7 Ways of Inspiring Team Creativity
According to the World Economic Forum, creativity is one of the top 10 skills essential for successful business. Global executives look for creative teams.
Previously, we’ve talked about the role of other people in personal creativity and emphasised the importance of communication. Now we’ve decided to go further and reveal how to use creativity in a team. They say two heads are better than one. Imagine the achievements when the ideas and capabilities of each person are brought together.
Let’s discover how to best foster group creativity at the workplace!
1. Support Flexibility
People who can choose a place and time for work are always more creative. New ideas visit night owls in the evenings or even late at night, while introverts show their abilities best by sitting in their cozy corner with the music in headphones.
The same office environment cannot suit everyone at once. If you give employees the freedom to choose where to cope with tasks, their creativity and productivity will increase.
Of course, sometimes you need to get together, remotely or in person, for brainstorming. For example, the Collabio team works completely remotely under quarantine conditions, and we call each other if we need to discuss something.
2. Collaborate More and Use Apps
When lively interaction is a norm, discussing ideas and constructive suggestions becomes a habit. Most importantly, feel free to express yourself and your thoughts! Your teammates are your main helpers; ready and able to support one another. If this is not the case, then we advise you to change the team. ;)
For fast and productive collaboration, use technology! In addition to Collabio Spaces, many more applications allow you to work together in real-time. We have shared short overviews helping you to choose the right tools and develop collaborative team creativity.
3. Recognise Success
The more the merits of employees are recognised by others, the more people want to reach new heights. It’s obvious, why try if the team doesn’t care about what you are doing?
This doesn’t always have to mean material rewards and bonuses; instead, build it into the working atmosphere –positive attitude, phrases of gratitude, as well as short inspiring conversations. It is especially important to negotiate positive results, despite any prior criticism. To this end, you let employees know that you are focusing, not only on their fails, but also victories, even the small ones.
4. Give People Time to Brainstorm
No one can come up with great ideas on the spot. Creativity needs time to flourish. Some of us even receive insights late at night just before going to sleep!
We suggest announcing that final brainstorming session in advance — giving your team members have a couple of days to get ready for it. That way, all you’ll need to do is to choose the winning idea among all the suggestions!
5. Keep Meetings Short
Not all meetings are effective, as we’ve discovered before! Except for six useful tips from the linked article, we’d recommend you keeping meetings short. Long ones rather exhaust attendees than create a positive impact. 15–30 minutes is more than enough — people keep in mind the limitations and try their best to use this time efficiently. So, as a result, no time is wasted on unnecessary discussions!
Another life hack is making at least 10-minute pauses between meetings if you want everyone to be happy and productive. Fast recharging with a cup of tea or coffee is essential!
6. Avoid Unnecessary Revisions
When it comes to collective work, we all come across dozens of revisions. You’re lucky if this is not the case for you! ;) For example, one of the team members, let it be copywriter, offers an option for a PR article. This article is reviewed and approved by colleagues: their team leader, a PR specialist, an SEO expert, and maybe several other people (tech lead, CEO, etc.). If the author receives tons of edits every day, all their creativity will be simply buried under these suggestions.
That’s why it’s essential to share the content with all participants at once and wait until everyone takes a look at it. Setting a deadline will urge team members to review the creative work in a timely manner.
You may also set the maximum number of revisions, for example, one or two. We all know that there is no limit to perfection. There is always something to improve, and you can continue doing this forever. Sometimes perfectionism only hurts, so it’s worth stopping at what has been done well and appreciate the accomplishment (even if not super-perfect)!
7. Make Your Feedback Actionable
The final tip is to make any feedback for creative processes actionable. For example, if you see that the work of your teammates can be enhanced, don’t say just that you would do it the opposite way:
- Outline what can be done better and why.
- Suggest helpful tools to your colleagues.
- Prove your ideas with statistics or previous experience.
Without that, your feedback will sound like criticism without reason.
Also, use value judgments. Talk about the job, not the person who did it. So, in the case of negative feedback, your colleague will not feel like a bad employee. And in the case of positive thoughts, people will perceive feedback as praise, which is motivating!
We’ve tested these tips with the Collabio Spaces team and hope that they will work for your team as well!
If you have some more life hacks to share, we’ll wait for your comments in Responses! ;)
