What is the link between Salvador Dali's art and business leadership? While it may not be obvious, the parallels are striking.

Like business leaders, Dali and many other artists imagine the future and think about how ideas might look when they are accomplished – only artists work ideas out on canvas instead of on a conference room's dry-erase board.

Dali's artwork will take center stage to help those participating in Plumbing Manufacturers International's Aspiring Leaders' Program to get more comfortable with their creative side – and spark innovation in their work. The program is scheduled for the first day of the PMI19 Conference, Nov. 4–7 at The Don Cesar hotel in St. Pete Beach, Florida. Program participants will be surrounded by beautiful works of art a short distance away at The Dali Museum in St. Petersburg as they learn what creativity is and is not, what the tenets of creativity are, and why it is important for leaders to understand these tenets.

Led by Kim Macuare, Ph.D., education manager of the Innovation Labs at The Dali Museum, this one-of-a-kind program will help participants learn about their personal cognitive style. "Every stage of the creative problem-solving process is connected to cognitive style, and your cognitive style determines how you're going to engage in the process," Macuare said.

Macuare, a FourSight trainer, will apply FourSight's mindset profile during the program. She explained that mindset helps everyone understand innovation is their job. "We're accustomed to thinking of creativity as a chaotic, indefinable or hard-to-understand process. FourSight helps us understand that process and think about engaging in it in a more mindful way. Once we do that, it's easier to improve both our creative thinking and innovation outcomes," Macuare added.

During a creativity workshop, participants will learn more about Dali's art, philosophies and methods to better understand the definition of creativity: novel ways of seeing, doing and being. After the workshop, participants will tour the museum's galleries, working with the artwork and focusing on leadership vision while practicing some of their newly learned skills.

"We're a unique program. We're the only museum in the United States or even abroad with an innova­tion lab dedicated to using works, processes and methods derived from art to jumpstart creativity and promote in­novation outcomes in organizations and corporations," Macuare said.

Registration for PMI's Aspiring Leaders' Program is available at www.safeplumbing.org/events/aspiring-leaders-program.

Registration for the PMI19 Conference is available at www.safeplumbing.org/events/calendar/event/id-2019-pmi-conference.