Leaders face a challenge in ensuring that their teams continue to deliver fresh ideas for their brand. Furthermore, although many brands depend heavily on agency partners to produce creative output, this skill should never be entirely outsourced. No matter the size of your team or company culture, these strategies might be able to help shake things up at your organization and set your creative team on a great thinking path ahead!
Encourage missions
Make your team inspired by challenging them with missions. Doing the same activities every day can be very mundane and unproductive for your team; encourage them to take time away from desks and screens with a purposeful mission. Cultivate curiosity in your team!
Disrupt patterns
Some of the best ideas may come to you when your body is in motion! Human beings are prone to sit in their typical seats and be at their comfort zone, so encourage them to resist the urge and step out of their comfort zone once in a while! Additionally, make them see the world in a “different view”. The goal here is to help your team members disrupt their current pattern. Therefore, give them ownership of ways so everyone is bought in.
Get in with the new
As we said before, cultivate curiosity in your team! By doing this it helps to shift the perspective of your team members and allow them to be more open to possibilities. Encourage your team members to share experiences with one another, through any on/off-site activity where everyone can put his or her new skill into play.
Be flexible
It is a natural reaction to try to over-manage someone when you see their enthusiasm, however, it’s not usually the right response when dealing with creative personalities. This is because by managing a creative team is to accept that everyone has their peaks. No one is always on time, therefore, give people the flexibility to work during the periods they’re feeling the most productive, creative and inspired.
Explore new mediums
Try to venture beyond the platforms you already have now like Facebook and Twitter by testing ideas. Have you ever thought about expanding to mobile apps or engagement on-the-go like bite-sized content? See your creative team as master storytellers and try to expand how they would be able to tell a story through these platforms. Keep in mind that these would factor in emotional connection and sensory engagement as it is a vital tool to keep your team inspired too!
Lastly, a good manager should lead by example. If your team needs to be creative, you should also have to set a very good example for them. You are a creative thinker after all – be sure to demonstrate and share your ideas! Use creativity tools and participate in thinking activities; this will also help your team be inspired and take part in as well. Don’t be shy and encourage creativity among those around you!