Creatividad. Es una característica sobre todo en su manera de tomar el mando de su equipo

Nicolas Tesla, the inventor of the fluorescent light bulb, the AC gen- erator, and high-voltage electricity, had an extraordinary capacity to create vivid imagery. He routinely envisioned three-dimensional im- ages of complicated machines. These were complete in every detail and as clear as blueprints. Even more astonishingly, Tesla tested his machines mentally by letting them run in his mind for several weeks and thoroughly examining their components for signs of wear.

Tesla'was probably an "eidetic" imager; his mental pictures were as bright and clear as his eyesight. An eidetic imager, a person who has a truly photographic memory, can look at the front page of a newspaper for a few seconds, turn away, and then read the entire page in his mind. For an eidetic imager, mental pictures are remarkably accurate and long lasting.

Almost a century ago, psychologist Francis Galton devised a ques- tionnaire that probed the clarity of people's imaginations. Besides discovering that few people are true eidetic imagers, Galton dis- covered that people's visualization skills do not improve easily. Here is a modification of his test:

Imagine Last Night's Dinner

Spend a minute or two picturing the scene. Visualize the people you were with, the surroundings, the table settings, the taste of the food, the sounds you heard. Before reading on, take some time to allow your image to build, piece by piece. Start now.

Answer the following questions about your image. • Is your image clear or indistinct?

• Is the image brighter or dimmer than the original scene? • Are all parts of the scene sharply defined at the same instant,

or are some parts clearer than others?

• Does the image appear in color or in shades of gray? • If your images are in color, are the hues accurate?

• Can you form a single visual image of the entire dining room? • Can you retain a steady image of your dinner plate? If so,

does it grow brighter?

• Can you mentally see your dinner plate, your hands hold- ing a knife and fork, and a person's face sitting across from you all at the same time?

• Can you feel the texture of the food? Q Can you picture what people were wearing?

How did you do with this exercise? If you are like most people, you probably found that there are places in your imagery that are rich and vibrant, and places that are less clear. Perhaps you could im- agine the people's faces, but not the shape of the cups. Maybe you could recreate the smell of the food but not the taste. Or recreate the acoustics of the room but not recall the shape of the cutlery. Per- haps all you could generate was the idea of yesterday's dinner without actually seeing any image at all.

Regardless of how vividly mental pictures can appear, our imagery tends to be far less accurate than we imagine it is. Draw a pound coin, or your front door, or a telephone dial's digits and letters, or your car's dashboard — things you see every day — and you'll find gaps and holes in your mental images. The accuracy of a mental image

depends greatly on how much you have analysed the original object. If you've never really examined a pound coin closely, you probably won't be able to form an accurate image of it. If you rarely give your dashboard a second glance, you won't have more than an abstract sense of what it looks like.

To add life to your imagery, you need to sidestep verbal thinking and use your graphic analysis muscles. Say you wanted to create a mental image of the swirl below. What would you do? Begin by ask- ing yourself, what do 1 actually see? Spend a moment looking at its overall shape. How light or dark is it? What, if anything, does the shape make you feel? What associations do you have with the image? Does it remind you of anything? A car tire? The digit zero? A Cheerio? The Zen symbol for eternity? Now look carefully at the details, focus- ing on the individual shapes in the figure. Notice how the edges and lines form miniature figures of differing sizes. What are the spatial relationships of these shapes? How do they build together to form the larger shape? Look at the space surrounding the shape, and how the space, itself, defines the shape. Continue to examine the shape in different ways until you get a solid feel for the object, The more you see and know about something, the easier it becomes to form an image.

When you want to form a clear image, recall the key elements gleaned from your analysis — the sense of proportion and the ar- rangement of component shapes. Allow the image to appear in front of you. It may be difficult at first, if you do not have the habit of visualizing, but if you give yourself time the images will grow brighter and steadier.

What objects can you practice visualizing? Faces, clothes, cars, buildings, company logos, patterns on concrete, pens, pencils, wallpaper designs, book covers, or anything that catches your in- terest is fair game. Besides encouraging you to pay more attention to your environment, visualizing everyday objects gives you a deeper appreciation of what's happening around you and deepens your sense of reality.

When you read a novel, take an extra moment to picture the events. Visualize the setting, the characters, and the action. Choose a specific spatial viewpoint and let the story unfold in front of you. Similarly, next time you read a newspaper article, visualize what's happening in the article. If you read about a political leader making a statement, picture the politician speaking the words. If you read about an earthquake, imagine what it would feel like to be there. You'll be astonished at how much more you will remember of what you have read.

As you practice visualization, you may find that at times images appear slowly; as in a jigsaw puzzle, they build up piece by piece. At other times, images emerge all at once, spontaneously, in full living color, giving you a taste of how brightly and clearly mental pictures may appear to an eidetic imager. More than anything else though, the practice of forming sharp, accurate mental images en- courages you to really see.

TCP Take the time to visualize.