Ways to spark creativity in your team more easily

Image by talha khalil from Pixabay

By Noah Rue

Creativity can be difficult to control. It often manifests in fits and starts. Tiredness or distractions can throw things off. Even the simple act of needing to be creative on demand every workday can make quality results anything but certain.

If your team needs to be consistently creative, here are a few suggestions for ways to spark creativity more easily.

Improve communication channels

A disconnected team will struggle with creativity. It’s as simple as that. The ability to remain connected is critical in helping innovation thrive.

Look for ways that you can improve communication throughout your team’s interactions. This can be as simple as creating better communication channels. It can also mean encouraging things like transparency and tolerance in interpersonal interactions.

Foster employee engagement

Employee engagement is another critical factor in sustainable creativity. Disconnected or uninvested employees will struggle to generate genuinely original ideas. You can foster employee engagement by:

– Generating back-and-forth conversations

– Asking open-ended questions.

– Giving team members influence by encouraging their voices to be heard.

– Using phrases like “yes, and…” to provoke unique responses.

Cultivate collaboration

Engagement and communication won’t go very far if your team isn’t willing to work together. This is why collaboration should always be cultivated to keep a team innovating on all cylinders.

You can encourage collaboration throughout your team by utilizing tools like workflow platforms and online whiteboards to collect ideas and disseminate information. Additionally, make sure to avoid micromanaging or overly-criticizing input from team members.

Provide chances to recharge

If you want your team to remain unified in its creative purpose, it’s also important to demonstrate empathy. In other words, you must show your employees that you understand that creativity can be challenging and even exhausting at times.

One of the best ways to show that you understand the creative struggle is to offer them chances to regularly take breaks.

When a team member can’t come up with a solution, encourage them to tap out for a while. If someone is acting tired, have them go home early. If an employee is overwhelmed or burnt out, let them know that they have the option to take personal time to genuinely unplug and recuperate for a bit.

Run constructive feedback sessions

If you find that your team is struggling to come up with high-quality creative ideas, consider implementing a structured system for feedback. This shouldn’t be focused on criticism or discipline. On the contrary, it should be specifically designed to help a project move forward.

Legendary movie studio Pixar is well-known for its ability to harness the creative power of feedback. While the animators at Pixar were often asked to provide serious and constructive thoughts about a project, they were asked to do so with purpose.

In other words, they didn’t simply give their thoughts on how things were going or suggest how they would do things differently. Pixar teams were specifically tasked with the job of providing constructive feedback that moved a project forward.

Reward creativity

Finally, if you want to spark creativity in your team, make it a valuable commodity.

Offer a monthly parking space, an honorable mention in front of the office, or even a monetary bonus. The point should be providing an incentive for employees who offer genuinely effective creative solutions.

Sparking creativity in your team

The struggle to maintain creativity — on a personal and a team level — is a very real one. This is especially true as teams continue to operate over the long-term.

While creative output can struggle at times, though, that doesn’t mean you have to simply sit on your hands waiting for it to kick back up again. From rewards to communication, breaks to collaboration, there are many ways that you can proactively spark creativity, even in the most uninspired team members.

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Noah Rue is a journalist and content writer, fascinated with the intersection between global health, personal wellness, and modern technology. When he isn’t searching out his next great writing opportunity, Noah likes to shut off his devices and head to the mountains to disconnect.

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