How Business Leaders Can Inspire Creativity in Their Teams

Creativity is incredibly important to business success. Leaders and workers alike need to employ creative thinking to solve problems in the workplace with efficiency and effectiveness. Creativity leads to innovation that can help an organization outcompete in its market, and employees who are encouraged to use creativity in their work will feel more satisfied and thus more connected to their employer. Often, it is creativity that catapults a company to success.

However, not every leader knows how to inspire creativity in the workplace.

Here are a few tips to help business leaders bring out the creative side of their teams to ensure that businesses benefit:

Engage in Productive Inquiry

Productive inquiry is a process that leaders can engage in to gather information before making decisions. Employed heavily in driven leadership methods, productive inquiry involves observing a situation and asking key questions designed to reveal more about the situation. Leaders who become adept at productive inquiry can use the tool to help workers think more critically about problems and solutions inside and outside meetings. Generally, productive inquiry works best when it has a clear and impactful focus, and leaders who use productive inquiry must be careful to format their questions correctly to drive results.

Reward Curiosity and Inquisitiveness

Curiosity is a rare quality in the workplace, but it is one that leads directly to creativity and innovation. The best way to encourage curiosity in team members is for leaders to be curious themselves; business leaders help to develop the workplace culture, and when they demonstrate a strong sense of curiosity, workers will do the same. Leaders might discuss the online digital marketing course they are enrolled in or display brainstorming efforts prominently in their offices. Leaders can also encourage curiosity in team members by rewarding employees who display inquisitiveness. Workers who ask quality questions and seek new solutions might be awarded small gifts like gift cards or free lunch as tokens of appreciation from leadership.

Allow Time and Space for Creativity

Some people can be creative in a crunch, but the skill of creativity does not often flourish under pressure. Leaders should try to avoid last-minute and surprise brainstorming sessions that come with expectations for high degrees of creative performance. Instead, leaders should offer their teams plenty of advance notice of meetings that will involve creative thought processes and innovative solutions. Then, the workers who need the time and space can begin to engage their creativity through research and focus.

Combine Collaboration and Solo Work

Different workers experience creativity in different settings. Some feel the glow of inspiration when they are isolated with their thoughts, and others feel more confident exploring creative solutions when they can bounce ideas off other members of their team. Mixing up opportunities for solo work and periods of collaboration can allow workers to experiment to find the right environment for creative flow.

Invest in Workplace Diversity

Without a doubt, business leaders should be eager to hire employees of diverse backgrounds simply to improve equity and equality in broader society and culture — but there are definite benefits to having a diverse workforce. Employees with backgrounds different from the workplace norm are likely to bring unique perspectives to problems and solutions, which can lead to opportunities for creative thought and innovation from the rest of the team. However, to capture this potential, leaders need to ensure that their work environment has a safe and inclusive feel. Otherwise, employees with different backgrounds might not feel motivated to share ideas.

Encourage Creative Personal Endeavors

Creativity is a muscle; the more it is used in any endeavor, the stronger it becomes. Far from wasting creative energy, creative endeavors enjoyed outside work can build an employee’s creative skill, making them more effective at thinking creatively and innovating while on the clock. Leaders should celebrate workers who engage with creative hobbies, like writing, painting, knitting and others, as those activities will help them become valuable forces for creativity in the workplace. Leaders might encourage the adoption of creative hobbies by organizing team-building events like cooking classes or drawing classes that introduce workers to new creative skills.

The importance of creativity is often overlooked. The sooner leaders recognize the power of creativity in the workplace, the sooner they can capture valuable innovation from creative team members.