Creativity and Your Team
Creativity at work is not about getting in touch with your muse – rather it is all about developing new perspectives and solving practical problems - which is why it is particularly relevant to managers and their teams.
All managers have to deal with problems – whether internal or external. It does not matter whether the problem is to do with internal efficiency, product quality, the supply chain or customer relationships; whatever the particulars, the challenge is to find innovative and workable solutions.
This is where creative thinking and your team comes in. The effectiveness of creativity is maximised when you involve other people. Why:
- Team members will often be closer to the ‘problem’ from a client perspective - and therefore more likely to come up with ideas that benefit both client and organisation.
- You’ll get access to multiple perspectives – it’s a numbers game! The team will produce more ideas and by involving them in the ideas from the start they will be able to help you evaluate and select the right ideas.
- It’s a great engagement and motivation tool – you’ll build co-operation, understanding and the team will feel a part of the process and more engaged in the delivery of the solution.
- You’ll be able to follow a proven creative process model - such as the one we use on our Creativity for Logical Thinkers workshop, employing a range of creative thinking, evaluation and selection techniques to bring rigour to your collective thinking.
One of the challenges for all team leaders (including senior managers and directors) is to help their people to recognise that there are many different modes of thinking and that the more perspectives that can be brought to bear on the challenges facing the team, the better the quality of group thinking, idea generation and problem solution.
We are finding that increasingly we are being asked to run creativity workshops for teams that not only introduce a range of practical techniques, but that also help attendees to understand the great diversity in team members – different thinking preferences, backgrounds and personalities. And that ’different’ is good – people who see the world differently are likely to work better than ‘like minded’ individuals working together. Often these workshops are built around real challenges facing the whole team or part of the team.
The benefits of this approach are clear:
- Everyone understands and appreciates the differences between themselves and team members – these differences start to be viewed as a source of potential benefit rather than a source of conflict!
- A range of techniques are introduced and used - so whenever the team leader (or other team members) get together to ‘be creative’ they have a number of alternatives to ‘brainstorming’ at their disposal.
- You see progress on real challenges.
If you would like to find out more about how a creativity workshop could be tailored for your requirements simply call us on +44 (0)1753 866633 or e-mail us
Click here to see details of “Creativity for Logical Thinkers” – our one day creativity workshop that’s available in Central London or as an in-house course for groups and teams.
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Tags: creativity and innovation, generate ideas, leadership skills, team working
