[Article collaboration with Morgan McKale. Photo credit: Jason Goodman on Unsplash]
Creativity comes from all team members – not just the leader. If you think being a leader means you are the only one generating ideas, you’re in the wrong role!
Exploring creative ideas is the only way organizations can grow and adapt to face competitors and the ever-changing needs of clients. Using creativity to perceive what clients need from you and what you can offer them is valuable – as a leader, driving creativity among your team is critical for
growth, but how do you do it?
When teams think creatively, it makes every individual team member better. So, how can leaders
drive creativity within their team? Rather than telling your team exactly how they should approach a task step-by-step, ask questions to inspire them to look at work with a new perspective.
Believe everyone brings unique skills and perspectives to their work.
Notice examples of great results that were approached with a different method. Appreciating others' creativity can snowball into inspiration of your own. View roadblocks as a perfect time to flex your creative muscles and challenge your team. Open communication encourages them to share their unique thinking and drive creative approaches to projects and problem-solving!
When organizing meetings or organizational gatherings, get out of your comfort zone. It’s easy for meetings to get boring and mundane. Switch up the time, place, and people to shake things up. For example, in a sales meeting, bring in someone who works in customer service to share their knowledge and that just may spark an idea that can help your organization grow! Instead of walking through a PowerPoint deck, open a virtual whiteboard, give everyone permission to add 'sticky notes', and brainstorm to get the ideas flowing. Even moving your meeting outside or to your favourite coffee shop can help generate creative ideas for tasks or problems.
Seek an alternative angle to approach a problem.
When artists are in a rut, one approach they use is to flip their art upside down and work on it with a new perspective – how can this be used in business? Perhaps, if you have a data set, consider what story the data is telling you relating to your hypothesis. For example, you may hypothesize
that your organization is thriving against its competitors. Your sales data says you are growing, but when you do market research, you may discover competitors are growing faster. Your hypothesis was incorrect, so this is when quality questions become important. What are the customer's feelings about your organization? What are your competitors providing them with? How can your organization adapt? Empathizing with your customers by using the data to put the puzzle together and gather the full picture from their perspective helps identify a problem and possible solutions. As a leader, ask thought-provoking questions to flip your team's project upside down to a new angle!
Be open to learning.
Acknowledge no matter how much you know, you don’t know everything. Attending workshops that share innovative trends and learning new skills in areas of weakness can stimulate your creative thinking – and spark interest in others to do the same! Leaders aren’t responsible for solving everything. They should inspire others to share ideas, test new methods and continuously learn.
“The role of a leader is not to have all the ideas; it’s to create a culture where everyone can have ideas and feel that they’re valued” -Ken Robinson
Leading by example is one of the most effective ways to exhibit creativity and encourage your team to do the same. Vulnerability and empathy are strong qualities in leaders who drive creativity. Not all ideas work out – you will get knocked down, so how will you get back up? If an idea didn’t work the way you hoped, focus on what happened and the outcome, not whose idea it was. Laying blame will only stifle creativity. Celebrate good ideas as a team and redeploy after a bad idea as a team.
*** If you have a story about how you took a team from disengaged to creative and high-functioning,
I’d love to hear it! Book a call with me or send me an email.***
Carrie Tuttle is the lead coach, speaker and founder of Team Mojo, a firm that works to ignite energy and meaning into work for sales and marketing professionals.