5 Ways You’re Killing Creativity and How to Fix it
Creativity and the Role of the Leader
Originally published as an Online Marketing article on Fiund.com
True leaders motivate their people to be creative. First and foremost, in order to effectively encourage creativity in an organization, a leader need not manage how all is done, but manage in a way that allows the employees freedom to be creative.
Giving freedom shows employees they are trusted and encourages innovation and free-thinking. Many organization profess to support “innovation” and “creativity” but in reality they are actually killing it.
Below are 5 ways you can fix the drain and boost creativity around you.
1. Money Talks, Change the Pay
One major change leaders can take (while definitely not for every organization) to help encourage creativity, is to offer similar salaries. Many organizations offer High salaries for managerial positions and low salaries for most workers. By flattening the pay scale and giving everyone more equal wages you are able to help everyone feel like their opinion is valid.
This increases creativity and helps the organization come up with more innovative ideas.
2. Freedom is 95% of the Battle
One of the many roles of a leader is to aid people in preforming to their best ability. As a leader the key to this is to motivate powerfully and communicate clearly with your team. One specific way of doing this is by giving more freedom in decision making and problem solving to your team and thereby cultivating a culture of success, creativity and innovation.
Without true freedom to make decisions that affect the project, team members are going to lose excitement and the feeling of personal responsibility for the outcome.
3. It Takes a Village to Raise a Monkey with Mind Control Abilities
When wishing to stimulate creativity, is essential to bringing people from many different fields and backgrounds together. A popularized instance of this occurred at Brown University’s in their brain science program. A group of neuroscientists, engineer’s, brain surgeons and mathematicians were all brought to work on one project.
By the end of the project though complex systems they were able to make a monkey control a computer mouse cursor with its mind. This incredible feat of science would never have been achieved if the leaders in charge had not brought people from different fields to work together.
It was vital that the leaders let the participants work on the parts of the project they felt most strongly about. This great decision by management helped facilitate the creativity and overall success of the project.
4. Apply Daily or Bust
These concepts can be applied to each of us in our daily life because we are constantly put in positions and given opportunities where we must lead. As a leader we have the choice of becoming overbearing and stifling the group’s creativity, or of giving freedom and encouraging the opposite.
In the past while working with groups and on teams I have seen both sides of the spectrum. When we all have the freedom to contribute in the areas where which we feel most passionate, projects run smoother resulting in a more refined and creative product.
5. Lose Control or Lose the Team
The ability to give freedom and decision making power to others is a difficult yet essential skill for every leader today. Ultimately by giving your people more freedom in a project, you are boosting the likelihood of the project’s success.
As leaders grow to understand how to cultivate creativity in a team, it will help them in their objective to inspire their team to success. By leading through creativity the goals a leader and the organization have set, will be more likely achieved and the full potential of the team will be realized.
Use a Checklist
If you are serious about creativity, I’ve created a free checklist for putting yourself into peak productivity & creativity. If you follow this daily, you’ll be able to prioritize your life and proactively create the life you want.
