The Shape of Creativity…

I spent some time today with an abstract artist that describes his personality as a “bubbly circle.”  For someone who is 15, he is pretty amazingly self-aware.  We spent some time talking about personalities, how we work together… and how we have conflict and it reminded me of a sort of unscientific personality assessment that I heard about a few years ago…

Now, for the  record, I think that ALL personality assessments are unscientific… So, this one has the benefit of taking about 10 seconds, as opposed to the Meyers-Briggs that takes half a day…

Pick the 2 most appealing shapes from the following:

The most appealing shape is your primary type… the second most appealing is your secondary type…

You have now completed the assessment.

Squares, Rectangles and Triangles are convergent personalities. In other words, they tend  to move in the direction of their goals.  They are generally systematic, logical and like specific and finite activities.

Rectangles are task oriented and relational.  They like to work in groups to solve problems, complete projects and accomplish tasks.  Squares are task oriented but not relational and prefer to work alone.  Triangles like to take charge, set goals and make sure that the goals are achieved.

Circles and Squiggles are much more interesting to creatives… since we tend to fall into one of these categories and find the convergent types rather boring.

Circles and Squiggles are divergent personalities… our tendency is to move outward from the current paradigm or structure.  Finite goals are uninteresting to Circles and Squiggles, who would much rather spend their mental energy trying to get OUT of the square, rectangular or triangular box that our bosses want to squash us into…

By the way, you might as well come to terms with the fact that Circles and Squiggles tend to be employed by Squares, Rectangles or Triangles…

Circles and Squiggles are also extroverted, creative and intuitive… and tend to be asystematic and undependable…

Circles are relational.  They are social and communicative.  Give a Circle a task to complete and he will talk about it.  I once worked with a pastor who would talk a project to death.  After one particularly long meeting, our administrative assistant looked at the two of us, shook her head and informed us that “talking is not the same as working.”  She was a Rectangle.

Circles also like for everyone to get along… Harmony is essential to their work environment… They don’t generally recognize structure as essential to harmony, but are not averse to the idea of adding structure as long as it doesn’t cut into their Facebook time…

In case you didn’t see this coming, a Squiggle is an off-the-wall creative.  Give him structure and he will invent creative work-arounds so that he can do things his own way.  Squiggles are people that get described with metaphors about “different drummers” and are often complaining about how boring their jobs are.

If you give a task to a Squiggle, he will generally come back to you with a counter-proposal. The current paradigm is ALWAYS too restrictive…

There is certainly more to be said about these types, but that’s it in a nutshell… So, what shape are you?