How to Increase Innovative Thinking Under 10 Minutes—Hint: It Includes Crayons

How does using your non-dominant hand increase your creativity, encourage collaboration, and invite easeful innovative thinking in under 10 minutes?

This is one of the practices I invited folks into during an in-person retreat I facilitated for a Root to Bloom client. To encourage team building and collaboration, I aimed to warm them up with a playful activity, returning to their inner child.

And what better way to do so than by drawing with markers and crayons?

The twist was: they had to use their non-dominant hand.

So if they normally write with their right hand, they would be drawing with their left in this activity.

When they received a few prompts, I had them respond with a drawing for a few minutes. We also took it another level and they responded to another prompt by writing this time, also with their non-dominant hand.

What flowed out from their reflections were vulnerable, deeply profound, and playfully nostalgic, often looking like a young child drew/wrote on the page.

So how does this simple practice actually encourage innovative thinking?

“Non-dominant handwriting technique, discovered initially, and promoted by art therapist Dr. Lucia Capacchione, is a pathway to access Parts of you that are not readily accessible. (Source: partsandself.org)

“Capacchione believes that the non-dominant writing hand is connected to the right hemisphere of the brain. By writing with your non-dominant hand, you are accessing territory beyond your rational and linear thoughts…More becomes available to you when you bring both hemispheres [of the brain] together through writing with both hands.

The power of writing with the other hand is symbolic to working with a tuning fork on the page: a reminder that the mind that holds the problem also holds the solution.” (Source: Psychologies Co UK)

The participants found it to be a wonderful experience to learn more about their teammates in an intimate, personal way beyond work discussions. One participant even shared that her family member is a professional in the neuroscience field, and when she mentioned this activity with them, they were amused that we were practicing an activity that they also engage with for the same reasons. In addition to several other activities that allowed them to access their inner child, such as movement practices and drawing exercises, everyone was able to show up to their organizational work in a refreshed manner.

There was a sense of genuine team bonding in such a short amount of time, which accelerated decision making for several tasks on their retreat itinerary, and even led to such a smooth collaboration of building a vision statement efficiently.

When we allow our interactions and environments to return to a sense of play and delight, great transformation can be accessed into the workplace that is often so monotonous and rigid.

Innovative thinking does not arrive easily from cookie cutter templates and routines, but from experimentation and out of the box processes. Innovative thinking is from remembering that we still have our inner child within us, waiting to be invited to play again.

Innovative thinking is from authentic relationship-building within our teams, to provide a feeling of safety to show up as our full selves and contribute to ideation and brainstorming.

Here at Root to Bloom, we care for your teams in a holistic way, not just focused on honoring your mission and developing business strategies, but also nurturing the people behind the scenes so they can show up feeling heard and supported.

If you are curious to learn how Root to Bloom can support your goals, we invite you to reach out.

“Thank you so much RTB team! This was a wonderful convening and I feel refreshed, motivated, bonded, and more in tune with my work and myself.” — Retreat Participant Testimonial 

“I really enjoyed the team-building exercises and games — they set the tone well for the rest of the session, helped me get to know my colleagues better, and it was a fun way to challenge myself and my perceptions in a creative way.” — Retreat Participant Testimonial