Seven Key Factors to Supercharge Your Team’s Creative Power.

Creative directors have a unique and interesting role, leading a group of creative people. It is exciting when your team develops ideas that result in something great. However, managing a group of creatives can be difficult. When those ideas are conflicting and you have strong individuals competing against each other within the team, there is that risk of adversity.

During my career, I’ve learned seven key factors that will improve your team’s creative power. These are practical keys to organizing the process of collaboration to improve your creative team's success. Creativity can be is lost without process and structure. Focusing on these seven steps, help will keep the team moving in the same direction to maximize new ideas and productivity.

1. Build the Right Team with the Right People: Work with a small group of 3-5 knowledgeable and competent people who understands that producing meaningful work is more important than personal attention or being on a list. Motive, the “why we are here” is the ultimate key to a successful collaboration. Show healthy respect and value for the team's intellect and experience and welcome them. Next, freely share what you know, who you know, and how you can help. When individuals freely give the sparks will fly.
2. Creativity brainstorming and improvisation: Great creatives love brainstorming and improv helps people overcome self-consciousness to create a free flow of ideas. Brainstorming with improvisation is useful because it establishes common goals, challenges, and ways to resolve the problems that block group effectiveness. The creative collaboration between people with a common goal of developing engaging ideas in a discrete amount of time relies on the uniqueness of individual participants working in concert with each other.
3. Establish role models and mentoring positions: Within your creative team, establish role models, mentors, and coaches. This allows room for younger staffers to join the team and to participate in a system designed to develop talent. The experienced members form one-to-one relationships with a chosen individual to provide expert information and accountability. Your group supplies a blueprint for achieving ambitious goals and creating clarity around success and failure in a structured environment.
4. Be a leader and not a manager : The creative director must lead with strength. Leaders take people to unfamiliar places; help people see new insights. Leading is about trust. Guiding people to unknown places, seeing things they have not seen, and doing things that may be risky, requires trust. Lead people out of the box, out of their comfort zone to fresh ideas. They will only trust you if they believe you’ll be honest, objective, and fair. Your trust will inspire creativity, innovation, loyalty, and morale. Your leadership plus the team’s creativity will produce breakthrough ideas.
5. Collaborative Servant leader: Collaboration must be a democratic republic. Under representative democracy, the elected leader establishes the governing process and procedures to sustain effective collaboration. The Creative Director must become a Servant-Leader that builds relationships, embraces diversity, and inspires a culture of collaboration. You must have eyes that see to see what is going on around you. See where things are moving. See how you ought to respond in situations. Teams should produce results, and an orderly collaborative team environment is essential for the team's success. Act on behalf of the collective by serving each individual and rewarding his or her contributions.
6. Engage your community: Make community engagement a part of the creative team’s DNA. Communities are all about interaction and engagement. Develop your young talent to see the value of community engagement; help them grow their skills and service mindset. Turn your firm’s mission and creative power into relevant collaborative social projects. Your team is happier when their work is meaningful.  Social projects inspire new marketing ideas.
7. Track and Evaluate: There are no participation trophies. When you’re managing a creative team, it is important to set goals for individual growth, group development, and project results. Key performance indicators help you gauge your team's progress and results. Track and evaluate the core initiatives, projects, and milestones for the team.

The ultimate goal for any creative team is to grow as an effective creative collaborative. You want everyone to grow to be as creative as possible and you want to see the balance and tangible growth. Be patient and supportive and your team will start digging deep for their best ideas. The creative power is in growing an agile team that’s more productive.