Leading Creative Teams: Balancing Challenge and Stability

This article was originally published on PhilCooke.com and poster here with permission by the author.

If you’re leading a creative team, here’s a piece of advice worth the price of admission: learn to balance stability and challenge.

It’s important to know that creative people need stability. If they’re worried about losing their job, company financial problems, or excessive turnover, they’ll never release their best ideas.

I’ve seen terrible leaders think they’re motivating the team by threatening them with being fired – which is the worst thing you could ever do. In other situations I’ve heard leaders tell creatives, “If this logo doesn’t get approved, we’ll need to cut a few people from the team.” Or, “This video better be good, or we’re out of business.”

This is terrible leadership. Even when we’re going through difficult times, we need to create an atmosphere of stability for the team.

On the other hand, push, challenge, inspire. Complacency doesn’t work with creative people. You need to build a fire under them if you’re going to get amazing work.

But that fire needs to be kindled from possibilities, not impending catastrophe.

So remember:

Creative people need clarity about your expectations.
They need to know their value.
You can’t threaten them and expect them to improve.
They need to feel secure in their life, so they can take risks in their work.

That’s the lesson for today…