Tips How to Foster Creativity Skills in Agriculture

In any business and especially on the farm, many people work together on teams and or on crews. Ag teams not only must grow crops, produce goods, and offer services, they must also lead the mission of the business and create and foster their team cultures. Having creative skills leads to the development of original ideas that are useful, such as doing things better or differently, or thinking of something from a different angle to solve a problem. Creativity and innovation help enterprises distinguish themselves in marketplaces (Maiden, 2015). Let's begin with a brief overview of creativity.

What is Creativity?

Creativity as an individual-level phenomenon, is described by psychologists as "the cognitive processes, personality traits, and developmental antecedents associated with individual creators . . . creativity might emerge through the interaction of individuals working within group settings . . . it might be shaped by the effects of social exchange and evaluation" (Simonton, 2003, p.305). Smith, an Oxford University professor, emphasized that the creative ideas are generated not only in people but in groups of people as well. His research discovered that people largely fit into two categories of creativity, first, the paradigmatic creative thinking that generates new ideas in small, incremental step, and second, the revolutionary creative thinking that opens bold new perspectives (Smith, 2003). Both of which are found in teams and farm crews.

Business leadership study defines creativity as the ability to produce work at novel and appropriate level. Creativity is the precursor to innovation it is expressed as the process of translating the creative ideas into monetized and scaled innovative goods or services or products that generate value or for which customers will pay (Maiden, 2015).

Leaders in agriculture business need creativity on their teams, they need qualified, creative and innovative employees. Leaders and managers must first create an environment rich with intrinsic and extrinsic belief simulators so that team members and employees can embrace and engage with their creative and innovative sides. Here are three ways in which you can cultivate and grow creativity and innovation on teams.

Leadership Tip: How to Foster Employee' Creative Thinking Skills in Agriculture

• Support apprenticeship in agriculture, through a mentor-apprentice relationship can foster mentee's creativity through providing supportive attitude, nurturing connectivity, and increasing self-confidence.
• Foster employee engagement in an ag, team by offering people the opportunity to feel connected and have a voice. Be open to suggestions and offer essential trainings and allow people to give feedback so feel like they are an important part of the bigger picture. Examples: a shared obligation to environmental stewardship or nurture an employee's ability to reach mastery and autonomy of a desired skill set (Pink, 2009).
• Show employees the pathway to career success in your agricultural enterprise, through mentoring and leadership programs (Freifeld, 2014). This is be achieved through envisioning a future for employees rich with development and growth opportunities that encourage learning about using emerging technologies. For example, in agriculture progressive usage of smart planters, or in dairy robotic milking, and even computer automated watering systems in the greenhouse industry should provide employees with interesting forward-thinking futuristic topics to master and advance themselves, in addition to their day-to-day farm chores.

Growing creative people and creative teams in agriculture requires leadership development and shared vision. Encourage creative idea sharing among your team and crew members. Ask your team members for their opinion and communicate with respect. Inspire and motivate your team members to be creative.

Sources

Pink, D. H. (2009). Drive: the surprise truth about what motivates us. New York: Riverhead Books.

Freifeld, L. (2014, July 7). Bridging the Skills Gap. Retrieved March 23, 2020.

Hooker, C., Nakamura, J., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2003). The group as mentor: Social capital and the systems model of creativity In PB Paulus & BA Nijstad (Eds.), Group creativity: innovation through collaboration (pp. 225-244).

Maiden, N. (2015). From Creativity to Innovation: The Importance of Design. In Missikoff, M., Canducci, M., & Maiden, N. (Eds.). Enterprise Innovation: From Creativity to Engineering. (pp.7-20) John Wiley & Sons.

Simonton, D. K. (2003). Creative cultures, nations, and civilizations. In Group creativity: Innovation through collaboration, In PB Paulus & BA Nijstad (Eds.), Group creativity: innovation through collaboration (pp. 304-325). Oxford University Press.

Smith, S. M. (2003). The constraining effects of initial ideas. In Group creativity: Innovation through collaboration, In PB Paulus & BA Nijstad (Eds.), Group creativity: innovation through collaboration (pp. 15-31). Oxford University Press.

Paulus, P. B., & Nijstad, B. A. (Eds.). (2003). Group creativity: Innovation through collaboration. Oxford University Press.