Encourage Creativity

How important is creativity to your team's success?

The best teams that I have ever worked on were also the most creative. True, some of them were in the arts (I do a lot of film, theater, and music projects) but certainly not all.

I remember great creative touches in six sigma projects, in business migrations, in product designs, in process changes...any project with a new deliverable (which should be every project) benefits from more creativity.

What can leaders do to encourage creativity?

Entertain new ideas
Try new things
Keep everyone on the team learning
Build a team that talks about creativity
Add warm-up activities to your meetings
Create visuals (other than slides) that show the details of what you're working on AND also the emotions behind it
Ask your team members for creative insights
Pretend you are an artist (because you probably are anyway!)
Play music
Share insights from creative guest speakers

There are no limits to your creative possibilities.

Creativity thrives where ever it is encouraged.

Why not encourage it more?

What will you do this week to encourage more creativity on your team?

-- Doug Smith

Front Range Leadership: Training Supervisors for Success

doug smith training: how to achieve your project goals

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