As a creative professional of over three years, I’ve seen the value on which a well-supported and empowered creative team can bring to a business. From closing big deals and securing future projects, employers need to look beyond just assigning tasks and start thinking strategically on how to integrate and leverage creative talents. From my experience, this is how you can make full use of your creatives!
Trust the creatives process
From experimenting, and even failing before arriving at the final product, employers need to recognize that the creative process requires time and flexibility. While I agree that certain limitations need to be set to keep expectations in check. It is equally important to encourage an environment where experimentation is welcomed and failure is a learning process.
Promote a collaborative culture
Where possible, encourage cross-departmental projects which allows your creative team to work closely with each other. Be it marketing, sales, or even website development, this helps broadens their perspective and also ensures that solutions are aligned with the businesses objectives. Having miscommunication within the team would result in disastrous results and ruin team morale.
Believe in autonomy
Let me be the first to say that micromanagement can be a creativity killer! Trust your creative team to make the right decisions and ownership of their projects. While I understand the risks that full autonomy may bring, a little freedom does go a long way. When creatives feel empowered, they’re more likely to bring innovative ideas for the benefit of the business.
Celebrate achievements
I will always remember the moments where I completed my tasks for the day be it proofreading or translating and my past employers never congratulated me. After being employed in several organizations, I started to realize that recognition is a powerful motivator. Celebrating your creative team’s success, both big and small is something employers should definitely practice. This helps reinforce the value of creativity towards achieving business success.
Encourage the team to provide feedback
It cannot be denied, feedback is essential for growth. Enabling a company culture that requests and give constructive feedback can help improve workflow and efficiency. One such personal occurrence was when a past project leader decided not to listen to the creative team input on streamlining the processes. This resulted in an unnecessarily delay in project deadlines which made the client very unhappy.
In conclusion, making full use of your creative team involves more than just telling them what to do! It requires a deeper understanding of their processes and aligning their work with business goals. Investing in their development, creating an inspiring environment, and recognizing their contributions are just some of the steps employers could take to unlock their creatives full potential.