Creativity boosts productivity and helps to motivate our people, so how can leaders encourage it teams and organisations?
Problem-solving exercises enhance creativity. They can often be approached collaboratively to diversify the proposed solutions and processes. They challenge employees to think beyond the status quo.
A genuinely stimulating challenge is one that encourages people to stretch themselves and feel energised by the process. We don’t want them to feel overwhelmed by a challenge that’s beyond their current capabilities – but we don’t want to bore them either.
Our role as managers is to set goals and support team members in achieving those goals. However, in many instances (depending on the work culture) we could be clipping people’s creative wings if you micro-manage them.
Encourage team members to decide for themselves how to achieve the goals you’ve set. Which techniques will they use? Giving our team members agency in how they achieve the goals we’ve set can foster their creativity, let them play to their strengths and enhance their motivation to help the project succeed.
If things don’t work out as expected, they will learn valuable lessons along the way.
Increasing creativity in the workplace can take time and/or money – both of which are often in short supply.
Managers may set a deadline to sharpen people’s senses and create a sense of challenge but deadlines that are too deadline my overwhelm individuals or teams. Creativity can often be achieved on a tight budget – and sometimes even on a budget of zero. Sometimes, however, investment might be required in order to fully support the team.
For example, there are many free image libraries of variable quality. In order to achieve a world-class visual project, a manager may need to approve access to a paid image library so that the team can focus on creating visuals that fully meet business goals without being asked to create a slick poster out of paperclip art.
Successful brainstorming and creative work isn’t coming up with a ‘pot pourri’ of ideas that never amount to anything. The end results of creative work needs to be tangible – completed and in line with predetermined goals.
Choose a creative taskforce that combines productivity with diversity of perspective and background. You’re not looking for chaos, but if your team is made of people who all think the same way they may simply plod through the work to produce a workable but uninspiring result.
Your experience and intuition as a leader, and knowledge of your team, will be required to get the balance right.
Taking risks is inherent in creativity. Creative thinking involves questioning assumptions and challenging the status quo; it involves questioning set ways of doing things in order to create something new.
Employees need to feel they can safely challenge assumptions for the good of the project without fear of recrimination; otherwise, they will only agree with leaders.
Leaders can support the people and process in a supervisory context and help to embed creativity into the wider organisational mindset. They can openly acknowledge and give credit to creative thinking – even if it challenges assumptions held by senior managers. This praise is important, because it sends a clear signal that creativity (and courage in expressing) it is valued by the organisation.
Collaboration and information-sharing leads to greater confidence and creativity – whereas a siloed or ‘politically charged’ environment stifles it. Senior leaders who soothe troubled political waters will create safe shallows for their teams to engage in the freedom of creative thought.