As anyone who has ever been in charge of a creative team will tell you, managing creatives is an art unto itself. As someone who has achieved some measure of professional success as a creative (both as a professional musician and a published writer), I can confirm once and for all, we creatives are “special flowers.” At our best, we’re quirky, innovative, and insightful. At our worst, we’re defensive, overly-caffeinated, and deadline-averse.
To say the least, ensuring the success of your creatives is often easier said than done.
One of the things I often struggle with is striking an appropriate balance between providing enough guidance to make sure the client’s objective is achieved, while not providing so much guidance that I stifle my team’s ability to discover the next creative awesome-sauce.
Despite my struggles, I know that creative success depends on my ability to communicate in a way that resonates with my creative staff so that they can do their best while also meeting the stated objectives of the project at hand.
Here are a few ideas from Gordon Torr’s “Managing Creative People: Lessons in Leadership for the Ideas Economy” for how to get the most out of your creative teams.
1. Recognize and appreciate your team’s abilities.
Keep in mind that the creative professionals you’ve recruited are specialists in their fields, so allow them some breathing room. For your new project to be successful, it’s critical that you build strong working relationships with the various artists or stakeholders that will be involved. This will increase the overall quality and efficiency of everyone’s work. Once you’ve built these relationships, you’ll have a better understanding of what your team members are good at.
Playing to those strengths will make everyone better.
2. Take charge of the process while allowing creatives a certain amount of flexibility.
Inspire your creative team in the same way that you would any other stakeholder. Include them in the decision-making process.
Managing creative talent may be a tricky process especially as you maintain a careful balance between artistic freedom and meeting deadlines. But you also need to learn to distinguish between projects that require a harder administrative hand and ones that allow for a freer approach. Think of the difference between an annual report or a TikTok video.
Giving creatives the room to have fun with a TikTok video is a great way to reward them for the more refined (dare I say, “boring!?”) requirements of an annual report. Allowing your creatives the opportunity to work on both kinds of projects is a great way to stoke their creative fires and keep them engaged.
3. Clearly state your expectations.
When there are precise criteria necessary for your current project, make sure you take time to communicate those early in the project. Creativity is not a linear process, so the sooner you can make your team aware of requirements and limitations, the sooner their “creative minds” can get to work on solutions.
Don’t be afraid that requirements or limitations might stifle creativity. They’re supposed to. But that’s not always a bad thing. For the same reason that poets turn to poetic forms, sometimes limitations can actually help drive innovation by forcing creative solutions. While the creative mind needs room and time to think outside the box, if you want a box, you better ask for it.
And here’s a harsh truth—if you don’t know what you want, your creative team won’t know either. I’m a big fan of examples. And my advice to clients is always to provide examples that can help me capture the style, mood, feel, look, or tone of what they’re going for. Preparing for success is a two-way street but remember, knowing what you want to achieve isn’t the same thing as telling creatives what to do. Sometimes creatives need to be told, but that’s never the best way to get their best work. Show them what you want, and then let them fill-in the blanks. That’s what they’re good at. And that’s what they enjoy.
In the end, there is a reason why you have a creative staff—you need their creativity! Empower them to succeed and you will too!
