Commentary: On Creativity in the Workplace from 'Just Shoot Me'

By Lissette Rios
Creativity + Social Change, University of Connecticut
Media Reviewed:

Just Shoot Me: Blush Gets Some Therapy

Commentary:
Communication is extremely important in our life. We need to have excellent communication skills at work, school, church, home, etc., in order to succeed. There are many people who know how to communicate well; others have bad or poor communication skills, while still others have no communication skills at all.

The video clip that I chose is from the sitcom, “JUST SHOOT ME.” This show is about a fashion magazine so you know that the screen writers always need to be creative when writing the episodes. In the video clip, we see that the employees are having a group dynamics session with a therapist. There was miscommunication within the staff so the owner of the Blush magazine decided to address the issue with the help of a therapist.

My opinion about this clip is that the originality was excellent. I love the therapist’s group dynamic and how he addressed the bad communication within the group. He said, “Today we are a car” and asked each one of the members to make a noise that resembles a car. The team started to make the noise, which sounded terrible. Then, he said, “That’s how it is when we communicate badly.” The exercise made the point across the team. I believe that this type of creative activity helps people to recognize their issues without pointing fingers. Once again, creativity is important in our life.

Creativity helps us to address a negative quality of someone without making the person feel bad or uncomfortable. Like the video clip showed (and we learned in class), these types of creative activities do not depend on age, length of employment, type of work, level of education, etc. In the process of any particular activity, we could learn to be non-judgmental. That did not happen on that episode, but hey, each character in “JUST SHOOT ME” has his or her personality, and sarcasm sometimes makes us laugh. It’s a great show, if you want to have a good laugh you ought to watch the reruns.

We should have creative exercises like this one in the workplace; especially for this particular issue, COMMUNICATION. I did a research on creative activities for the workplace and communication and came to the conclusion that they can be used as icebreakers or warm ups before a meeting. They aer simple, inexpensive and most of all, FUN. I will be doing one at work and I’ll ask everyone to provide their honest feedback because in our last pulse survey, communication was one of our weaknesses. The activity that I am planning on doing (see below) will cover the other side of communication which is, “good listening.”

Paper-Tearing Exercise
Time Allocation: 5 minutes
Materials: Blank 8 ½-by-11-inch sheets of paper for each participant

Instructions:

1. Tell the participants the following: “We are going to play a game that will show us some important things about communication. Pick up your sheet of paper and hold it in front of you. Now, close your eyes and follow the directions I will give you—and no peeking!" Participants cannot ask questions.
2. Give the following directions, carrying them out yourself with your own sheet of paper and pausing after each instruction to give the group time to comply:
   “The first thing I want you to do is to fold your sheet of paper in half. Now tear off the upper right-hand corner. Fold it in half again and tear off the upper left hand corner of the sheet. Fold it in half again. Now tear off the lower right-hand corner of the sheet.”
3. After the tearing is complete, say something like, “Now open your eyes, and let’s see what you have. If I did a good job of communicating and you did a good job of listening, all of our sheets should look the same!” Hold your sheet up for them to see. It is highly unlikely any sheet will match yours exactly.
4. Observe the differences. There will probably be much laughter.
5. Ask the group why no one’s paper matched yours. (You will probably get responses like “You didn’t let us ask questions!” or “Your directions could be interpreted in different ways.”) Then, lead into a presentation on the need for two-way communication in the workplace.