Chris Lesner
Well, Frederick, thanks for being here.

Fredrik Haren
Hey, thanks for having me.

Chris Lesner
all the way from your island.

Fredrik Haren
Yes, all the way from my island. Yeah. You should see the video I have, that's even better.

Chris Lesner
What a view. I'm so... Oh man, I'm so excited for our audience to hear from you. People call you the creative explorer. You're the expert in one of the world's most forward thinkers on creativity. So this is super exciting for our audience to hear from you.

Fredrik Haren
I'm very excited too. It was actually my son that came up with the creativity explorer. He was supposed to his presentation in school. What does your parents do for a living? And he was supposed to say my father is a creativity expert. But he got it wrong and he said my father is a creativity explorer. And I heard that and I said this is much better. Because an expert knows everything but an explorer doesn't know anything but is curious to find out things.
I heard him say that, he branded me and I'm very happy for that. Yeah.

Chris Lesner
Well, I love that. So how does somebody become a creativity explorer? How do you become in the role that you're in?

Fredrik Haren
Well, actually I wrote my university thesis about internet and marketing when I was 24, no, 1994 or 95 or something. And it was very early, the early internet days. So I became an instant internet expert. So in the first five years, I was writing books and speaking about the internet. But then I kind of transitioned around 2000, I sold my company and then I transitioned into creativity because I realized that
Interesting thing with internet in the beginning was the fact that it was new No one knew how to do internet and everyone no one could said no one could say this is how you do the internet because no one had done the internet so everyone had to say well of how could you use this thing and let's try it out and let's experiment it was such a wonderful creative time period and then I said well, okay, let's just study creativity regardless if it's with the internet or with AI or with Nonprofit or whatever. It might be creativity is such a more broader and more interesting topic

Chris Lesner
Wow. I so I follow you online. And it looks like you go on some crazy adventures. It looks like you're meeting people around the world learning about innovation, creativity, the creative process, all of that. How do you even find these people that you're going and meeting with and learning from?

Fredrik Haren
Different ways actually. One way is I do travel a lot. I go to between 15 and 35 countries per year for my speaking assignments. When I do that, also meet interesting people. For example, the next speech I'm doing is next week in Denmark. I just found out they opened a museum of disgusting things in Malmö, right next to Copenhagen. I said, I have to go there. It's a museum where you can taste really disgusting food from all around the world. I said, okay, I have to go and interview the guy.
or a woman, don't know actually, whoever started this. And so I do my speech for KPMG and then I go to the Museum of Discussing Things and I interviewed him and like, how did you get this idea and why are you launching this? And so I try to find interesting people who can teach me something about creativity. And then the other way I do it is I just go on research trips to like the more unexpected places. I just go because I want to.

Chris Lesner
So.

Chris Lesner
I'm sure people pitch you things all the time in terms of, what do you think about this creative idea? How do you know if an idea is good or not?

Fredrik Haren - The Creativity Explorer
Bye.
Okay, first of all, I think it's a good question, but I think it's very...
subjective. what I think is a good, like for example, I live on an island. I think that's a brilliant idea. I love living on an island, but some other person will say, well, I'm an introvert. So an extrovert might say, oh my God, how could you have no neighbors and how can you live, you know, what do you, so it's a good idea for me, but it's a terrible idea for someone else. So I think you, you, do you measure if this idea is good or not? You measure it on if it gives you, if you inspires you. I think if it inspires you,
it's a good idea for you. But then that's a totally different thing from will it work? Is it a commercial idea? That's a totally different matter. And the only way to do that is to do research and then to try it out and tweak it and pivot if it doesn't work in the whole concept of launching ideas, which is something totally different. But for example, when I write books, I never sit down and say, oh, I'm going to write a book that's going to sell. I write a book that I want to write. And then I walk with it.

Chris Lesner
Talk to us about your book, because the first book that I came in contact with was a very creative book in hindsight.

Fredrik Haren
Oh, the idea book, I'm guessing. Yes, yeah, so the idea book is, well, I guess my most bestseller, my most famous book, but the concept with it is it's a book and a notebook. So it's a book about creativity, but it's also a notebook for your own ideas. And the reason it's such a good idea is because I can now sell it to companies as stationary, and the stationary budget is much bigger than the book buying budget, and that's why I've sold so many.

Chris Lesner
Yep.

Chris Lesner
So when you're talking to all these people and you've created a bunch of things, when you're talking to people who are creating things or not creating things, I'm sure a lot of people wonder, are they actually creative? Does that come up? how do you, are you trying to convince people that everyone has creativity inside of them or do they instinctively know it?

Fredrik Haren
No, I am trying to get everyone to think that they could be a little bit more creative than they think they are. So that means that the people who don't think they are creative, which is quite a big group, I want them to get creative confidence. But for the creative, the people who do identify as being creative, I want them to become even more creative. I mean, the saddest thing for me is not the uncreative people. The saddest thing for me is the creative people who don't try to become even more creative.
basketball player who doesn't practice, that's a shame isn't it? And they create a person who doesn't try to become even more creative, that is a shame because imagine what that person could do. So I target both of those groups.

Chris Lesner
Why do you think people limit themselves on the creativity side?

Fredrik Haren - The Creativity Explorer (6:19.336)
That's an even better question. There's so many things that kill creativity. It's, I interviewed, oh, what was that?
It was one person just a couple of days ago I was interviewing and it was one drawing, one drawing in art when she was in ninth grade and the art teacher gave her a C on one drawing and she told herself for 20 years, I can't draw based on that one comment. And now in her 40s she started drawing again and now she's a...
going down that avenue again and now she thinks, now she knows she can draw. So it could be one comment, could be self doubt, could be fear, it's so many things that kill creativity. But.
I think it's more interesting to ask yourself what encourages your creativity. When have you been the most creative? In what environment is very intuitive for your own creativity? For me, it's nature. That's why my office is like a bubble, a glass bubble so that 360 degrees I see nature because it inspires my creativity. And I therefore have more ideas. So I think this is...
I do, actually I should maybe write a whole book about this topic, but to get people to want to become more creative would be the number one thing to make humanity better. I mean, if you really look at it, because creativity is solving problems, right? So if we had people solving more problems, the world would be a better place. But not only that, when we are creative, we become happier.

Fredrik Haren
Think about it, when are you the most happy, when is a person the most happy in his whole life or her whole life?
Well, when they are in love, right? But what is the second most wonderful feeling a human being can have? That's when we have an idea, like the best idea of our lives, or when we make an idea happen, like when we publish a book, it's like, oh, I got my book published, or when you have this idea, oh, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna propose to my wife, or whatever it is. So having a really, really good idea is no feeling beats it except love. It's the second most wonderful feeling, then why don't we spend more time
developing that skill. It eludes me.

Chris Lesner
So what do people need to do to develop the skill? That's a hard skill it seems like to develop.

Fredrik Haren
Well, there's so many things you can do, but my father, this is a good one. My father was a teacher, he was a very creative teacher, was a music teacher, and he said...
Because people ask him the same thing, can you teach someone to play an instrument or are some people just born with it? And he said, you can teach any kid to play an instrument. You put your fingers like this, you blow here and out comes music. But the only way to make someone a musician is through inspiration. Take a kid and you're Michael Jackson. He saw Fred Astaire, he Frank Sinatra, he studied all the greatest, he got inspired by them, he became Michael Jackson. inspiration is what fuels everything.
but more specifically fuels creativity. So the one thing, if I can only say one thing, you want to develop your creativity, figure out what inspires your creativity and go there.

Chris Lesner
So on this podcast, we talk a lot about leadership and servant leadership. And you've got this whole creative piece that you're bringing to the table. And you go around the world speaking to very large audiences, corporate teams, all of that, and teach them creativity. How do you think servant leadership intermingles with creativity or does it?

Fredrik Haren
Yeah, I think it's an interesting concept. I interviewed recently a marketing director of a big professional services firm, and he is now the marketing director for all of Europe. And he said that his creativity when he was young is totally different from what it is now when he is the CMO. And he called it junior creativity and senior creativity. And junior creativity is like when you're young, you want to prove yourself, you want to have the best idea, you want your idea to win, you want to show that you can do
Do you want to come up with this groundbreaking idea? Seeing your creativity, he said, I don't care. I don't need to have the idea. My goal as a leader is to make sure that the other people, the younger people, that they have the perfect environment to come up with the best ideas. So in that sense, guess, servant leadership is about making sure that other people are in the right environment and have the right tools to be as creative as they can be. And then you don't have to do it.
anything.

Chris Lesner
Wow. When it comes to developing the creativity skill, developing this leadership skill, and moving into that higher position, let's say, where you can then inspire others, what do some steps look like to go from, just being inspired myself, to then inspiring others?

Fredrik Haren
I think that's a very, very individual aspect. And I think the whole creative process is extremely individual. So you have to understand that your creative process might look very different from mine.
So the most important thing you can do is to sit down and write down what's the best idea I've ever had in my life. What is the one thing that kills creativity? What's the one thing that encouraged my creativity? How do I work in creativity with groups? How do I work with creativity alone? And you write all of this down, just as much as you can in 15 minutes. Ask sentences. And take that, put it in ChatGDP. And ask ChatGDP to create a manifesto, a creativity manifesto for yourself. And then you read it back to you.
have a description of what your creative process looks like and what you should do to harness that as much as possible. Ninety -nine percent of people haven't done this. They have a rough idea about their creative process, but they haven't done this. It's 15 minutes of your life and it's the most valuable 15 minutes you could do.

Chris Lesner
Wow.

Chris Lesner
So obviously, takes a little bit of work to start being more creative. Like you said, a lot of times people have heard somebody say something negative or they get discouraged along the way. How do you build up the courage to just go up and try? I mean, even the conversations you're having with people, the experiences you're doing, do you ever get nervous?

Fredrik Haren
Yes, I mean, as a speaker, yes, I do forced nervousness. I'll take away a slide five minutes before the speech starts to make myself nervous because I don't really know what order they are coming. Because I've done 2 ,000 speeches. You should be nervous when you speak. The worst speech is...
are when the speaker is not nervous because nervousness means that you care and if you're not nervous you don't care about the speech so you should be a little bit nervous nervous is good but I'm not nervous when I interview people because then it's not about me it's about them so I'm just extremely curious

Chris Lesner
And how does somebody build up the resistance or resilience it takes to be creative, know, just the continual trying, even if things don't work out, and not be discouraged to not be creative again?

Fredrik Haren
Oh good, I have a great story. I was just in the Philippines and I interviewed, I'm writing a book about how creativity is different in different parts of the world. And I went to the Philippines because Filipinos are such happy people and happiness and creativity is very connected.
And I interviewed a bunch of Filipinos and I said to them, why are you so happy? Like, I know you are happy, my wife is Filipino, so I know the culture, but why is it? And no one could really answer until I interviewed one guy, I think it was a minister of commerce or something, and he said, well, actually, I've never thought about it, but my grandmother...
Like she grew up during the Japanese occupation. was a terrible time. But when I grew up, she never told me any negative, terrible stories. She only told stories about how they were able to survive during those hard times. And the word here is resilience. And I'm a big fan of ethymonology. So the word resilience means, literally means, re means back, and sillience means bounce. The resilience means bounce back, not just turn down.
bouncing back. When I was in the Philippines for the research
I got stuck at 2 a .m. in the morning. I got stuck by a huge flood. The water was this deep. Hundreds of cars stuck. Water coming in through the car at 2 a .m. in the morning until 5 in the morning. And there were 10 -year -old kids outside in that water swimming around like it's a swimming pool. And I didn't see a single angry bird. Everyone was just having fun, laughing, splashing water on each other. And then a few hours later, okay, water

Fredrik Haren
water is gone, now let's continue. So resilience, the ability to bounce back from a bad experience is maybe the most important thing for creativity. And I just saw the federal, have you seen federal speech?

Chris Lesner
No.

Fredrik Haren
Roger Federer held a commencement speech recently, I highly recommend it. And in the speech he says, I was the best tennis player of my generation. How many ball, how many points, how many matches do you think I won? And I think he won something like 78 % or 82 % or something. But then he says, how many balls and points did I win? Do know what the answer is? 54%. He almost lost every other ball.
But he said the difference between me and the other players is that I lost the ball and I said, okay, I lost that ball now and on to the next one. That's resilience, ability to quickly bounce back. So another player will get, oh, I had a match point, I missed it, and then they missed another two and then they lose the game, right, or the set. So the ability, because creativity, you will fail.
you will run down dead ends. will meet rejection after rejection after rejection. But the ability to practice the skill of saying, that's awful, that feels terrible. Now let's go back and, no, the JK Rowley story. Rejected what, 26 times, right? But say, that was a nasty rejection letter, let's write another one.

Chris Lesner
So you talk a lot about this focusing on the global mindset and the importance of the interconnected world. Share with our audience about your thoughts about trying to connect people and embracing different opportunities.

Fredrik Haren
I don't like the word global mindset. I like the word, it's not wrong, but it misses the point. I like human mindset. Because when you, I've been to 75, I've worked in 75 countries. And when you do that and you go to Bangladesh, I've been to North Korea, I've been to South Korea, which is like total America, whatever. And you start meeting people and you start realizing that we actually, there are a few things that we have in common. And when you start to realizing what humans have in common,
start to think how humans think. And that broadens your perspective. If you become not multilingual, become like, you can read humanity. And then you start to see human issues, human problems, and then you can go back to your country and live your whole life in your country, but you start to see a solution, you start to think in solutions that's good for humanity. And actually, I think you work a lot with nonprofits, right?

Chris Lesner
Yeah.

Fredrik Haren
And I was actually thinking about that when I read that as a non -profit. said, you know, that is a terrible moniker. Because it doesn't describe, it's like saying I'm a non -man if you're a woman. Like why would you define what you do based on what you are not?
So I'm thinking, it shouldn't be for profit or not for profit, it should be for profit or for humanity. We are a for humanity organization, we're not for profit organization. That would focus your mindset much better on what you are actually doing. You're doing this to benefit humanity, not to make money.

Chris Lesner
Wow, I love that perspective. Even just your ability to think so quickly on the fly to come up with creative concepts like that. I mean, it's taken years for you to get there. Is there hope for the rest of us?

Fredrik Haren
I know I speak fast, I get criticized for that. I apologize.

Chris Lesner
No, that's so, that's so insightful.

Fredrik Haren
No, okay, but let me share with you. I interviewed an artist in Afghanistan just to show that there's no right and wrong here. So I speak fast and I think fast, but she does traditional Afghan painting. Okay, now they're not allowed to paint at all, but in olden days, they had a huge culture of dance and music and art. And she paints like they used to do then, which means she will take emeralds and she will ground them down to make a powder, and then she would add water and make a paint.
Then she'll go and chop down a tree and make paper. Then she'll go to a cat, cut a hair from the neck and make a brush. And it takes her six weeks just to make the material for what she's going to paint.
And she said, you just go on Amazon and the next day you have everything, you start painting. She said, you don't have time to think about what you're going to paint. And she called that profound patience, which I think is beautiful. So for six weeks, she thinks about what she's going to paint while she makes all the materials. So when she finally paints, starts painting, she's already been thinking about it for such a long time, which makes a totally different painting than if you just buy the material and start painting right away.
It's totally opposite from the way my brain works, but it's also a different creative, it's a different way of being creative and it's equally beautiful.

Chris Lesner
That's interesting. think of when you you're hearing that story, I think of all the things that you hear people say like fail, fail fast, fail forward, like make it happen quickly. That's such an interesting take. Do you do you ever think that sometimes people hear so many so many influences that are of the same perspective that they forget that there's other perspectives? Does that ever happen when it comes to creativity?

Fredrik Haren
Exactly.

Fredrik Haren
Yes, I, so I'm Swedish, but I moved to China in 2005, and when I moved to China, I didn't know the culture, I didn't know a single person in China, I had no friends, so for about three months, I was alone before I started making my own network. I had no colleagues, because I'm an author and a speaker. So in that period, would go, and I couldn't speak the language, so I'd go to restaurant, and I would just point on the menu, three different dishes, because I knew I couldn't eat one of them, but two of them I could eat.
serve me the dish and then they would give me a fork, a knife, two chopsticks and a Chinese spoon and they would rub, because they couldn't speak to me, I couldn't speak to them, so they just gave me everything. And I didn't know how you're supposed to eat that dish and I didn't, so for the first time in my life I had to decide.
How do I eat this? I don't know what it is. I don't know how you're supposed to eat it. How do I want to eat it? And I realized when I was in Sweden, so many things that I did, I did because that is how you're supposed to be doing them.
And that's the same thing with my wife. I am Swedish, she is Filipino, and now when we have kids, we have to say, how do you raise kids? For example, in the Philippines, they hit their children. In Sweden, we don't. I've never been hit as a child. I could never hit my child. So now, are we gonna hit them? Are we not gonna hit them? Now, I need to argue with my wife, what is the benefits of hitting? What's the benefit of not hitting? And in our case, she said, okay, let's try not to hit them and see what happens, and it worked. We never hit our children. But in the Philippines, they have respect for the
For the elders in Sweden, we don't. And they wait, that's really nice, actually. So let's take that from the Philippines. And so now we are questioning every aspect of parenting based on, well, this is one way of doing it, but there's another way of doing it. And when you do that, you realize there's so many ways of doing it. And when you realize there are many ways of doing it, that's when you get the human perspective. And then you pick the best one.

Chris Lesner
Wow. As people get so stuck in their routines or their cultures or whatever it is, just I'm even thinking as you're sharing that my daily life, a lot of times it's on repeat, Monday through Friday, you're on repeat. What are small steps that you encourage people to take to break habits or break routines and start being slightly more creative?

Fredrik Haren
Yeah, that is actually, if I'm not wrong, the word experience from an ethnomalogy point of view, experience means...
It's something that's somehow connected to try. experience comes from trying things out. So if you do the same thing over and over for 20 years, you don't have 20 years experience. You have one year's experience if you've done that for 20 years. So experience comes from trying new things out and do experimenting. That's what experience is. yeah, that's why it's so important to try new things. It doesn't mean you have to travel around the world, but you can go to a trade fair that is not in your industry.
Don't go to a non -profit trade fair. Go to a plumber convention.

Chris Lesner
So as you're going through and raising kids, what advice do you give to parents to help them teach their kids the creative process or to become creativity explorers?

Fredrik Haren
Yeah, well I gave you one from my father, so let's give me one from my mother now. My mother was also a teacher, and she's the kind of person who knows everything. She was on Jeopardy and she lost in the final, you know, she was, she knows everything. So when she, and she's been a teacher for, and she's been a normal teacher and a Montessori teacher, so she's been trained in two different ways of being a teacher. So when I got kids late in life, I was 40 years old, I said, I know creativity, mom, but I don't know children. Teach me something about children that
that will help me raise creative children. And she said this, and I think this is brilliant, because I didn't say it, she said it. She said, whenever the child asks you a question, don't give the answer. Say, what do you think? Because creativity is not about asking questions. Creativity is about finding answers. And every child will ask questions. You don't need to teach a child to ask questions. They all, they do that all the time.
But if we always give the answer, we don't teach them the second aspect of creativity, which is to ask the questions and then find the answer. So the kid comes to you and says, Daddy, why is the sky blue?
Most parents will say, well, you see, that's because the light reflects, blah. Instead you say, what do you think? Now the kid will think about it and say, well, think the sky is blue because blue is the favorite color of God. Okay, well, that's an interesting answer, but this is what science thinks. So you still give the answer. You just hold on, you hold off for 30 seconds. And sometimes the children will have a better answer than you.
This actually works on employees too. Whenever the employees come, hey boss, what are we going to do? You say, what do you think? And you just send them back.

Chris Lesner
I love that. was thinking about that both for my kids and for people that I work with, this concept of challenging them to think through it and understanding where they're coming at it from. There's such learning in that.

Fredrik Haren
Exactly.

Fredrik Haren
Yes. And I actually interviewed another person a couple of days ago and she took that even further and said, whenever you have a, whatever problem you have, never make up your mind. Always go out and ask someone else, I have this problem, what would you do? And ask five other people what they would do and then decide what you're going to do. Basically, kind of a second opinion approach to creativity, just to get different new perspectives before you even start thinking yourself.

Chris Lesner
So outside of all the speaking you do, and obviously I think you might be starting to write a book, what are you doing now to continue to lead this creativity journey that you're on?

Fredrik Haren
In my case, those 15 lines put it into ChatUDP. To me, is travel,
go to 15 to 35 countries, go to Denmark and then go to Mexico and go to the Philippines and whatever. Meet a lot of interesting people, interview them, and I do that for, I don't know, six, seven months per year. And then the other half of the year, I sit on an island, totally isolated, sit on a rock, and just do podcasts and write my books and do my thinking and play with my kids. Because those interviews give me a lot of inspiration, right?
inspires me. But to inspire means to breathe in, right? Inspiration, perspiration. So if you always breathe, if you're constantly inspired, you never create anything. So if I always would be interviewing people, I would never write a book. So I need this other six months to just sit and reflect on what I was taught, also what I think I should be writing about, but also writing it. And writing is a solid, it's an act of solitude. You need to be by yourself.

Chris Lesner (27:38.443)
How does somebody even start that process if somebody hears that and they think, boy, if writing is part of it, I'm not a writer. I've never written. I've never even tried this. I've never thought through those questions. What's the first step?

Fredrik Haren
It depends what kind of book you're writing. So I've written fiction and non -fiction. My non -fiction book came to me in a night. was a nightmare. So I just wrote the nightmare down. So that was that process. And when I did that, I never thought, oh, what should happen now? I just thought, I just closed my eyes and said, what happened next? And then I wrote whatever came into my head. And that was an amazing book. But when I do business books, 99 % of the work is research.
interviews, interviews, interviews until you think you feel like you have such a broad understanding of the subject and when you do that the writing goes almost by itself. Having said that those are my two ways of writing books but I know people there's a Swedish lawyer who writes 15 minutes on her lunch break every day. She writes 15 minutes she has a 45 minute lunch break instead of an hour and for 15 minutes she writes her book but she does it every day. I don't write every day so you know find whatever works for you.

Chris Lesner
All right, Frederick, I want to ask you 10 rapid fire questions. Just say the first thing that comes to your mind. Who's the first person you think of when I say servant leadership?

Fredrik Haren
There we go.
Okay.

Fredrik Haren
Okay, first I would say Joe Biden because he stepped down. I'm not a political American, political person, but to step down like that, I think that's a servant leadership thing to do.

Chris Lesner
Great, five words that most describe yourself.

Fredrik Haren
Okay, well, Explorer will be one of them. Curious would be one of them. Father would be one of them. Should I put that on top, I think. Okay, I'll say Island Owner because it includes Introvert and Nature. And then I will say...

Fredrik Haren
I will leave the last one blank because that will change over time depending on what happens. Am I allowed to do that?

Chris Lesner
I love that answer. Favorite author of book?

Fredrik Haren
Oh, oh, yeah, yeah, okay, wait, wait. Okay, I really like one book that's called Influence Science and Practice. get, yeah, Gileani or something like this because it's so full of exp, it's a book about the psychology professor, oh sorry, it's Fire Action. Okay, Influence Science and Practice. It's a great book.

Chris Lesner
favorite movie.

Fredrik Haren
Oh, I'm a kind of person who really don't have memories of anything. So I'm going to say I just saw Why Women Kill. It's not a movie. It's a mini -series on Netflix, I think. But Why Women Kill, wonderful. Wonderful dialogue, twists, plot twists and everything.

Chris Lesner
Favorite food.

Fredrik Haren
Strawberry. My own strawberry. Yeah.

Chris Lesner
Do you make your own? Love it. Favorite thing to do in your free time.

Fredrik Haren
Play with my kids.

Chris Lesner
All right, surprising fact about you.

Fredrik Haren
I have a twin brother.

Chris Lesner
Wow. And actually, a lot of your family is in writing and creativity, which is interesting. Favorite place you've been?

Fredrik Haren - The Creativity Explorer (31:4.962)
Yeah.
Oh, that is so difficult, but there's so many.

Fredrik Haren
I'm gonna say...
I'm going to say, favorite, not favorite, okay, when I moved to China, because that took me from being a Swedish author and speaker to becoming just an author and a speaker. So that changed my worldview.

Chris Lesner
or somewhere that you want to visit that you've never been.

Fredrik Haren
Kass -Sechs -Damm.

Chris Lesner
Oh wow. And finally, what's the best advice you've ever gotten?

Fredrik Haren
I don't have memories, I don't remember. I live in the moment.

Chris Lesner
I love it. Well, Frederick, thanks for being open and sharing with our audience. Thanks for being here today. What a privilege.

Fredrik Haren
Hey, I'm very happy we could make it happen. Okay, great.

Chris Lesner
Likewise, we'll talk soon.