Managing a group of individuals is hard enough, but when you’re managing individuals who have to be highly creative in order to complete their role, a new level of complexity is added.
Managing creative teams effectively requires not only basic management skills, but also an understanding and technical expertise of the creative employees’ work. It is essential to cultivate excellent leadership on a continual basis. If you’re faced with managing a creative team, then here are some top tips to help you:
1. Clear Communication
One of the best tips available to any manager is clear communication. Managers and team leaders need to ensure that they clearly communicate tasks to employees. They also need to make sure that the person on the receiving end of the information understands what is being asked of them. Communicating effectively with team members not only helps to build strong relationships, but it can also prevent errors from occurring, therefore saving you time and money.
2. Teamwork is Crucial
It’s often hard to be creative when you’re expected to do it on your own. Good team leaders understand this issue. They overcome it by having regular meetings or conversations with their employees. This allows them to get feedback and bounce ideas back and forth.
3. Set Goals for Your Employees
When we talk about being creative, lots of us think about the freedom it gives us. But in a professional world, we’re not just being creative for the sake of it. So, it’s important to make sure you set goals for your employees and that they understand the goals. Defining and agreeing on the boundaries and goals of a project early on will give you the ability to guide your team through a project.
4. Make Sure You Have Enough Knowledge and Experience
The best creative leaders have the right skills, technical knowledge, and experience in order to lead a team effectively. Leaders need to be able to notice if the work being completed by team members isn’t up to scratch. They also need to be able to advise individuals on how they can improve in the future. Team leaders need to be able to identify difficulties within a team and either deal with them or overcome them.
5. Nurture Diversity
Creativity is stoked when new influences and ideas are present, therefore diversity in teams is important. Strong creative leaders will want to build a team of people who are different from one another. One brilliant example of a company that cultivates diversity is Octopart. Their team includes people from all walks of like including recent college graduates, hardware hackers, industry veterans, folk musicians, and theater critics.
6. Give Your Employees Enough Time
When you’re leading a team of creative individuals and you’re asking them to come up with solutions to problems, you need to make sure that you give them enough time to do so. Filling their schedule with lots of pointless meetings isn’t giving them the time or space they need to create their best work.
A good manager pays attention to many aspects of management and leadership within a business. So, it’s hard to take the subject of management success and say which items are the most important. However, by following some of our tips above, you’ll be well on your way to becoming an amazing creative team leader.
