Asumpta Happy Umwagarwa is a human resources strategist and career coach. She is the author of Drums of Success, a book through which she describes ten steps to turning your creative potential into success. Basing on research, Umwagarwa believes that these steps are very important and relevant to Africans in general and particularly Rwandans, as they provide an insight in discovering one’s mental capabilities. The New Times' Solomon Asaba caught up with her. Below are the excerpts:

Can you provide us with a brief background to this book?

As a human resource strategist and career coach, my research in psychometric tests enabled me to test the mental capabilities and personality traits in the motives of individuals. Although such studies are used in human resource management to find out how the person will perform other than cognitive knowledge. I went further to find out what else a person can do besides his or her field of graduation and what would happen when they encountered a problem in their work places. As part of this study, it was also in my works to find out whether one may have capacity to analyse the solution and personality traits, such as teamwork being crucial in solving such challenges. This is the basis of my publication. Although I do not talk about much of my research in the book, I drew some conclusions from psychometric tests and performance at work, after reading similar research by another American woman. I have studied and stated some key aspects such as fluid intelligence and crystallised intelligence. The former being inborn and the later being affected by the environment all of which affects creativity in individuals.

Despite the fact that my research on creative killers would urge me to write this book to human resource managers, I realised that it would only have such a big impact if it is addressed to all people.

Your book mainly emphasises creativity and I believe this is the big message you want to deliver to your readers; how do you think this is going to impact people’s lives?

In my book, I help you understand your creative potential and mental capabilities as part of the big equation that governs a successful life. In the equation, there is a personality trace on one side which is the ‘how’ and motivation being the ‘why’, hence you need all because creativity has to come up with some new solutions.

With personality traits differing in individuals, you find that most people who are curious are more creative than those who are less curious, which means that any creative venture we engage in has risks. For many reasons, we may want to play it safe hence we fail to discover our creative potential.

Although I cannot be talking much about risk management, my understanding is that if something is not taking your life, then it is worth trying.

The publishing industry in Rwanda is just growing and it would require only determined writers to put content on the market; what drove you to this publication for our local market?

After the death of my father during the Genocide, my mother had to switch from a house wife to selling flowers, which was a big contribution to our survival. In the book, you will realise I talked about my brother Strong, who started with dust and eye pencils to move his art work to the next step. He made several of them, and today, he uses modern pens and exhibits his works in different countries. These are people I had to learn from here in Rwanda and despite my being very educated; this experience is common to most of us here.

But at some point in the book you say you got disappointed by your brother, why did you say so?

Even when you read in my acknowledgements when I talk about my father who grew up in a poor family, one thing that saved him was education, and all the time he would tell us that if you did not go to school, you won’t make it in life. Looking also at the trouble my mother went through when selling flowers to facilitate us at school, we were always meant to fight to stay in school, but my brother decided not to complete school. Although luckily he completed school later, I was left in astonishment that time when I was doing my research when I received his e-mail saying he quit school. Now I understand what it takes and sometimes people who are intelligent do not really have to complete school.

Human resource is a field where you have quite reasonable experience, but do you believe Rwandans should look more into unlocking talents of individuals than promoting the routine of going to school?

Personally, I do not advocate for people not going to school. I went to school myself and have more plans for advanced education, but there is somewhere I talk about what schools should do for people to develop all the eight types of intelligence. One main thing is that as early as possible, you should try to help children unlock their potential. By the time children reach teenage age, they have mastered so many skills and have variety to choose from, which takes us back to fluid intelligence that peaks up during adolescence which helps us a lot in life.

It is common in Africa and Rwanda to define people by their degrees. If you think a degree is something to lead you to success, you are right but if you think a degree is success itself, then you are wrong. It is, therefore, at this early age that they can play with so many things such as nature, touch smell and feel then draw judgment on what to do or not.

Looking on the other side of life, even when you make a random survey with graduates concerning job interviews, they will assure you that they always find them hard.

As someone in the human resource department, what are these key things you look for in fresh graduates to be fit for certain positions?

In any selection process there are three main things; can you do the job, will you do the job, and will you fit in.

‘Can you do the job’ is about the skills besides your qualification, the second one is about the motivation - why do you want to be what you want and third being a concern of whether you will fit in which reflects on your personality. Every company has an organisational structure whereby someone to be hired must be found fit for the community. There are also written tests for assessing that you can do the job although competence based interviews are now more so used, like finding out what you did when you found yourself in a certain situation.

When I was writing this book, I was taken out of organisations because today only very few organisations foster creativity since staff members now have projects they work on almost all the time. So, it is more about compliance and adherence to policies which makes the brains idle.

You write ten steps to turn your creative potential into success; what exactly is limiting our creativity?

There are three main things, one being the thinking that we do not have the potential because we think it is always left for the genius, which is in the way they talk and the way they dress. They should learn to turn that potential into creative ideas and objects. For instance, although there are so many people who can sing, not all of them are musicians.

The same applies to story tellers who cannot write novels, and a lot of people who have creative ideas have managed it in a way that leads to success then a lot of us think that it is difficult to be successful. If you look at the book, I emphasise fighting with creativity killers, some people have discovered their potential and they always claim they can do it. Sometimes they are right they can do it, but they never did it, but then they meet with the creativity killers.

You write about fighting creativity killers; who are these people?

There are five creativity killers; the guru is that person who is like a thought person, an expert on the subject – they have done it and they always come to a conclusion that it has to be this way. Learn from them, but do never let them change the originality of the ideas. Build on their knowledge to come up with something new because if it is singing when you can sing like Beethoven, then you cannot sing just like the guru requires.

The second one is the perfectionist; they are not even experts, but do not want to see any flaws; they do not understand that you can do something today, which improves slowly until excellence. Creative people always do something beyond the ordinary, but something queer is that perfectionists cannot do everything perfectly.

The third is the sponsor; this one can tell that if you do not do it this way you won’t succeed. Simply because they have a key to your success, they believe there is a framework that you have to go through. Sponsors are more dangerous in a way, but all they want is for them to minimise the risks of engaging in your creative project. All you have to do is to win their hearts.

Then the lover, who you must fight so that you minimise risks, although in most cases they may not understand things the way you do.

The fifth one is yourself and I drew that from the first step. So, if you have not developed trust from people, there is no way you are going to get out creative ideas.

Calls have been made on efforts to improve Rwanda publications; what do you think about our local publishers and why did you choose this publishing house?

We have few publishers and most of them focus on academic material. I commend many Rwandan authors that have managed to put out books, despite the many challenges, they show me that they at least tried to put out of those books. My dream would be to have experienced professional publishers to enable Rwandans with ideas to really write.

I would not get a publishing house in my country; it took eight months for the publisher to work on his book in editing, services that I could not easily get in this country. This book is more relevant for developing countries.

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