A client said something recently that bothered me.

I was talking with a young adult about career options. I heard him say, “I’m not very creative, I’m really more of a math-and-science type.”

Creativity as an individual trait has been hemmed in and crowded out by a narrow definition that does not do it justice. If we can’t paint a still life, compose an original symphony, or design an architectural masterpiece, we conclude we aren’t creative. That’s that, an entire cluster of fulfilling, meaningful careers is suddenly off-limits.

Rik Wouters [Public domain] - Chrysanthèmes, 1915, oil on canvas, The Phoebus Foundation, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=70512242

Even career coaches like me fall into this trap! The most frequently used skills and interest assessments are based on a personality-to-occupation matching model created in 1959 called the Holland Occupational Codes. When a client seeks clues to which careers may be ideal for them, a coach usually gives the client an assessment with questions like these:

On a scale of 1 (dislike) to 5 (like), how would you feel about a job where you might:

Repair household appliances
Develop a new medicine
Play a musical instrument
Perform rehabilitation therapy
Manage a department within a large company
Develop a spreadsheet using computer software

If you’ve never seriously pursued music other than as a hobby, you would probably not rate “play a musical instrument” as a career option. After answering dozens of these questions, you receive the results of your assessment. If the “Artistic” occupational trait isn’t listed in the top two or three traits identified in your assessment, you would naturally think that it’s wise to steer clear of creative careers.

Not so fast!

It’s widely agreed that there is more than one type of intelligence. Spatial, linguistic, and interpersonal intelligence (also called social intelligence) are a few of the types identified in multiple intelligence theory.

Here’s the thing:

Creativity is like intelligence: it comes in different shapes and sizes.

Here is one example.

Dr. Tahira Reid is a scientist and professor at Purdue University. She’s studying how humans interact with complex machines by measuring changes in heart rate, blood pressure, eye movement, and other metrics through psychological and physiological sensors.

Reading her bio and learning about her research, patents, and focus areas, I’m pretty sure her top occupational codes would be “Investigative” (people who like working with ideas/concepts and enjoy science, technology, and academia) and “Social” (people who enjoy working in cooperative environments to improve the lives of others).

However, when you listen to Dr. Reid talk about her work, you hear the critical role her creativity plays in everything she studies. She considers creative ways to solve problems, devises new ways to bridge disciplines, and integrates ideas like trust into the field of mechanical engineering. She is director of the Research in Engineering and Interdisciplinary Design (REID) laboratory at Purdue, and her research is incredibly interdisciplinary, innovative, and imaginative. Dr. Reid says of her lab, “we like to study interesting, human-centered problems that matter.” As she describes in a presentation she gave at the University of Michigan, the field of design science “creates a space for you to have free and creative thought.”

Are science and engineering ever creative?

After hearing her design science presentation and TEDx talk, I think there can be no doubt that creativity is at the center of her work. But as a scientist and engineer, she would not be seen as “artistic” in the traditional sense of the occupational code.

Art and creativity are obviously related, but creativity is more than the ability to express emotions and ideas through music, visual arts, or dance. Creativity is about making connections between previously unrelated concepts. It’s about finding new ways to approach problems. It’s also about observing patterns that may not be obvious, and also noticing how and when those patterns are disrupted.

Rethinking creativity and the brain

Research on the human brain has shown us that creativity is more about the integration of less-frequent neural pathways than the mythical “creative right brain” of conventional wisdom. As Dr. Anna Abraham describes in a recent Scientific American Q&A: “Several large-scale brain networks that are known to operate in circumscribed ways in the uncreative mode are engaged in an integrative and dynamic manner during the creative mode.”

Artists demonstrate creativity when they express themselves through their art. The type of creativity they display centers on imagination and original thought, but that is only one way creativity manifests in an individual’s work. Perhaps a software designer has a different kind of creativity than that of a sculptor. Observing patterns and noticing their disruptions may be a type of creativity that is more often found in engineering and scientific fields than in music or dance.

A financial analyst may demonstrate creativity by integrating accounting principles with behavioral science and implicit bias theory to develop ethical and equitable financial benchmarks for an industry. This integration of different disciplines is truly creative, but might not be a trait that an occupational interest assessment would capture!

In her book The Gifts of Imperfection, research professor and author Brené Brown shares this eloquent perspective.

“There’s no such thing as creative people and non-creative people. There are only people who use their creativity and people who don’t.”

Consider how you might use your creativity to find new approaches to a challenge. You can be both creative AND scientific, innovative AND accurate. You don’t have to choose!

Confocal microscopy. Image from European Science Photo Competition 2015 by AlmudenaFM [CC BY-SA 4.0]

Interested in seeing what your occupations fit your interests? Try O*Net’s Interest Profiler.

Learn more about Dr. Tahira Reid:

Purdue University Faculty profile: https://engineering.purdue.edu/ME/Industry/People/ptProfile?resource_id=74127&group_id=28524

Notice innovation: Learning to See the Unseen in People and Opportunities (TEDxPurdueU): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGcW2xaFZv8

Have an example of how you used creativity in your work? Share it with me in the comments! Did you find this post helpful? Please share it with your network!

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