How To Lead A Creative Team In The Professional Environment?

The Professional Environment Managing a creative team is a unique experience for managers since the productivity and quality metrics are different. You cannot lead a team of artists with the same approach as a sales team with the number of ideas as some metrics. The traditional methods can overwhelm the team members with additional stress and may turn out disastrous for the organization.

This doesn’t mean you need some exclusive talent as a leader to take charge of a creative some. Many people have managed to get the required skills in little to no time to lead by example. Thus, you must start with the groundwork and add a few qualities to your management style.

Here are some tips for managers and team leaders to effectively lead a team of creative individuals in a workspace.

Protect Team from Tedious Tasks

Employees have different key performance areas and responsibilities based on their role in the organisation. You should not force the subordinates to spend their valuable time on unimportant tasks. Their priority should remain on tasks that bring more value to the organisation, and no other can perform them.

Therefore, avoid allocating tedious administrative work to the creative team members. Their time is better spent on developing new ideas, find solutions, and work on complex projects. Make sure the unproductive tasks take a minimal amount of their time a few times a month.

Give Time to Develop Ideas

Creative heads need time to develop ideas in some situations. There is no manual for developing new ideas to disrupt the market overnight. It can take a few seconds, minutes, hours, or even days to build a great plan.

This does not mean the deadlines are not required and let the members take countless hours for every task. Just give them enough time not to crush them under unreasonable deadlines for each task. Also, make sure the communication is clear about the time required to complete each task.

Change the Landscape

The office layout may have a direct impact on the company culture and employees’ performance. They may not work as efficiently in a dull environment with not enough lighting and age-old furniture. It is time to give the office a new makeover to change the attitude at work.

Creative teams work in meeting rooms to manage collaborative projects and develop new ideas. Thus, you should not miss the meeting areas while changing the décor, especially the furniture. You can apply for business loans for bad credit to make the investment in the workspace and improve the overall performance of the team.

Promote Problem Solving Attitude

It is common for creative teams to get stuck in a crisis or a dead end. These situations require the critical skill of creative problem solving within the team members. While it may seem like a prerequisite to be a part of a creative team, many organisations provide training to the employees for it.

A great investment can save money, resources and time for the employees. Moreover, it may also eliminate the need for micromanagement since the employees will get capable enough to solve a problem on their own. This will give you time to focus on more critical tasks for the growth of the organisation.

Take the Risks

Working in a creative team is an exciting experience with unknown results to your ideas and implementations. You don’t know whether the solution will make the situation better or worse. You can only predict the outcome regardless of the risk, making the action the only alternative.

Therefore, a manager should trust the decision or solution from their employees. It will boost their morale and self-confidence to increase their loyalty towards the organisation. Even if the idea backfires, you can still try to minimize the damage by applying for bad credit loans with no guarantor.

No Micromanagement

Any human is annoyed and distracted by constant reminders about some task or progress reports. It will only increase the stress that may create a situation of errors and failure. While it is essential to keep track of their progress, do not ask them after every 5 minutes.

You have already given them some time to complete the task. Just keep a check on them with small milestones or your project management tools. Let them take accountability if they fail to meet the deadline and provide some extension, if possible.

Promote Diversity

Diversity is extremely important in an organisation for an inflow of various new ideas. It will provide feedback from different perspectives for the same situation. Therefore, managers should hire a diverse team and welcome contrasting opinion from team members.

Deadline is Important

As mentioned above, it is critical to provide the employees in your team time and space to complete a task. They will take responsibility themselves and perform the task more effectively. However, this doesn’t reduce the importance of deadline in their line of work.

A deadline will provide a sense of priority and urgency to the task. They will no longer procrastinate the important tasks for weeks. Though, the deadlines should remain reasonable as it can hurt their performance, health, and satisfaction level with the job.

Offer Feedback

Criticism and feedback have a different impact on the employees on their performance. A criticism is telling them the shortcomings for a period or individual project. They may not take it supportively or have some negative impact on their self-confidence.

Feedback is a combination of praises and criticism in a correct manner. You should always start with some positive about their performance or capabilities politely followed by the shortcomings. This will act as a motivation for them to bring positive changes for the next task.

Enhance Communication

Communication is part of the creative process as the majority of the projects are collaborative. Give the employees a platform for smooth communication with the team members and other departments. Also, make sure the roles, responsibilities and messages to the subordinates are clear and understandable to avoid confusion with their responsibilities.

Conclusion

To sum up, creative teams in an organisation require some changes to your management style. They may not thrive under a leadership that believes in micromanagement and unreasonable deadlines. Therefore, you must trust the employees and leave them with the problem to get the desired result.