 back to the creative life from the American Creativity Association on Think Tech Hawaii. I'm your host, Phyllis Blyse, and our co-host today is Darlene Boyd. Our show we will be discussing the accidental creative. You can send questions by email to questions at thinktechawaii.com. Our guest is Dr. Jane Horan, calling from her home base in Singapore, where she runs her own company called the Horan Group. She focuses on inclusion and diversity in the workplace with international companies like Disney and Kraft and General Electric, and she also works with private individuals. Jane has lived and worked and studied in the US, China, Japan, India, and Hong Kong. And she holds an educational doctorate from Bristol University. The three books that Jane has written, one is I wish I'd known that earlier in my career, The Power of Positive Workplace Politics. Another book is How Asian Women Lead Lessons for Global Corporations. And the third book is Now It's Clear, The Career You Own. Her new book will be coming out in 2022 called The Practice, Coaching Across Cultures. So we'll welcome now Jane. Jane, welcome to The Creative Life, and let me start with you. First question is, why did you call today's show The Accidental Creative? Yeah, great question. I think I just kind of, well, actually, I'll tell you. A couple of months ago, I took an assessment. And my top strength was creativity. And I told a woman who I didn't know me very well, I said, you know, I got this odd result back. My top score is creativity. And she said, of course, we all knew that. And I went, really? So that's why it hit me to call myself an accidental creative. Never thought I was creative, but when I look back on my life, I can see periods of creativity or how I go about doing writing or working and all of that. I think more often than not, the people that we think are most creative don't realize that. They think of themselves differently. And it's no secret that obviously, Phyllis and I know you and we, the three of us were together in Singapore and very early on in the first meeting, I thought of you as being very creative. So it's a welcome opportunity to realize that you're surprised. Yeah. So Jane, you talk about times of creativity. And I noticed that the tagline is moments of realization. Could you tell us a little bit about how moments of realization translate into an accidental creative life and what some of those are for you? Yeah, that term moments of realization came to me, I think in two ways. One, I was writing my dissertation and I use narrative inquiry. So it's storytelling, really. And I was noticing in people's lives where they would have these moments or I had a moment for them when I saw that it led to who they are today or it led to I could see pockets of creativity. And then I also, I think when you're doing your dissertation or when you're writing, you really look at yourself, right? And so I started saying, well, I had those same patterns, but it's not until you take a step back and look at it that you realize either the creativity or the learning in that moment. So it was a journey of the dissertation, but it was also looking back on my life where I had these pockets where people kept nudging me and I wasn't paying attention to those nudges. Oh, could you talk about a nudge? Well, a big one for me was, so I was at UCI and I was studying social ecology and I have to tell you, I got so much grief for that major and that major had a huge impact on my life. Like everybody else was either bio majors or chem majors. And I stuck with it because the first course was fabulous, but I had a professor that came up to me and it was when UCI, I think at first launched their writing program and he said, I should join the writing program. I'm thinking, oh my God, you have no idea. I spend days writing one paper. Like there's no way I could join that writing group. And years later, when I wrote my first book, I thought, I get it. And actually I do love the writing process. I find it very creative, but I find it also really daunting. It doesn't come easy. And so that was the first nudge that I didn't pay attention to that I've circled back now and doing it. And narrative inquiry, what is that? Does that elicit more creativity than any other form of inquiry that you've been using? I'm anxious to hear that too. Yeah. So when I decided to go back to school to get my doctorate, I was really fascinated by the art of storytelling to uncover insights about people. And I just didn't think you could do it. Most PhD programs or doctorate programs want you to be more quantitative. And I saw this, I looked at Bristol University in the UK and a narrative inquiry is actually just asking people questions, listening to their stories and then rewriting their stories for them. And so that's where the creativity part comes in. There's an element of narrative inquiry called creative nonfiction, which is what my sponsor encouraged me to use. I have a secret desire to be Hemingway and she knew that and so she pushed me to keep writing more these stories more creatively. I mean, it's the truth in the stories but it's just how you surround it. So that's where the creative part comes. So it's not an oxymoron to say creative nonfiction. It sounds like you're infusing life into it, not untruth, but a level of life and energy that isn't in your standard flat narrative nonfiction. For a mere embellishment, you're not implying that it's an embellishment. It's much more as Phyllis has just pointed out. Yeah, and it's such a great question because when you talk about creative nonfiction, some supervisors or some professors go, wait a minute, is this an embellishment? Is this a real story? So it's more wrapping the story around, let me just tell you, this will be clear when I tell you, I was interviewing a woman for many years, for six years and I told her story. I used to Hemingway voice in telling that story and I interviewed her a lot of times in restaurants. So I just increased the restaurant, the waiters in the restaurant pouring the water and brought her story out that way but her story was real, it was just surrounding of it and it pushed you right in the place of Singapore in a restaurant. So that's creative nonfiction. So, and just to elaborate a little on that, can you, what is your interpretation of what a Hemingway narrative story is? So we can get a sense of what you mean by a Hemingway kind of writer that you'd like to be. What does that evoke for you? You know, it's really funny what it evoked for me. Actually, it was my sponsor who said, you have a very clipped style of writing. Like, so it's a lot of dialogue and it's, when I was a kid, I hated Hemingway and it wasn't until years later when I started, I joined some Hemingway competitions of imitating him that I really, really loved his writing style. So it's quite clipped, it's very dialogue, very simple words and yeah, I think that's how I would explain it. And I followed one of my favorite short stories, The Well-Lighted Place, to write, to recraft this story for my dissertation. Thank you. Have you ever been to Key West, to Hemingway's home, to see if you could reincarnate Hemingway into your personal delivery? You know, this one place I've always wanted to go is Key West. So it's on my bucket list to get there and to kind of walk in the shoes of Hemingway. Just wondered. So darling, she's only lived in Hong Kong and India and China and Singapore. Key West is probably dull for you, Jane. No, not at all, not at all. I think it's a fabulous place. Actually think about moving back. So any other moments of realization along your journey? So this is a, you know, when I get to senses, this is a bit of a retrospective to finding those moments, those touch points for creativity in your life. And one was in that writing class, you just started college, you've had this aha moment there, what might be another moment of realization along your journey? Yeah, you know, it was interesting, like when Darlene said earlier, I think that I had wrapped around creativity as art. You know, you have to paint or do something or dance or sing, which is not me. Like I do sketch, whatever. So I think a moment of realization, and so I always learned through what I don't, what I think I don't like. So another one was writing my third book. I felt the need to kind of be really reflective and I thought that poetry offered a way of being reflective, a short poem that you could read and go for a walk. And so I started interviewing poets for that book and I actually started dabbling in poetry myself. And so that was another moment of realization. I think that's a highly creative act and really hard to do. I'm not saying I'm there yet and I wouldn't share any of my poems with anybody, but that was another one. And that was actually very recent. It was like in the writing of this book, I started to kind of try to unpack poetry and poets. I have a, I suppose I could call it a pressing question. Looking at your book titles, they're very intriguing and I certainly do want to read them because of the titles. But I do have a curiosity. Your expertise is in diversity training and you've chosen to title one of your books, How Asian Women Lead. So I'm wondering how do they, how do they different? How are they different or are they different? Or, help us out with that. Yeah, that was a title that was the publisher wanted to use that title. My dissertation is called Moments of Realization and so it's an interesting question. So let me unpack that a little bit more. I don't, so when I was doing my book, I don't, so when I was doing my dissertation and I focused primarily on Asian women, what I found is there's a culture of gender. So across the globe, we have a lot of similarities as women or women in leadership, but specifically in the Asia-Pacific region and actually in each country where I went and did my interviews, there are some differences that I believe, because I do a lot of work with multinationals that organizations, Western multinationals need to understand this style of leadership might be slightly different. It might not be something that you see all the time. And so from a diverse, from an inclusive perspective, how do you embrace that different style and not put a judgment on it? So one would be perhaps maybe a humble servant leader. I'm not saying everybody in Asia is like this, but sometimes working with American firms, they want that kind of more speak up and more bravado. And that might not be a style that's preferred in some countries or for some people. So that's some of the slight differences. But I do think it's important to know that what I uncovered and what other researchers uncovered is this gender of culture. And I thought that was so powerful and I saw that. I wonder how that translates into learning how to be more inclusive after Black Lives Matter and the Me Too movement. Are we putting ourselves in someone else's shoes and valuing that just equally, even if it's different than someone else? And can your training help all of us step into a new day and new age of inclusivity? And is that a creative act at the same time? Courageous and a creative act? Yeah, no, I love that step into a new day. Okay, that could be in my new book. Yeah, so let me just circle back to narrative inquiry. When I interviewed women from Japan all the way down to Bangladesh, hundreds of women, and then I followed six women for about four to five years and kept interviewing them. I find the process of narrative inquiry just sitting back and asking open-ended questions. I learned more about them. And actually one woman said to me, you know more about me than I know about me. And it's that process of sitting down and listening and listening to someone else's story and then holding back on what we feel, know or do. Just listen. And I actually just gave a talk yesterday on this exact same subject and wrote another article, published an article on this. So it seems like such a simple thing. And we hear people say, oh, just listen, but it's hard to practice that. And I had to for my dissertation, but I think we need to do this inside organizations. And if we just shifted that, and I love when you said courageous and actually creative and having more empathy, just sit back and listen to someone else's story. And it'll open your eyes to something completely different. I do this all the time with taxi drivers. Like I sit in the, and for some reason, everybody tells me their stories all the time. It can be anywhere on a plane in an elevator. It's something about, I think I just listened or say, tell me a little bit more about that. So yes, I would, I'd circle it back to narrative inquiry and I think we should all do that. So I loved it that you said, they said, you know more about me than I know about myself. And I'm kind of connecting that, the dots to how much meditation and self-help books and reflection is going on in the world so we can listen to our own small voice and know what our application is and learn what's our soul's purpose. Now, what makes us flourish? What makes us happy? And it seems that that's all different ways of trying to discover who we are. And maybe there's a process of a creative narrative inquiry that we could put ourselves through that doesn't require a second person. I mean, maybe we could be listening more deeply. Maybe in one of your books, do you go through a narrative inquiry process or how to so that we could maybe adapt it to self-narrative inquiry? Yeah, the third one, Now It's Clear is exactly that. So the book Now It's Clear came from all my research with women. So when I first started doing this research, I noticed an element of spirituality. So if you read my dissertation, I did a whole chapter on spirituality, but actually as I started digging deeper, it was about purpose. And I love that your term when you use our soul's purpose. And it was this process of looking back on your life and then getting something that happened and then having a moment of realization across that. You can do it on your own, absolutely. You can do journaling. That's why I write about journaling. I took a lot of grief for that third book. People said, oh, don't write about poetry. Well, poetry is incredibly powerful. If you take a poem and read it, you're gonna learn a lot about yourself, right? How does that make you feel? What's coming up for you? Go for walks, get your own journal. So that third book is all about that. I should have called it that narrative self-inquiry. As you said, that could be your next book. Yes. Or 2.0. Same book, 2.0. Darlene, you were gonna say something. How long, Jane, was it before you realized your clarity long before it was clear to you? And I suppose- Or have you? You know, or is it ongoing? And when you mentioned and talk about interviewing these women for six years, another simple question I had was, how did you know it was time to stop? Why six years? Why not seven? Why not eight? Or were you just exhausted? Or did your publisher say, this is it, Jane? You know, six years is enough, but let's get some closure. Yeah, let me answer that one first and I'll answer the second one. I do think it's a solid journey. The first one was actually it was my dissertation where I interviewed women for six years and I had to have a full stop. And actually I interviewed six women and I had to take my dissertation only required four stories and so I had to take two women out, which was really painful. Like which one do you take out? Cause you've been interviewing these women for years, right? And you've been so close to them, of course. That would be difficult. Really close, yeah. And I, you know, I often wanted to go back and kind of pull out those stories and do a bit more creative nonfiction right around them, write some stories about them. So it was that, but that point when somebody called me and said, you know me better than myself, I actually cried. It was my idea to send back their story and said, does this make sense? My dissertation didn't require that. I could have submitted it without doing that, but I felt an ethical that I felt that I needed to. And I was floored by that. And that's though, when I knew I was onto something with this moments of realization, this creative nonfiction. So your first question, I think I am a work in progress. I think we all are. I think it comes from looking back and honestly, I have a desire to write and I'd like to write a fiction book. And that's what I'm struggling with now is why aren't you writing that? So I think I'm a work in progress. I can't say it for everybody, but I'm still kind of going on that journey of figuring out, I'm going to know calling. I enjoy helping other people, which is why I do coaching. And I really enjoy the diverse inclusion work. So I want to ensure that these voices that may not be heard are heard. And so that's sort of a calling for me, but there's another creative side that keeps nudging me. Why not fiction? Is it that calling that you just mentioned that keeps you from moving into fiction? Or you just do such a great job, you're comfortable with not moving towards fiction? I think it's a little bit of a fear. Do I really know how to write a fiction book? I have it in my head. I've been writing it for like 15 years now in my head. I know what I want to do with it. I just need to sit down and go, just write that. Just put it on paper. You're fine. You know, you're reminding me as I sit here thinking about the audience and I want to remind people that can send questions in to questions at thinktecawaii.com. It seems a little out there to think, well, I don't do narrative inquiry to write books about other people. And yet that is a doorway to not only creativity, but the creative self as we discuss it today. And I'm reminded that Julia Cameron wrote the book, The Artist's Way. And one of her suggestions is to do morning journaling even with your left hand. So I just wanted to share that with the audience that that doesn't require any preparation, just requires showing up and starting to write down whatever comes to your mind. There's not anything scientific about this. It's chalkwood carry water, just the discipline. And you're sort of breathing new life into the importance of taking that step and journaling is one pathway to replicate what you're doing, but doing it by yourself. Absolutely. First of all, she's my favorite. I picked up that book during COVID and did exactly that. So I've had that book on my show. I have two copies of that book and never really followed it religiously, but during COVID I did. And I just posted an article about her on LinkedIn and I can't believe how many people that that article, it was a short post, it resonated with them. Everybody recognizes that book. So brilliant book. And I actually make comment about her book in my book. I just think she's amazing. Wow. I think that was a good suggestion to bring her forth. Well, we're obviously in flow because, so this is good. It's juicy. It feels good to be pulling this together. And I have a sort of left brain question that I wrote down and we have about seven minutes left. So I want to kind of get this in. I was noticing that we called this show the accidental creative and then the moments of realization. And those two things seem to be more looking back at a life, like discovering in a look back at where you were creative. And I was just, they have that quality to them. And I'm wondering about being creative intentionally. And I didn't prepare you for that question, but how do we do that intentionally moving forward using moments of realization that we look back at and why does it always have to be accidental to be creative in your opinion? Or is that maybe that's okay to stumble into our destiny and discover that we're being creative. So that was a jumbled question, but I'm kind of meshing the title and the tagline of today's show with how people can walk away and do this intentionally. That's spirit of serendipity, a little bit of serendipity there. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's really interesting. I think that if I was intentionally creative, like if I sat down on my desk and said, okay, I'm just gonna be creative, I think that would be a block for me. I'm not saying this is for everybody, but I do like your point on, there is an element of looking back, but what I find is when I get stuck is if I go for a walk, that's when creativity can be spontaneous for me. So if I'm stuck on a problem, I'm just like, look, I'm just gonna go for a walk. And I do long walks, 10K, 12K, 15K. And it's in that process and not take anything with you. Like don't take the poem, don't take your iPhone, just walk and see what bubbles up for you. And inevitably if I'm stuck on a story, that story will come back and I'll be able to write it. So that's, I think that's that spontaneity in that looking forward, it's not looking back, it's just like, get up and do something different. Okay. Well, that in the little bit of time remaining, I'm too wondering, is there a question we haven't asked you that would help you bring out something about being accidentally creative or having moments of realization that we haven't asked you? Something that, I mean, what makes you a corporate rebel? You put that down in your affiliation. That sounds juicy, like we haven't covered that yet today. Yeah, why would a US company hire you as a corporate rebel? Why would they want to corporate rebel? Oh, I think the corporate rebel title was the fact that I asked too many questions. So when I was at work, I would ask, why, why are we doing this way? And can't we do it a different way? And that's where that creativity would come in. And people would say to me, can't you just come back down to earth? Like just do it this way. And I'm like, but no, there's so much better ways to do it. So that's why I call myself a corporate rebel because I question everything and I try to figure out how do we can make it better? And I think that's what actually makes me a better consultant rather than an employee because I can go in and speak my mind, not harmful, not hurtful, but just ask the questions like, well, why are you doing it this way? And have you thought about this or how might we do this? And so sometimes as you know, in corporate, you have to kind of follow this path. And people like me, well, I've actually been told to stop asking the questions or dial back the creativity. So I would assume the questioning, the techniques that you have just by, just in a very natural way work to make you an outstanding coach is if there's anything someone, someone that needs a coach, certainly wants to be asked the questions to see if they can be better. And if you ask seems to me, you would be asking those in-depth correct questions. Yeah, thank you for that. I hope to be a great coach. And I think there's a part with questioning, absolutely, and there's a part with listening. Well, that's a perfect place to leave it with an open invitation for the audience to go pick up your books and wait for your next one. And I wanna let everybody know that you've been watching The Creative Life on Think Tech Awareness. And I hope to see you next time on Think Tech Awareness. I've been watching The Creative Life on Think Tech Hawaii. Today, Darlene Boyd and I have been discussing the accidental creative with Dr. Jane Horan. Thanks so much for participating. And thanks to our viewers, both of you. Thanks to our viewers. I'm Phyllis Bleece and we'll be back in two weeks with another edition of The Creative Life. Aloha, everyone.