How to Give Creativity a Voice in the Workplace
Interactive moments inside a company headquarters represent at least 50% of the global creativity interaction. Today’s organizations spend considerable time and energy selecting the right talent. And rightly so. Creative employees help their organizations survive and remain relevant in an ever-changing global environment. But no matter how creative an organization’s workforce might be if employees are unwilling to speak up and express their innovative ideas to the organization’s leaders, then creativity will be but an untapped resource. Luckily, there are steps both leaders and employees can take to ensure the creativity present in an organization sees the light of day, and they revolve around enhancing an important part of the creative process: employee voice, or the expression of novel ideas and changes intended to improve the work environment. So if you’re looking to ensure your employees are willing to come forward and share their best ideas, consider the following:
1. Ask for Ideas…any of them.
Although this sounds simple enough, research shows one of the primary reasons employees refrain from speaking up is because they don’t believe their leader wants to hear their concerns or suggestions. So one of the easiest ways you can ensure your employees understand that you actually value and desire their creative ideas is to personally ask them to offer any thoughts or suggestions that they believe can help the organization grow and succeed. In fact, by neglecting to explicitly encourage your employees to voice their opinions, you might not only be instilling a mindset in your employees that you neither want nor value their ideas, but employees might also begin to question your confidence as a leader and activeness in your leadership role.
2. Acknowledge the non-orthodox ideas
Nearly every discussion on how to promote an environment where employees are willing to express their creative ideas acknowledges the importance for leaders to foster psychological safety, i.e. the perception that it is safe to take risks and voice one’s opinions without fear of negative repercussions. But how can you foster such an environment? One way is to openly recognize and commend those employees who do come to you with ideas and suggestions.
3. Provide employees with the resources needed to take the initiative
As “space” for example. Voicing creative ideas is a process. It involves the conceptualization of an idea, deciding when and how to communicate it and anticipating the need to defend or justify the idea after it’s communicated. So in addition to making sure your employees feel that their voice is desired and accepted, it is also important that you ensure they possess the diverse set of skills needed to navigate the creative process.
4. Start small
This is geared towards team members. How one of them, one way to maximize your chances of getting your idea heard and (hopefully) implemented is to focus on how you communicate the idea to your leader. When you go to your leader to express an idea or proposed change, you’re essentially trying to persuade them that your idea is important and needed. But as creatures of habit, most people (including many leaders) tend to be somewhat apprehensive to change, especially if it involves some major deviation from the status quo. So rather than hastily pitching your groundbreaking idea that involves a radically new way of doing things, ask yourself if there’s a way you can break it down into more easily digestible suggestions that can be implemented in stages.
Ensuring employee creativity finds its voice requires effort from both leaders and employees. Applying the suggestions offered here can help unlock the creativity potentially lying dormant in your creative allies.
