Imagination First: Unlocking the Power of Possibility by Eric Liu and Scott Noppe-Brandon (Jossey-Bass, 2009)
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Adults decide what to do based on analysis, consideration of consequences and long range planning. The portion of the brain, the frontal cortex, begins to develop in late adolescence, often not reaching its full maturity until a person’s early to mid-twenties. However, decisions tend also be too based on the options available and the “gut” sense of how to act. These aspects of decision-making depend on imagining the options and intuiting the best action to take: imagination and intuition. Though neither the table of contents nor the index ever use the word “leadership”, the authors strongly maintain that imaginative thinking is vital in today’s global society, not only in the classrooms, but “in the workforces as well.”
The book grew out of reflections about the work of the Lincoln Center Institute for the Arts in Education LCI), New York City’s educational arm of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Scott Noppe-Brandon served as the LCI director for 14 years, teaching, performing, and administrating. Eric Liu founded the Guiding Lights Network for the practice of mindful and imaginative mentorship. Noppe-Brandon has been very active in developing active Imagination Conversations among leaders from all fields within the United States who “Care about fostering a culture of imagination.” The LCI, founded back in 1975, has rigorously explored how best to train the imagination, at least in those areas that pertain to the performing arts.
The book premises that imagination is an essential cognitive skill that can be taught, and not only can it be taught, but also that it should be taught. LCI “Feel(s) that it is its responsibility to propagate the idea of imagination, creativity and innovation as indispensable tools of survival for all: artists, scientists, entrepreneurs, mathematicians, politicians, or business leaders.” Could it be that a well trained, active imagination is necessary for quality adult leadership?
Much of the work of enriching anyone’s ability to imagine has also to do with removing blocks that have developed and thwart the ability to think in terms of options. LCI, having observed many blocks, the stones that prevent the flow of an active imagination, have developed a number of activities that help dissolve blockage while at the same time improving, restoring, and enhancing, the individual’s or a group’s capacity for imagination. “Individuals, groups, organizations even bureaucracies can learn to routinize imagination.”
The authors attack what they see as a common myth, that one either has imagination or does not. “Imagination can be cultivated……everyone – can raise [his] level of imagination and readiness to apply it.…and…that it’s time for our society to get going on an intentional, dedicated, and systematic effort to up our imagination quotient – the real IQ – at work, at home, in school, at play, and in our community life.” This claim seems remarkably similar to that made by any number of speakers at leadership conferences, that leadership is learned, not genetic.
The text defines imagination as the capacity to conceive of what is not – something that, as far as we know, does not exist; or something that may exist, but we simply cannot perceive. Imagination, creativity and innovation are not interchangeable – they exist as distinct phases of a continuum. “If imagination is the capacity to conceive of what is not, then creativity in turn is imagination applied: doing something, or making something, with that initial conception. But not all acts of creativity are inherently innovative. In our view, innovation comes when an act of creativity has somehow advanced the form….The quality and durability of any creative act depends in great measure on the fertility and force of the imagination that feeds the act.”
.............................The ICI Continuum...................................
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To show that imagination can be cultivating, the authors cited the work of Alex Osborn, Applied Imagination, 1953, who pioneered the practice of “brain storming”. Imagination can be learned given appropriate techniques, which when practiced can develop a habit of mind practiced to imagine, the What if.
Among the sub-capacities that lead to improved imagination, they describe:
Noticing deeply – identifying and articulating layers of detail through continuous interaction with an object of study
Embodying – experiencing a work through your senses and emotions, and physically representing that experience
Questioning – asking: "Why” and “What if?” throughout your explorations.
Identifying patterns – finding relationships among the details you notice, and grouping them into patterns
Making connections – linking the patterns you notice to prior knowledge and experience (both your own and others)
Exhibiting empathy – understanding and respecting the experiences of others
Creating meaning – creating interpretations of what you encounter, and synthesizing them with the perspectives of others
Taking action – acting on the synthesis through a project or an action that expresses your learning
Reflecting and assessing – looking back on your action to identify what challenges remain in order to imagine future possibilities
The book is short, a mere 208 pages, only the first 39 pages are given to apologia, the stating of the need and importance for cultivating imagination. Succeeding pages describe a wide range of training techniques, developed at the Lincoln Center Institute, to broaden imagination. Included, also, is a thoughtful and fairly extensive bibliography.
The Imagination Capacities listed here bear some strikingly similar parallels to the Leadership Capacities espoused by Kouzes and Posner in Leadership, the Challenge (2003). At least three of Kouzes and Posner's "leadership capacities" seem to depend on strongly on the ability to take initiative and to imagine possibilities: "Challenge the Process", "Encourage the Heart", and "Model the Way". Even "Inspire a Shared Vision" and "Enable Others to Act" require the ability to imagine a variety of ways to accomplish these ends. The two sets of capacities align in so many ways. An underlying assumption by Kouzes and Posner is that we know [leaders] when we see them – meaning that leaders are identifiable by their actions. K&P accept initiative as a given without exploring why some individuals are prone to action while others remain far more passive. L&N-P defines action as creativity, a step that happens only after imagining what might be.
Not confined to individuals, imagination can be collective. Groups of people can have or be inspired to have a shared sense of what is not, what could be.
The exercises suggested in Imagination go way beyond the typical theater tricks drama teachers use in their classes, or what other artist-teachers use to loosen up fretful students: no color wheels, no leap frog exercises, and no voice projection practices. Mix Your Metaphors, for example, swaps out typical metaphorical descriptions for the unusual in order to allow participants to explore new visions of their group. “When a family is understood in terms of cycles that can’t be broken, people behave accordingly. But how would they behave if the family were a garden?”
Some of the exercises break conventional rules. In the exercise Fail Well – Treat Failure Like a Skill readers are encouraged to embrace failure. “We forget what children know intuitively, which is that there’s a useful way to fail and a wasteful way. The wasteful way to fail is to deny it or hide it….The useful way is to treat failing like a learnable skill – something that, with effort and reflection, we can get better at until one day we can reach the point of mastery. If at first you don’t fail, try, try again.”
Leaders need to imagine outcomes. Adults who can imagine the what could be begin the process of creating a vision; they are well on the way to being able to share that vision with others, a necessary capacity according to Kouzes and Posner. History suggests that a group’s destiny depends in great part on the actions of its leaders. Common sense would suggest that being able to imagine answers would provide leaders with a much greater range of choice. Potential leaders practiced in imagining potential approaches would seem more likely to step forward when needed to more readily accept the challenge of leadership. Adding imagination training to leadership education seems to make good common sense. The High School years, which bridge the growth phase between intuitive thinking and rational/reflective cognition, need to concentrate on developing an active imagination.
Coloring outside the lines may have no connection to being a leader, however imagining that you have either option, despite what the teacher says, allows a student to learn how to dare to be different. Perhaps the daring is the greater strength, but imagining what could be dared, what could be different, predates the act. Leadership is an act of creativity and depends on an active imagination.
That enhancing the ability to imagine outcomes makes good sense, accepting all these exercises as appropriate to leadership preparation for high school students does not. These exercises however help begin the dialog of the need to include imagination training in high school preparation classes.
