In this thought-provoking episode, Ryan Goulart welcomes American psychologist, author, and creativity researcher Dr. Keith Sawyer to explore how intentionality, improvisation, and the creative process shape personal and professional transformation. Drawing from his background as a jazz pianist and his latest book, Learning to See, Dr. Sawyer discusses how learning to perceive the world differently is essential for innovation, growth, and meaningful change.
Dr. Sawyer also shares insights from over a decade of research with artists, designers, and educators, revealing how the process of “learning to see” is not only central to visual creativity—but also a profound metaphor for how we navigate leadership, teamwork, and personal development in an ever-evolving world.
Improvisation as a Way of Life
Sawyer begins by redefining intentionality not as rigid goal-setting, but as an openness to act, observe, and respond to what the world gives back. Whether in jazz, theater, or leadership, improvisation is a vital skill for anyone trying to align their actions with evolving circumstances. “The most powerful intention,” he explains, “is one that’s ready for a response from the world.”
Personal Transformation Through Creative Practice
One of the central insights from Learning to See is that creativity changes who we are. Through interviews with art and design educators, Dr. Sawyer found that teaching creativity isn’t about mastering tools it’s about transforming how we see, think, and interact with the world. This kind of learning, he notes, takes years and is often invisible to those going through it until they emerge seeing differently.
Failure, Feedback, and Improvisational Confidence
A major theme of the conversation is how failure can be a creative catalyst. But it only leads to growth when people are open to adjusting their original intentions. Dr. Sawyer argues that true creative confidence isn’t about certainty it’s about trusting in one’s ability to respond, adapt, and co-create in the face of uncertainty. “It takes a deeper confidence to not always know what’s going to happen,” he says.
Leadership as Improvisational Teaching
Ryan and Dr. Sawyer draw parallels between studio teaching and effective leadership. Both involve guiding others through unclear terrain without prescribing every step. Whether leading a team or mentoring a colleague, great leaders create environments where others can explore, make, reflect, and grow often without realizing how their thinking is changing until much later.
Technology, Tools, and Creative Constraints
In an age of digital tools and AI, Dr. Sawyer cautions against the illusion of unlimited possibilities. Every tool whether it’s a pencil or Adobe Creative Suite shapes how we see and what we create. That’s why many design educators deliberately restrict technology in early training to help students discover the constraints embedded in their tools and develop deeper creative awareness.
About Keith
R. Keith Sawyer is a leading scientific expert on creativity. He is the Morgan Distinguished Professor in Educational Innovations at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Check out his latest book, Learning to See: The Transformative Path of Visual Creativity
Transcript
Ryan Goulart (00:02.23)
All right. Keith, welcome to Making the Ideal Real. Great. First question we always ask our guests that are appearing on our podcast for the very first time is, what does making the ideal real mean to you?
Keith (00:10.871)
It’s great to be here.
Keith (00:29.575)
For me it means intentionality, intentionality of action. And by intentionality, I mean something maybe a little bit different because intentionality implies that you want to impose your will on the world or that you have a script or a vision that you want to execute.
But I think the most powerful intention is one that is ready for a response from the world, where you’re aware of what’s going on around you, and you take an act, and then you’re able to see what life does in response. And then you can continue that process improvisationally. So for me, when I say intentionality, I mean a sort of improvisational way of approaching life.
Ryan Goulart (01:15.916)
That’s a wonderful answer to a great question and a wonderful platform for you and I to have a conversation on today because we are talking about your new book, Learning to See. And I’m curious to learn more from you as someone who has been active in the creative space for a…
many, many years. You’re an experienced professional, experienced researcher on the topic of creativity. So when it comes to intentionality, how have you seen through your research, intentionality play a role in creativity?
Keith (02:01.211)
Well, you’re right. I study improvisational creativity for my career, and it’s a great life to have. I see everything through the lens of intentionality. Probably like all researchers, everywhere we look, we see our phenomenon. So mine is improvisational action and improvisational creativity. Going back to my original studies of jazz musicians, I myself was a jazz pianist.
That’s how I got interested in creativity research, and in particular, the improvisational nature of jazz. And then I studied improvisational theater. played piano with an improv group in Chicago. And I became fascinated with this particular type of creative action. And I’m saying intentionality now, but I think it’s a form of improvisation. And you think about it in a group setting.
where you’re taking an action on stage or you’re playing a particular phrase on your saxophone and you can’t impose your will on the group, that’s going to result in a horrible performance. So if you want to understand ensemble improvisation and you want to be effective at that kind of performance, you have to be constantly aware of what’s going on around you. You need to take an action and it has to be a creative action because it’s a creative performance art.
but you have this ability to listen or see and respond. So for me, any kind of creative action is a matter of seeing clearly. Maybe in music you would call it listening or hearing more clearly. So that’s where we get to the title of my new book, which is Learning to See.
which actually does tap into the same notion of intentionally interacting with the world. And you can’t improvise in that way unless you can see clearly what’s going on around you.
Ryan Goulart (04:02.141)
love that. I’m going to say that all the way through this podcast that I love these answers because I have, it’s already triggering a lot of different thoughts there that I’m going to save for later. But one of the things that, you know, when you and I were talking, we, and in your book, there is a foundation, and as to why, why we’re talking about learning to see why we’re talking about improvisation, intentionality, and this, kind of
connection between idea and action. And in that space, in that space of idea and action, there’s oftentimes growth and the growth comes from personal transformation. Talk to us a little bit about what personal transformation means to you as it relates to this creative process, because I think there’s going to be a lot of insight there. already, see you smiling, so let’s go.
Keith (04:58.371)
Absolutely. Well, the book, Learning to See, is based on over 10 years of interviews I did with artists and designers. And they’re very special kind of artists and designers because even though
their full-time job, their professional creators, but the ones I interviewed are people who also teach in art and design schools, in BFA and MFA programs. And I wanted to find out what these people are doing. How do you teach students how to be artists or architects or graphic designers? And, you know, me being an outsider, I’m not a visual artist, so you might think they’re teaching you how to mix paints or they’re teaching you how to build architectural models.
But no one said anything like that. They all talked about the importance of learning or teaching students how to see and how to think.
And this is what they were always saying when I was asking them questions about what you’re teaching. They’d say, I’m teaching students how to see. And of course, I didn’t know what that meant because I don’t know how to paint or do architecture. So that’s how I ended up spending over 10 years trying to find out what they’re doing. And I gradually realized, I mean, think about it. If you’re learning to perceive the world differently,
and you’re learning to think about your action in the world differently.
Keith (06:25.191)
That is a personal transformation that really does change you as a person. You’re seeing and thinking in different ways. So for purposes of art or design, you’re learning particular kinds of seeing and thinking that are associated with visual creativity. But it’s something you don’t know when you start art school. So imagine an 18-year-old who goes to art school. They’re very talented. You have to submit a portfolio of your work as part of your application.
So you’ve probably been generating good-looking work since you were 10 years old and you’ve submitted some great stuff in your portfolio. So how could these 18-year-olds not already be really good artists? Well, this is what these professional artists and designers told me. They said, yeah, but the students don’t know how to see yet and they don’t know how to think in the ways we do. And this is our job here.
We need to teach them. And it takes them quite a while. They say more than two years that the students don’t even start to get it yet until the beginning of your third year. So it really is a personal transformation in how you see the world. And I’d say, yes, it’s focused in this case on a particular type of action, which is generating works on Canvas, let’s say.
But I believe that the lessons that are in my book based on art and design, creativity, or learning how to do it.
It really is a deeper message about what goes on in your life and in your mind when you’re changing fundamentally how you perceive and how you think about the world. So that’s the way I think about this book Learning to See is that it’s really, I guess I might say a cognitive science book. It’s about action in the world and how you interact with the world.
Ryan Goulart (08:24.343)
Yeah, I love the, I mean, as a, I am not an artist. I barely, barely scratched the surface of design.
as particularly graphic design, just, and I’ve learned those skills because I work in a small business and those skills have been needed. So I went out and learned them myself to apply here. One of the things that as I was kind of contemplating and I actually, this, this recording is actually very timely because I’ve actually been doing a lot of design Keith. So I’ve had to find myself back in my Adobe creative suite doing those things. And what was fascinating about the timing of this is that.
Keith (09:00.391)
good.
Ryan Goulart (09:09.487)
I found myself thinking and like, wow, like I knew I learned these skills probably like five, six years ago, but it took me some time to relearn them again. And I was contemplating too, just like how creativity itself, and we’ve been talking a lot about that here on the podcast, how just like the various connections we have to make in our mind to be able to shift.
our mindset, our shift, our thinking into be able to perceive something very differently. Like I use, I have to change my mind to work in design. I have to change my mind to work in Excel or financial models. It’s just a different way of thinking. And
How did you notice with various art forms in your research for the book, how did you notice that transformation with individuals that were working, whether in visual art, like canvases or sculpture? Was there a consistent theme that you saw and how people were able to make that shift and be aware of it too?
Keith (10:21.597)
Absolutely, it’s very rich. As I said, over 10 years of interviews, and then I went and observed these professors in studios with the students. So how do you guide someone through this process of personal transformation? Well, maybe it’ll sound obvious, but one thing they told me very early on is you can’t lecture. You can’t just tell students, here’s
the way you’re seeing now and here’s the way you need to see and by the end of the semester I’m going to give you a test to see if you can see the new way yet and then I’m going to have a series of lectures. So absolutely that doesn’t work. You can’t just tell someone how to think differently and how to see differently. So that’s why I think
what I’ve learned from these artists and designers is important and relevant to any kind of personal transformation because that rings true, right? You can’t just tell someone how to grow up or how to be an adult or how to be a good friend or an effective colleague. It’s, I think, in a way with all professions or all professional expertise, you have to guide the learner and the learner has to do it themselves.
but the learner doesn’t know how to do it. And you can’t tell the learner how to do it. So that’s, guess, the mystery of guiding someone toward this kind of complicated outcome. And that’s what I really focused on in the book, is what are the guiding structures that these professors provide. So the students are always making creative works. They’re always engaged in projects.
every class. So that’s what a studio class is. You’re painting something or you’re weaving something or you’re making an architectural model. So if you go into an art studio class you’re going to see visual stuff being generated. But these professors say, yeah but that’s not what I’m teaching them. I’m not teaching them how to make stuff. But they have to make something to go through the process of learning to think differently.
Keith (12:37.987)
And one of them said, and this is a quotation, the thing they make is only the carrier. They need to make something to change their mind into thinking in this new way. And they don’t really know that that’s what’s happening, right? They don’t know how they’re going to be thinking at the end of the process. So that’s the brilliance of this kind of educator, is that you can create conditions.
which guide the learners to the outcome of being able to think and see differently. And it’s, I gotta say it’s complicated and it sounds mysterious and it is. That’s why it took me a long time to do this and that’s why it’s a long book. And that’s why I can’t tell you how to see in one podcast episode, but hopefully to convince you that this is.
not easy and you can’t do it in one semester and you can’t do it in one week or one month. It’s a set of mindsets, it’s a way of being in the world that you can’t just lecture at someone. So that’s why I have a, I guess a long book about the nature of these constraints, the types of projects that you guide students through.
and how it is that they go through, I guess, like a process, a pathway.
from not being able to see clearly to at the end being able to see clearly. And actually now this comes back to intention I suppose, right, intentionality because you’re making something in every class so you have to have some idea of what it is you’re going to make. You can’t just be throwing stuff on the canvas every week. So yes, you do have an intention and I think this is true of all of us in everyday life as well.
Keith (14:37.039)
with intention. We have to have something in mind. You can’t just be wandering aimlessly, but you need to do it in such a way that you’re able to listen and respond to what the world is telling you back. In the case of a painting or an architecture student, what you’re listening to is the work that you’re generating. So it’s an architectural model or it’s a painting. So that’s why it’s important that they make something.
because what you’re trying to help them learn is the nature of this dialogue that you need to have with the work that you’re generating. And you need to learn how to engage in this dialogue where you are listening and seeing and responding. So it’s a kind of improvisational intention, if you will.
Ryan Goulart (15:26.805)
Yeah, I I smile because there’s a lot in what you just said that applies to a lot of the work that our listeners do. Our listeners work with people. They’re leaders, they’re coaches, they’re aspiring to be leaders or coaches or financial advisors.
And, you know, oftentimes the medium are other people. So you’re having to help them, guide them to realize a vision that you have for a business or a project. And I’ve often thought that the art mediums, whether art or design, I perceive that as hard.
But in fact, like just how you just framed that, the fact that they get to, that there’s a physical thing, a tangible thing to respond to actually is fairly nice to have to go through a personal transformation with a physical object versus another person, which exponentially increases the likelihood that they’re going to want to do with their own thing.
So, very, very interesting thought there as it, as it relates to just how does one, you know, navigate creativity through, you know, being intentional, listening around, but you’re also dealing with people too. it was just a side thought, but I told you that was going to happen. So, but when it comes to, so in your work, and this is something that we expire to too, is what role does.
Keith (17:02.269)
All right, absolutely. Go for it.
Ryan Goulart (17:13.003)
teaching mean for the people that you researched. Those arts, art students, or art teachers, because that’s a really important piece.
Keith (17:23.227)
I think there’s a parallel with leadership, absolutely. And it gets back to my own research with improvisational theater, which is an ensemble art form or jazz improvisation, like a book I wrote some time ago called Group Genius, where, yes, you are improvising with other people. And you hit the nail on the head that I think these artists are, in a sense, improvising with the work that they’re generating.
So it’s improvisational action, whether you’re doing it by yourself or whether you’re doing it with other people. So yes, if you’re a leader, can’t, I mean, maybe some leaders try to impose their will on their workers, but I don’t think that’s effective leadership. And I’m sure you don’t either. It’s just ordering people around and telling them what to do. But effective leadership has to be improvisational. You have to be aware.
of the responses that you’re getting and then your own action needs to be improvisational action. And that’s true in the art studio as well. The professors are there with the students and every student is different every semester. You start to see patterns of course after you’ve been doing this for five or ten years. But new students always come along and they always do something different that you haven’t seen before.
So teaching is fundamentally improvisational. I your responsibility is to provide guiding structures, as I’ve already said, that guide the artist through the process of generating the work. In a workplace, I’m thinking about, let’s say, mentoring or apprenticing someone new, for example. They’re not going to be.
in a class for three months, they’re going to be there doing the job for three months, but they don’t know everything they need to know yet. So an effective leader or mentor is going to have to guide that process, I think, very much the same way as a teacher in any class, including in our class.
Ryan Goulart (19:36.086)
Yeah. And I, it’s so true. And one of the things that stands out to me in this personal transformation, part of the creative process and what you’re talking about of just that improvisational action, there’s an element of both confidence and courage.
How did those two elements play in your research for the book and what you saw in artists and designers?
Keith (20:07.747)
those are powerful terms, confidence and courage. Confidence, I’ll start with that one. And I think maybe it’s problematic. So I’ll say something complicated about confidence because it’s, I think, tied into intentionality. If you are too intentional, like for example, we often hear about people having a vision.
and sticking with their vision and executing their vision and your true north, this sort of language you’ll often hear in business settings. And that makes me nervous because it implies that you are starting with a vision of what the world’s gonna look like and then you’re imposing your vision on the world. And that’s the sort of intentionality that I would say is not improvisational and that you’re not seeing clearly and you’re not responding.
to what’s going on. So your intentionality is not improvisational. In many cases, that’s what I hear when I hear people say, stick with your vision and don’t be unwavering or be unwavering and realize or manifest your goal. All of that way of thinking, yeah, that makes me nervous because it loses that improvisationality. So you asked about confidence and I could see confidence.
you could think of it in two different ways. And one of them I would say is the wrong way, which is I’m confident in my vision and I don’t care what other people say and I’m just going to execute my vision. Then you’re sort of steamrolling in my view. But I think it’s a different kind of confidence, maybe more profound, if you have the confidence to improvise with the world, that you will listen, you will see what’s happening at response and then you’ll
respond with that in a way I think that requires a deeper sort of confidence, a confidence of not always having to be in control and not always knowing, not always knowing what’s going to happen next. I mean imagine doesn’t that take a lot of confidence in yourself? I don’t know what’s going to happen next but I’m confident that I can deal with it and that I’m going to make something bigger and greater.
Keith (22:28.423)
than I would have if I just tried to impose what I thought was going to happen. Yeah, I hadn’t thought about this before, but absolutely. Doesn’t that sound like a pretty profound kind of confidence?
Ryan Goulart (22:40.598)
Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely. You know, it does lend itself to, you know, when it comes to, because I think oftentimes when you hear terms like personal transformation and confidence, courage, intentionality, I mean, there’s, there’s a through line to that where, and this is just human, human nature to want to think linearly and that like, if I do this, then this happens. But there’s an element to it too, that can rock.
it a bit, and that is when you get stuck or when you experience failure. What did you learn from your research or from your book about what happens when humans that are actively in the art and design world get stuck or experience failure? Because that’s… yeah, I’ll leave it there.
Keith (23:38.554)
Failure came up all the time in my interviews and there’s almost a stereotype now in design thinking that failure way to success or that we’ll all hear stories about innovators who failed early on or they failed many, many times and then they gradually found success.
And I believe in those stories. I do think that failure is essential. And it comes up so much in my interviews. It’s one of my nine chapters is called Failure. And it’s something that they need to teach the students how to.
how to handle failure or how to fail successfully. So it’s all the things that you’ve heard before about innovation and business and failure, but these artists and designers I think have a deeper and more profound way of thinking about failure. So first of all, the failure has to happen early on.
in the process. I mean if you get all the way to spending a billion dollars designing the iPhone and then at the end of the process it doesn’t connect to the phone network or the internet so you can’t use it, that failure is not productive. There’s no way you can value that kind of failure. And also that’s the case with artists and designers. They teach their students how to fail early.
And students don’t like failure. No one likes failure. Even professional artists and designers don’t. But they have developed the confidence to trust in the process. And they have developed ways of working where failures will occur early on. And then how do you define failure? I think a lot of people would define failure as I have an intention and I tried to do something and then something else happened.
Keith (25:32.486)
So what I was trying to do didn’t happen. So yeah, a lot of people perceive that as a failure. One thing you need to teach to be a successful artist and designer is to not see it that way. So when there is a mismatch between what you were trying to do and what happened, some people would call that a failure and then try to redo it so that you can get your original intention realized.
But someone who’s learned how to be creative, they’ve learned to see that failure as a mismatch. It’s a mismatch between what you intended and what the world did in response. But what the world did in response might actually be better. Or even if it’s not better, it might be something you could respond to in a different way so that it would go in a different direction.
But failure only helps you if you’re receptive to modifying your original intention, that you perceive these mismatches not as divergences from the path that you need to be on, but as possibilities for opening up new paths.
that you hadn’t seen originally. So that’s where I think the power of failure is. It only has power if you have an improvisational attitude towards the world. If you think of what you’re doing as executing a linear path to a preconceived outcome, yeah, I don’t see how failure is going to contribute to that. Failure helps you if you’re willing to see and listen and modify your original intention.
Ryan Goulart (27:15.457)
That is a really good point in that being aware of the failure, if it’s a divergence and being open to it. mean, that so much of it’s that it’s binary. It’s either you failed or you didn’t. mean, there’s a lot of world that can be like that. But what we’re talking about here is it’s not that. And especially with art and design, leadership of people, you know, there’s
There’s a whole lot of learning that goes on and how to help yourself feel more confident, be more courageous in pursuing some of these ideas. want to spend a little bit of time just because the creative art world and the role of technology, know, how are you perceiving
just technology itself, the way of thinking creatively. How is that human condition being influenced right now as the world moves towards AI, things like that, that kind of disrupts a well-established art form that has been a human form for a very, very long time.
Keith (28:28.177)
I’ll try to represent the voice of the artist and designers I talk to. And some of the people I interviewed are multimedia artists or they’re digital artists of one form or another. So computers are, I guess I would say it’s one more tool. It’s a tool like a paintbrush or a canvas is a tool. And I think this is the way professional designers think about it.
Okay, so think now you get an 18-year-old who enters college next fall and has submitted a portfolio of graphic design work. That 18-year-old probably has Adobe Creative Suite on their computer since they were 10 years old. they are computer savvy. They know how to use Adobe Creative Suite. They know how to make things that look great. What they don’t realize, according to the
designers I talk to, the students don’t realize that the technology has constraints of its own. Because Adobe Creative Suite makes things that look so great, the students think there are no constraints, that the possibilities are unlimited. But they don’t realize that the technology, like every technology, has constraints built into it. And it necessarily guides the way you see the world.
So a lot of these designers, even the ones who are digital or multimedia artists, in the first or second year of a design school, they actually will have assignments where they do not allow their students to use the computer. And the students are puzzled or they complain at first, what are you talking about? I’ve been using Adobe Creative Suite since I was 10. I’m really good at it. And you want me to sketch on a pad with a pencil?
Yes, absolutely. So pretty much everyone I talked to said we require our students to use paper and pencil. And the reason is because the students, by doing that, the goal is to help them understand that every tool has constraints. And every tool supports certain things and makes other things hard. So you need to use a variety of different tools.
Keith (30:48.391)
Then when you go back to the computer, you have a deeper understanding of how to use this particular tool. It’s not unconstrained just because it’s on the computer. It channels the way you see the world. So that’s not a bad thing. And like I said, some of these designers are doing their digital creators. That’s what they do for a living. But they think the students will see more clearly.
how the tool constrains their pathway if they first create with a variety of different tools. I’m not sure I answered your question about technology, except I guess maybe my bigger point is that digital technology is, in some ways, it’s like every other tool, analog tools.
Ryan Goulart (31:37.025)
Yeah. Well, I, it, it most certainly did answer the question. And I think it’s also true for everything that we just talked about too, of the tool, what you use shapes, how you see and being aware of it and how it’s a impact on you will allow you to see differently. So that’s,
Really a great place to stop. Keith, thank you so much for coming on. This has been really fun to learn more about your book, Learning to See. And I’ve taken a lot of notes already. So thank you so much.
Keith (32:15.55)
Well, thank you. It’s been my pleasure.
