by John Brooker | Feb 25, 2012 | Innovate
YES! AND… Creative Gorilla # 55 Flexing your style can help you to relate better to others, influence them more and so help in your creative endeavours I am a man of fixed and unbending principles, the first of which is to be flexible at all times. Everett M. Dirksen (1896 – 1969) US politician How easy is it for you to flex your style? Would your creative efforts improve if you flexed it more? Have you ever driven a left hand drive car? Or for those of you that drive on the wrong side of the road from us in Britain, (just teasing!) a right hand drive car? For those that have, you will probably realise that you have to flex your style. Driving in Spain recently, I realised that I had not even thought about the fact I was driving on the right, the change seemed totally natural. I had flexed automatically, even though it had been some months since I had last driven on the right. Some other analogies which may be more relevant for you could include eating a meal with chop sticks or knife and fork (I’m sitting in an oriental restaurant writing this), swimming alternate breast stroke and front crawl (just had a swim) or, like the Dutch aircrew nearby, switching between English and Dutch at bewildering speed. The driving analogy struck me as I was preparing for a section of a course on flexible communication whilst in Spain. The training related to work done by Robert Bolton and Dorothy Grover Bolton (you can find out more by reading their book People styles...