John Cleese: Get your team in touch with their best hunches

(soft electronic music) - At the read-through of Fish Called Wanda, when Jamie and Kevin and Michael Palin and I were there with the Director and the First Assistant, at a particular point, when we were reading it out, the First Assistant Director, Jonathan Benson, said, "Wouldn't it be better if-" and Jamie kind of went Because she thought that in America, if I was American, I would've jumped on him. Said "You're Assistant Director. We don't want no of you." Whereas what I actually said was "That's a better line" and I crossed the line out that I had written and I wrote in Jonathan's line and thirteen different people contributed dialogue to Fish Called Wanda. And I got the Oscar nomination. So the point was I was smart enough to listen to everyone. Because you never know when someone is going to say something interesting. Being creative in a group, what you want is conflict of ideas. You don't want conflict of personalities. Because conflict of personalities is a waste of energy. That's not going to make anything good. And it's also going to make people less creative because if there's conflict they tighten up. And creativity is all to do with not tightening up. Of relaxing, becoming spontaneous, and allowing any silly little idea that comes up in your mind to be expressed to the rest of the group. And if everybody's sitting around trying to impress the rest of the group and make sure that they say only sensible things so that before they say something they start checking. Is it all right to say that? If you have that, it's not going to be a creative group. So there has to be a trust. So the first thing you want in a group really to make it work properly is one person, we used to call them a Chairman or Chairwoman, but somebody in charge who understands the creative process. And who will, for example some people if some people are too dominant they will just say "Wait a moment, I haven't heard what so-and-so said" and then bring out the shier people who may have just as much if not more to contribute. And they will control the people who are trying to dominate the discussion. And they will also come in with an open mind because if people come in knowing what answer they want, then creative people pick that up. And they've got to be able to understand the creative process, which is more a- is getting very relaxed, getting... in touch with very subtle stuff coming up from your unconscious because when your unconscious, which provides all the creativity, when that gives you a message it's not going to be neatly typed out. It's going to be just a hunch. Einstein said that muscular sensations played a large part in his creativity. So it's stuff coming up from underneath because our unconscious minds are unbelievably, um, (soft electronic music) complex and almost omniscient. (music continues)