with this van. Dead on the side of the road, no one's coming. Now, at the time my parents had just had their fifth child, so imagine five kids in the course of seven, eight years that's a surprisingly big family. And, my parents were awesome. So, my mom's home with two kids and a toddler, er not a toddler a newborn, brand new baby brother. And, we went on a mission down to Utah to go retrieve my grandfather so he could come meet his new grandson. My grandfather was old and struggling with cancer. We didn't know how long he was gonna have so we wanted him to meet his new grandson. So we went down there in the 1975 two-tone 70s van, picked him up, and we were driving back and the van starts sputtering and then slows down and then dies. We're stuck on the side of the road. This is before cellphones, so my mother has no idea why we're late, she has no idea that we're gonna die. At least, this is as a seven year old, the first time I ever really remember thinking I could probably die now. As such, because I realized that we were screwed, I decided I was gonna now murder my brother so that I would not be the first to go. So, we're fighting in the backseat while my dad is trying to fix the van. My grandfather is a Korean War Vet, really kindhearted, very thoughtful guy, he's tryin' to help my dad out and my dad's an engineer, very good with cars and mechanics. They had no idea what's wrong with this van. So, they're up there, we're in the back fighting. My mom has no idea how screwed we are.
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Ratings and Reviews
Olga RK
What a great course, there is a lot of good and practical information here. What I appreciate the most about it is the methodology that's presented to help you develop your ideas. In my particular case, I have no trouble coming up with initial questions or concepts that I'd like to work on, but I'd often get stuck at a certain point. Also, I didn't know how to draw the line between where my input and unique perspective was valuable and where it was a good idea to get input from others, I enjoyed how this method allows you to pick at other people's brains while showing you how to simultaneously maintaining control over the steering wheel. Definitely recommend it!
aliens-leotard-0a-icloud-com
That was fantastic! So engaging, chock full of excellent, actionable ideas, and woven throughout with interesting stories and anecdotes.
user-baacd4
I like facts and stories woven together!
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