Creative AND Practical

I'm guessing that anyone who knows Clare Lindstrand will tell you first of all about her enthusiasm for what she does – she oozes a love for her career and her clients.  I know Clare through the UK Coaching Partnership and always feel completely inspired by her.  In her answers below, she'll tell you the key to her enviable business success is that she can use both sides of her brain together – therefore being both Creative and Practical at the same time. This doesn't surprise me at all! Take inspiration from Clare and consider how to use both your creative side and your practical side in business. Let me know how you did? For now though...here's Clare:

1. What talent do you naturally have that makes you successful?

Working in the creative sector, I’m a bit of an odd creature because both sides of my brain work in unison. I am both creative and practical. The linear, intellectual, process-driven left brain makes me a very good project manager with obsessive attention to detail, whilst my creative, problem-solving right brain generates the ideas, inspiration and uniqueness that cutting edge creative demands.

2. When did you first realise you had this talent and how do you use it every day?

My total artistic inability to progress beyond drawing stickmen meant I didn’t consider myself creative at school. So I pursued the more academic topics at school. It wasn’t until my marketing career developed that I learnt that creativity is about ideas, not drawing. In 2002 I teamed up with a graphic designer who can manifest our creativity. Though scary in early days, we now recognise that this ability to both ‘think’ and ‘do’ is what sets us apart in our target market of SME service providers.

Do I use this ability daily? Yes! Absolutely. Both at work and in managing life to make sure that life isn’t mundane! There’s always another way of doing something and there’s always a reward from doing it differently!