Creativity + Innovation Coach, and PrinciplesYou Certified Coach
Most people assume creativity is a rare talent or a job description. But what if your creative intelligence, or your ability to navigate change, solve problems, and imagine new paths, is already hiding in plain sight, embedded in the way you think?
That’s the power of understanding your thinking style. And few tools illuminate it as clearly as the PrinciplesYou assessment.
Many personality assessments tend to reduce people into tight categories, like diagnostic snapshots that can feel black-and-white. Even when backed by rigorous science, the results often fall short, reinforcing overly simplistic judgments about who we are and how we work with others.
In contrast, PrinciplesYou offers a more layered and dynamic picture, one that illuminates the nuance of how your mind actually operates, especially under pressure, in collaboration, and through complexity. It helps you learn not only how you process information, but how you instinctively make decisions and lead others.
When viewed through the lens of Creative Intelligence (CQ), those insights can become a launchpad for real transformation.
Creative Intelligence Is More Than Creativity
Creative Intelligence (CQ) is a dynamic, human-centered framework I developed while coaching professionals through complex transitions and inflection points. It integrates three essential capacities:
- Emotional Intelligence (EQ): The ability to identify and interpret emotions and use them productively, while understanding others’ emotions and better navigating them
- Creative Thinking: The ability to generate ideas, imagine alternatives, see new patterns, and conceptualize future possibilities
- Applied Creativity: The ability to take those ideas and turn them into strategic action, making what’s imagined into your reality
While creativity may include being artistic, it’s more fully understood when embracing adaptability, resourcefulness, and emotional agility in an unpredictable world. CQ is a skillset you can learn and practice. And your thinking style shapes how you do it.
Thinking Styles: Your Hidden Creative Code
In my book Second Draft: Rewrite Your Midlife Through Creative Intelligence, I describe five broad categories of thinking styles that influence how we approach creativity: Analytical, Relational, Visionary, Practical, and Creative/Innovative. Some people naturally generate a flurry of new ideas but struggle to follow through. Others prefer structure, clarity, and solving problems within a defined system. Neither is necessarily more creative, but both need to know how they tick, and where they come up short.
This is where PrinciplesYou shines.
The assessment uncovers how you prefer to think – abstract or concrete, independent or collaborative, conceptual or practical – and how those tendencies may shape your approach to problem-solving, relationships, and leadership. It gives language and insight to something most of us have only felt intuitively.
And once you know your style, you can start designing around it, leveraging your strengths and identifying your creative blind spots.
When Strengths Become Stuck Points
We often default to what we do well, and frankly, many of us assume everyone thinks the way we do. But our greatest strengths can quietly become limitations when overused or left unchecked.
A systems-oriented thinker might struggle with ambiguity and avoid experimentation. A relational thinker might seek harmony at the expense of bold decisions. A fast-moving visionary might overlook crucial details and the constraints inherent in life.
Understanding your thinking style means you know the lane you’re in so you can consciously choose when to accelerate, shift gears, or bring in collaborators with complementary styles.
That awareness is the foundation of CQ.
From Insight to Action: Building Creative Intelligence
Knowing your style is just the first step. CQ asks you to use it. To grow from insight into impact. Here’s how:
- Emotional Intelligence helps you notice when you’re excited, triggered, or stuck, and use those feelings to shift your mental state
- Creative Thinking helps you become curious, ask “What if?,” and imagine multiple solutions
- Applied Creativity gives you tools to test, prototype, and iterate, turning ideas into meaningful results
All of these can be tailored to your unique cognitive wiring. In fact, one of the most powerful exercises in Second Draft is helping people identify their personal creative thinking style. Not to box them in, but to give them agency and choice.
Why This Matters Now
Change seems to be accelerating at an alarming clip. Not least of this is automation and uncertainty, and we can’t afford to rely solely on machine-like logic or rote productivity. The future belongs to those who think like humans: deeply, flexibly, and creatively.
PrinciplesYou helps you see yourself more clearly. Creative Intelligence helps you move forward with clarity, courage, and adaptability. Together, they offer a powerful roadmap for anyone looking to rewrite their next chapter, in their career or beyond.
If you’ve ever dismissed yourself as “not the creative type,” think again. Your thinking style may hold the key. With the right lens, it’s not a limitation. It’s your creative calling card.
