Facebook
Julie Tucker
Posted by

Bring out the best in your creative team

Every entrepreneur faces new challenges when starting a business. One of the biggest is learning how to bring out the best in your creative team, as they are the innovators behind your brand and this is fundamental to your company’s success.

Sometimes the most creative team members don’t appear to see the value of strict work schedules, as they can’t say when they will come up with an inspirational idea. To other people looking in, their work processes may seem unstructured. You can’t predict their behaviour, but you know their innovations will propel your project or campaign forward.

Introduce your creatives to an environment that will inspire them to come up with ideas and avoid mental block.

What creates a mental block?

According to surveys of creative teams, following the rules and trying to work within a set schedule is one of the top three reasons they suffer mental block.

Being practical also stifles innovation, such as having a team leader who wishes to evaluate the practicality of an idea while it’s still in the early stages, before letting the team fully form it. Over-thinking the pros and cons can leave it dead in the water in the very early stages.

While most business people will agree shared values, consistency and considering things logically are the route to success, the creative team isn’t part of the admin staff, or the financial team. They’re not thinking about things in the same way everyone else does, so it can be really challenging to bring out the best in them.

Creative blocks are a problem condition among writers, artists, designers and other creative people. It affects their day-to-day work and your overall business success if you don’t learn how to inspire them.

Flexibility

Many businesses are choosing coworking spaces today, with flexibility being a key reason for that decision. Understanding creative employees and their work behaviour, while allowing them the flexibility they need, will result in a more engaged and loyal team. They will help take your company or agency to the top.

The best creative teams are cultivated, so permitting them a flexible workspace is the type of leadership they will appreciate. According to the late psychologist, inventor and author, Edward de Bono, “Creativity involves breaking out of established patterns in order to look at things in a different way.”

As their team leader, you need to give them the freedom to work in an unfettered way, while you remain at the helm to bring it all together in a structured plan to help your business move forward.

Healthy work/life balance

The key to bringing out the best in your creative team is enabling them to have a healthy work/life balance. This is important for everyone in the workplace – managers included. As a team leader, you can’t be all things to all people, but you can prioritise your own time to ensure your own work/life balance is good and that your creative team has the same benefits. Play to people’s strengths and make sure they can prioritise their time, so work doesn’t take over their home life and vice-versa.

During the pandemic, when lockdown was in place, many office workers were home-based. This meant work was often encroaching on home life. People found it challenging to get any structure in their working day. Working from home with distractions from family members, pets, the television and visitors made it tough to get any innovative ideas flowing.

A coworking space provides people with a place that has flexibility, that is also separate from their personal space, so they can achieve the necessary work/life balance.

Personality and passion

Hiring the right people, with the right creative dreams, personality and motivation, is the key to gathering a great team. Don’t pay too much attention to their previous employment. Great creativity doesn’t follow any particular pattern and the previous brands they have worked for aren’t totally relevant.

Having a creative team who have worked with major brands such as Apple or Coca-Cola isn’t necessarily the greatest team for you if they don’t gel as people. Hire team members who appear to share the same values and passion that you have and who you believe will boost your company’s goals as a collective.

Artist, speaker and author Bruce Garrabrandt said, “Creativity doesn’t wait for that perfect moment. It fashions its own perfect moments out of ordinary ones,” and this is true of your company. On paper, a creative team may look perfect when you consider their CVs. However, when meeting them in person, you may have a different view.

Motivation and productivity

High employee motivation will positively impact productivity, stimulating their creativity and spurring them into producing better and more work. Motivated team members have a greater level of job satisfaction, so there will be less boundaries to keeping the creative juices flowing.

Working in a flexible coworking space means your team can have a change in scenery once in a while – they won’t be tied to a desk in a corner of the office. They will be able to collaborate with other co-workers from different brands and teams, while sitting in a community area.

You can further change the surroundings by adding plants to bring the outdoors inside. In summer, you can even pop outside to work with your laptop, if the mood takes you. When you’re heading a creative team, you need to appreciate the value of even a small change to the routine to spark ideas and innovation.

Headspace Group provides flexible coworking and office spaces that are aimed at the creative, media and technology sectors – our clients can focus on their business while we take care of the hassles of running an office. With cost-effective monthly memberships that mean you can expand your team without hassle when the need arises; creative teams can enjoy a thriving coworking space!

For further details, contact Headspace Group today.

 

© Urbanscape / Shutterstock.com

Previous Post Next Post
Say Hello! Pop in for a coffee