Fred Mandell on Embracing Creativity, Finding Inspiration, and Reinventing Yourself
Journal of Financial Planning: February 2015
Who: Fred Mandell
What: Author, teacher, artist, life-change expert
What’s on his mind: “Whenever you feel frustrated or lost or have a sense of your own limitations, it’s an opportunity to step back and ask the bigger question, ‘While that may be true in the moment, am I on the right path?’”
If you’re looking to reinvent yourself—whether personally or professionally—Fred Mandell has some insight for you: it’s not a matter of changing who you are; rather it’s about becoming more whole as a person.
And Mandell should know. He wrote the book, Becoming a Life Change Artist, from his personal experience entering the financial planning profession as a career-changer, then exiting it in the same way. Today, Mandell is a prolific artist who teaches leadership at MIT and coaches and consults to a variety of businesses.
He’ll bring his unique technique of using arts-based experiences as a catalyst for exploring personal growth to FPA Retreat 2015, April 20–23, outside Atlanta, Georgia.
The Journal recently sat down with Mandell to learn more about his personal life-change moments and how we’re all more creative than we think.
1. Talk to us a little about your book, Becoming a Life Change Artist: 7 Creative Skills to Reinvent Yourself at Any Stage of Life. What does creativity have to do with making a successful career change?
This is personal for me, because I came into financial planning as a result of a career change, and I left the financial services industry as a result of a career change. So I’m intimately familiar with some of the dynamics, and I would say that creativity has everything to do with making a successful career change.
Creativity is not just about painting or composing or writing poetry. I believe everything we do is creative. I think we create relationships, we create families, we create communities, and we create financial planning practices. These are all forms of creativity, because they’re bringing something into existence that did not exist before, and that’s the essence of creativity.
Folks are a lot more creative than they think they are. The problem is that they’ve always associated creativity with what’s in a museum and not in their own lives. But in truth, people are confronted with creative opportunities and apply creativity every day.
The book was actually an outgrowth of my personal journey from being an executive at a major financial services company to becoming an artist and a consultant. During that transition many things happened, but two really stand out. One is I did a deep dive into the creative skills and the creative processes of the great artists. I wanted to learn what made them tick, what accounted for them producing a creative body of work over lifetimes. The other thing was, I began to interview a lot of people about making significant life-change transitions, trying to understand what went on psychologically, emotionally, and so forth.
So I interviewed well over a hundred people for the book, including a number of financial planners and executives in financial services. And I discovered something that, for me, was really interesting—the creative skills of the great artists were really life skills, and those people who made successful life/career changes used the very same creative skills that the great artists used in producing their masterworks. When you talk about creativity, you really can’t separate the creativity of everyday life, the creativity of career-change, from the kind of creativity that goes on in what we traditionally think of as the pure creative process.
2. In your book, you write about seven key strengths that the most creative minds in history shared. Among those that may particularly resonate with financial planners is “embracing uncertainty.” What more can you tell us about this key strength?
That’s a good one, because there is uncertainty all around us. Let’s start by going back to the great artists for a minute. The best ones, I think, were great because they were always working on the edge of the unknown—the stuff that had not been done before. They pushed themselves. They were taking risks and putting themselves and their work out there, stepping into the unknown space where creativity really happens. And so, creating is about doing things that have not been done before. These artists were always working without certainty, without knowing how it was going to turn out.
They also looked out beyond their studio walls into the wider world and saw all kinds of changes going on; changes not new to our century or our time. Change has been constant—back then and today. What characterizes change today is that the pace of change is a lot more rapid. We are living in a world of constant change, more rapid change, and disruption. Rather than get frustrated by this change and uncertainty, the great artists saw it as an opportunity to create something new. They embraced it.
And it’s true today. I see all kinds of people who are afraid to make changes despite all of the change around them, because they’re uncomfortable with uncertainly, or they default to the same old, same old. Creative people, including artists and entrepreneurs—and financial planners are entrepreneurs—embrace uncertainty as an opportunity to create something new.
The world around us is characterized by disruption. Those who react to this disruption through fear will be paralyzed and will miss some genuine opportunities.
Here’s a quick story: I work with a financial adviser. His lease was up and he was being kicked out of his office. Now, he could’ve wrung his hands at this disruption, but instead he used the opportunity to reimagine how he wanted to use physical space as a reflection of his financial planning practice, and he ended up getting a very different space in a different location, and he did wonderful things with that space that enhanced the quality of the client experience.
What appeared to be a disruption and potentially a devastating circumstance in his life, he embraced as an opportunity.
3. A lot of your work on creativity, from workshops to your book, can also be applied to people embarking on retirement. So what does developing your creative skills have to do with transitioning to retirement?
I’m going to gently push back on the word “retirement” itself, because many people are still holding what I think is a fairly traditional view of retirement—not working anymore, kicking back, hitting the golf links four days a week, etc.
There are many folks who will aspire to that traditional view, but the view of retirement and the landscape that supports it is changing. For instance, we have the longevity revolution of people living longer, but not just longer, healthier. We have the most educated generation ever reaching traditional retirement age. And because of both of those things, many people are simply not satisfied with a traditional view of retirement.
For one thing, they continue to want to work, sometimes because they need to, but also because of this gift of extended longevity. They want to continue to work and they want to make a contribution.
They want to continue to learn, and they want to continue to develop an interest they perhaps neglected for decades.
I think the psychographics of this “retiring” generation is very different from the one that went before. If this is true, then it has really profound implications in terms of the role of creativity in that phase of life. What was called retirement in the past, I think, can actually be a time of great personal renewal and creativity. You don’t need to retire in the sense of receding from being engaged in work or life, I think you can reinvent yourself, you can renew yourself, you can reimagine yourself.
And this cannot be done without drawing on a creative mindset. Questions like, “Who do I want to be now that I don’t need to be who I was?” become more prominent. “What parts of myself do I want to explore that I’ve not had the time to explore in the past?” “Do I want to make a contribution to the world, perhaps in a different way, and what does that look like?” And maybe, “What talents can I bring to this contribution and what new ones do I need to learn or develop?” The answers to all of these questions require a creative response.
Therefore, the need to develop our creative skills and our creative orientation is as important during this stage in life as in any other stage of life.
4. You are an artist yourself; you’re a painter and a sculptor. Where or how do you find creative inspiration?
I find inspiration everywhere. I think the essence of a creative mindset is that you need to be tuned into one’s environment and into one’s relationships; you need to be open to them as sources of insight and learning and appreciation and gratitude.
Let me give you two examples. I’m inspired by my five-year-old grandson. He loves playing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. He gets a sword made out of cardboard, and I’m left without any weapons whatsoever. And I say, “But I don’t have a sword.” So he looks at me in this puzzled way and says, “You can pretend. You can imagine.” That a five-year-old kid can tell an adult to reconnect with their imagination, that’s what I find inspiring.
I also get inspired by stories of people who have the courage to do both small and big things. I’ll read about Rembrandt and how he lost three of his four children before they reached their teens. And that within eight years of getting married he lost his wife, and then he had to declare bankruptcy because of a real estate bust. And through it all he continued to be dedicated to his artwork. To me, that’s inspiration.
Or I can read a story about a wounded warrior who has the power to fight through his or her disabilities and still be a loving human being and want to make a contribution to society. If you give me a human being and you give me his or her story, I’m going to find inspiration.
5. In a video of one of your presentations you said, “When I am creating, I am both lost and found.” That’s pretty compelling. Tell us more about what that means to you, and how others can achieve that.
I can’t tell you how many people have asked me about that comment. On the face of it, it seems impossible. How can you be both lost and found at the same time? It’s a real paradox.
I originally made that comment in relationship to when I was painting, when I was engaged in a painting project, and I felt lost and found at the same time. I was lost, because from a creative perspective, I didn’t know what came next in the painting. Worse, I didn’t know how to get from where I was to where I thought I wanted to be. So I was really, really frustrated, and I felt I didn’t know what I was doing. I felt lost. But when I stepped back from the whole process and realized what I was doing, I realized that I was found, because I was doing what I was meant to be doing. And that was to be painting.
As I interviewed a lot of people for the book, I realized that many of them felt both lost and found at different points in their lives when they were in transition, because not everything is clear to us all the time. We get frustrated. We throw up our hands and say, “What am I doing?”
But when we step back, even in the midst of that realization of being lost in that sense, we’re found because we’re on the right path. We’re making the right journey. I think this is true professionally; I think it’s true personally.
For me, the impact of that is, whenever you feel frustrated or lost or have a sense of your own limitations, it’s an opportunity to step back and ask the bigger question, “While that may be true in the moment, am I on the right path?”
6. You experienced great success during your 21-year career at American Express Financial Advisors. What do you think was the key to that success?
I don’t think there’s one thing. There’s a little bit of luck, there’s a little bit of this, a little bit of that, but when I step back and reflect on that, the things that stand out for me are curiosity, loving to learn, and a willingness to put myself in new situations.
I used to do a lot of mentoring, and so promising young leaders would come to me and ask, “What do I need to learn to be a good leader or a better leader?”
And at first I’d say, “Well, here are some good books that you should read. And you should also become observant; look at other leaders, see what you like, what you don’t like.” I would also suggest that they look for a stretch assignment, because that’s where they’d really learn and grow and confront the potential for failure. But after several years I realized that I was allowing the mentee to frame the issue. I realized that you don’t learn in order to lead. You lead in order to learn.
The best leaders for me are the ones who ask compelling, daring questions, and they take people along on the journey of learning in response to those questions. I think part of success is a function of a person being willing to constantly push the envelope of their own comfort zone, and that’s really important.
7. What advice would you offer someone wishing to redefine their life?
That’s a big question, and I’m not sure there’s an easy answer, so let me tell you a little bit of my personal story, because I think part of the question has to do with this idea of personal identity.
I stepped away from the corporate world to pursue my interest in art, and I found myself meeting new people. It wasn’t unusual for them to ask, “Well, Fred, what do you do?” And for the first 18 to 24 months, my response to that question was, “I’m a former business executive.” I defined myself by what I used to do rather than what I was actually doing, because I hadn’t been comfortable or confident in the new me, in my new emerging identity. That’s not always easy to deal with as you make transitions. In some ways, the idea of totally redefining one’s life just sounds too radical; it’s too big a departure to leave a good chunk of ourselves behind.
So it was really interesting that when I did these interviews for the book, several people told me that it was not a matter of changing who they were, but more about becoming more whole as a person. I found that really compelling.
The opportunity is for us to spend time appreciating who we really are. What are our core values? What are our gifts? What do we like about ourselves? And then asking other kinds of questions, like: Where’s the joy missing in my life? What are my dreams deferred or unfulfilled? What are the things I always wanted to try but put off?
I think we each have so much inside of us that’s untapped and under-optimized. I think we need to listen to that voice, and by heeding that voice, we do not necessarily get redefined in a fundamental way, we rather allow ourselves to become more whole human beings.
8. You serve on the board of directors of the Life Planning Network, which is dedicated to helping people navigate the second half of life. Why are resources and support specifically for later life important for financial planners, and ultimately for society?
Perhaps not for reasons that we’ve defined. For the most part, I think the financial services industry has not fully caught up with the new emerging reality of the over-60 crowd. I think the industry has formulated it in terms of, “How can I help you not outlive your income?” with the underlining assumption that the consumer or the client is retiring in a fairly traditional way. But in truth, we’re going through a major social revolution as it relates to aging.
We’ve all heard that folks are living longer. I actually saw a billboard the other day that said, “The first person to live to 150 is alive today.” Now that’s pretty amazing!
People are more productive now after age 65. I think more people are wanting to work and they are wanting to make a contribution. I think we have this huge amount of intellectual capital that’s been accumulated by these people. On the other side, I think we have a society with significant unmet human needs, problems to be solved. And interestingly, the rate of entrepreneurialism of people age 55 is the highest among any cohort.
So, you have to put all of this together. To me, this means that planners need to be tuned in to these new elements and become familiar not only with these issues that lead to different kinds of conversations about the practice and about the relationships and conversations they have with clients, but planners also need to become familiar with the new emerging institutional landscape that’s out there supporting this new stage of life.
There are organizations like the Life Planning Network and Encore.org. There’s the Conscious Aging Alliance. There are all kinds of things going on in the landscape that are creating a support system for these people, and I think financial planners need to get connected with those in order to understand the way this cohort thinks and wants to live, in order to provide the kind of financial planning support that makes sense for them.
9. You teach leadership programs at the MIT Sloan School of Management using the arts. What is the relationship, or the interplay, between leadership, creativity, and the arts?
One of my personal missions is to really break down the walls between the arts and leadership. Traditionally, the thought is that the arts are things that you hang on the wall, or you perform in a concert hall, but there’s no tangible relevance to leadership. You know, art happens in a studio; leadership is about doing heavy-lifting and dealing with the real world. So what does one have to do with the other?
IBM conducts a global CEO study every couple of years, and several years ago they did one in which they surveyed over 1,500 CEOs around the world and asked, “What is your No. 1 leadership need?” And guess what came back as the No. 1 leadership need? Creativity.
For me, the question is, why did creativity come back as No. 1? It came back because all these CEOs were looking at the new global environment, and they saw that it was characterized by disruption, speed of change, uncertainty, and ambiguity. It had to do with the rapid distribution of knowledge through technology. In that sense, the environment was so fluid that what got created was what researchers are now calling “transient waves of value”— that means that a business might create value, but it’s transient because something else comes up next and it comes up very quickly.
So how do you stay relevant? How do you continue to add value to your customers and clients? Well, it requires a different set of leadership skills, and those are characterized by the umbrella term “creativity,” but it means agility, inventiveness, resourcefulness, resilience, and different kinds of problem-solving. There is no greater pure experience of those attributes than the arts or creativity—where those things really get a chance to play freely and make a difference.
The good news is, through the work and research that I’ve done and some others have done, we’ve been able to identify seven core creative leadership skills that can equip entrepreneurs, practitioners, and leaders to better navigate this changing environment and identify new sources of value and innovation.
At MIT, I spend time helping students develop their creative skills and applying them to real-life challenges. And I do this by giving them immersive, art-based experiences as a springboard for insight and learning, and then teach them to take what they learn through that immersive art experience and apply it to real life—real business challenges and situations. The feedback I get from this is outstanding, partly because it is so different from the traditional MBA fare.
My program gives the students the opportunity to get in touch with and develop their own creative problem-solving skills in a way that traditional, straight-line analytic thinking does not. It’s fun teaching it; you come and roll up your sleeves and get dirty.
10. At FPA Retreat 2015 in April, you will present the general session “Creative Leadership in a World of Uncertainty and Disruption.” What can financial planners expect to learn in this session, and the subsequent break-out sessions you will also present?
From my involvement at FPA Retreat as a whole—as opposed to just the keynote or breakout sessions—they can expect that I’m going to provoke them. I’m not going to be just a talking head. I want to help Retreat attendees get directly in touch with their creativity and begin to make connections with how that creativity can provide practical benefits to their practice and to their relationship with clients.
Another thing is I want to provide an opportunity for attendees to engage in some of the big questions that they face using arts-based experiences as a springboard for that, and exploring what really matters to them on a deep, personal level. And then, how can they creatively manifest in their practice what deeply matters to them? What’s going on in the wider world, and how might that affect how they practice their profession and how they create client relationships?
And, I hope they walk away with practical tools they can use to develop their own creativity, and the creativity of their team, to help them become more creative problem-solvers.
Carly Schulaka is editor of the Journal. Email here HERE.