Observing subjective qualities in others past and present gives us a mental picture for the behaviors we want to practice. Each figure illustrates a quality researched from The Look to Craftsmen Project. When practiced as part of our day-to-day, these qualities will help us develop our mastery in our lives and work.

Creativity 101

“There is nothing stronger than a broken woman who has rebuilt herself.”

Hannah Gadsby's Nanette is one of the most powerful one-hour Netflix specials that every student, every employee, and every parent should see. A study in female anger, an inversion of comedy tropes, a wake-up call for toxic masculinity, a battle cry for women for the entire spectrum of femininity. Additionally, her work is very, very intelligent, sharp, and funny. Gadsby, a 40-year-old comedian once described as a "tea-sipping Australian lesbian," rocketed to international fame since her release.

The power of Nannette is that we are witness to the process of another human being’s self-actualization. Self-actualization is the realization or fulfillment of one's talents and potentialities. In a world telling us to fit in, this highly creative and vulnerable process is a radical act.

While it is an urge in every human being, few realize their true adult selves. We are behaviorally conditioned to be cautious, logical, and as unemotional as possible. We censor ourselves and others. Tapping our innate creativity can be a hard, messy, and painful endeavor.

“I don’t think anyone needs to follow my lead for the effective the shakeup to still happen. I don’t need people to do the same thing I did. That’s a recipe for blandness.”

Hannah Gadbsy sits with Backstage's managing editor Benjamin Lindsay to talk about her career, offer her insight on writing your own material, and more.

CREATIVITY 101

Creativity (or, as Maslow says, “creativeness”) is a facet of self-actualization. It is not a process that results in something novel and useful. In contrast, Maslow observed that there is a correlation (in his experience) between psychological health and ordinary creativity.

It almost always takes a transformational crisis to make us question ourselves, reassess our priorities, and change direction. For Hannah, it was about reasserting her identity and changing the story she was telling herself about who she is and the kind of work she wanted to do. To see and greet ourselves where we are at and nurture ourselves is the greatest act of creativity and kindness we can learn.

The hardship of something we deeply wanted to work but failed miserably in execution provides us with a pivotal moment, offering us the opportunity for profound change. Hannah’s failure wasn’t her comedy. It was that she was so successful at it, while not being herself. While life’s trials are real, so are many forms of knowledge (awareness, skills, experiences). We come through setbacks tempered, strengthened, and wiser—when we commit to exploring change and challenge.

The lesson here is that everything is temporary. So are we. We are not the person we were ten years ago, ten months ago, or ten days ago.

It is hard not to confidently come up with the correct answer to our dilemma is, as if there were only one. We have been raised to be right, definitive, and preferably first with an answer. We like our problems simple, ones we can get our heads around. Resolving simple, routine problems makes us feel smart. We feel like we are making progress when we can check off our to-do list.

Artist Ann Hamilton said, ”labor is a way of knowing.” In other words, what we work on creates our perspective of how things work in the world. Suppose this is true, and I think it is. In that case, those who have disproportionately relied on maintaining the status quo over creativity have been misled by the most profound myth of the industrial age: that efficiency can solve everything. That is only part of the complicated problems we face. Our practice is to build our subjective intelligence and help it engage more effectively with objective knowledge.

Our ability to advance in our lives and career is related to proximity and maturity. It's in the proximity to specific problems we care about that we hear things that we won't otherwise hear, that we'll see something we won't otherwise see. The things we hear and see are critical to our knowledge and our capacity to problem-solve. Creativity and mastery, in whatever work we do, comes down to how well we manage ourselves under pressure—maturity. Our ability to apply our skills and knowledge with improvisation when the stakes are high, to perform, is learning in action. Proximity and maturity come through awareness, reflection, and experience. Anyone can learn these skills. If we are willing to ride the edge of our certainty toward problems we can't not solve (yet), we will find the power to change the world. Those of us who can learn well will lead.

From animals to humans, we learn by watching others. We take elements from those around us and construct our own conception of who we are becoming in work and in life.

How do we become more creative? Wrong question. Creativity is not a goal it is a byproduct of a maturing process.

PRACTICE

List five “creative contagions,” past or present, whom you’ve admired. Then answer the related questions. Place a symbol next to the people who had the greatest impact on your conceptions of working with masterful creativity.

What specific examples of unique expression of their work stand out in your mind for each of these individuals?
What reservations might you have of learning from each one?
How did the context in which each of them led in their subject differ from what you face today?
What qualities, if any, of these leaders would you like to emulate?
What qualities, if any, of these leaders would you like to avoid?
After considering the qualities of those you admire, what themes emerge?
Are there any qualities you’ve observed here that you see in yourself?

After considering the qualities of those you admire, what themes emerge? Are there any qualities you’ve observed here that you see in yourself?

List five skills in which you are an expert. Imagine you lose your top three skills in the next twenty-four hours.

How would it feel if you could no longer lead with expertise in those skills?
What thoughts race through your mind?
What new skill would you have to develop if you were merely a beginner in the ones you lost?
Why did you choose that skill?

List ten hobbies, skills, or interests you would pursue if you weren’t too old, too tired, or defending your current knowledge. Choose one and take a side trip related to it. Begin your apprenticeship toward learning and creativity.

THE COMMITMENT

[ ] I commit to increasing self-knowledge of my core interests, and areas I can focus my development.

In her words…

"I don't hate men, but I wonder how a man would feel if they would have lived my life."

“My issue with Picasso is not that he shouldn’t exist and that he should be erased from our collective consciousness. Quite the opposite. I think he should stay there, but we shouldn’t be weaving a positive angle onto his misogyny and violence. That is part of the story.”

"To be rendered powerless does not destroy your humanity. Your resilience is your humanity. The only people who lose their humanity are those who believe they have the right to render another human being powerless. They are the weak. To yield and not break, that is incredible strength."

"I have built a career out of self-deprecating humor and I don’t want to do that anymore. Do you understand what self-deprecation means when it come from somebody who already exists in the margins? It’s not humility, it's humiliation. I put myself down in order to speak, in order to seek permission to speak, and I simply will not do that anymore, not to myself or anybody who identifies with me. If that means that my comedy career is over, then, so be it."

“…when I was diagnosed, it just gave me permission to be kinder to myself, to not always take responsibility for being a bit clumsy around other people, and allow me to start to tell people, "I'm clumsy, but I [don't] mean to be."

"I’ve been mastering the art of tension since childhood. I didn’t have to invent the tension. I was the tension. I’m tired of tension. Tension is making me sick."

"Punchlines need trauma because punchlines need tension and tension feeds trauma. I didn’t come out to my grandmother last year because I’m still ashamed of who I am. Not intellectually, but right here [points to heart], I still have shame. You learn from the part of the story you focus on. I need to tell my story properly. "

"I have a right to be angry, but not to spread it."

“What my mom eventually said to me was pretty much at the core of why I’m questioning comedy. She said to me, ‘The thing I regret is that I raised you as if you were straight. I didn’t know any different. I’m so sorry. I knew well before you did, that your life was going to be so hard. I knew that, and I wanted, more than anything in the world, for that not to be the case. And now I know that I made it worse. I made it worse because I wanted you to change, because I knew that the world wouldn’t.’

"I looked at my mom in that moment and thought, how did that happen? How did my mom get to be the hero of my story? She evolved. I didn’t. I think part of my problem is that comedy has suspended me in a perpetual state of adolescence."

"I don’t want to unite you with laughter or anger. I just need my story heard.”

"Seventy percent of the people who raised me, who loved me, who I trusted, believed that homosexuality was a sin, that homosexuals were heinous, subhuman, pedophiles. 70 percent! And by the time I identified as being gay, it was too late, I was already homophobic. And you do not get to just flip a switch on that."

"This is bigger than homosexuality. This is about how we conduct debate in public about sensitive things. It’s toxic. It’s juvenile. It’s destructive. We think it's more important to be right than it is to appeal to the humanity of people we disagree with. "

"He beat the shit out of me and nobody stopped him. I didn't report him to the police. And I didn't take myself to hospital. And I should have. But I didn't, because that's all I thought I was worth. That's what happens when you soak one child in shame and give permission to another to hate."

"This tension is yours. I am not helping you anymore. You need to learn what this feels like, because this tension is what not-normals carry inside of them all of the time. It is dangerous to be different."

What we don’t see on the resumes we review or the job descriptions we want is the litany of emotional entanglements we bring to our roles, uninvited, to the team and organizations we work in. Alongside technical skills, people who can master a range of subjective skills are better able to influence, deal with ambiguity, bounce back from setbacks, think creatively, and manage themselves in the presence of setbacks. In short, those who learn lead.