Over the years, after managing dozens and participating in hundreds of creative teams and projects, I’ve found that it’s incredibly important to the success of the business for the management and leadership to consider their management style.
Particularly in our current age, it’s important to develop a series of management principles and workplace culture code, even if you are a small business. By deliberately planning to nurture your team, you can develop a more productive and cohesive team, which you can retain as you grow.
What are the guidelines you have in place to ensure your team’s success?
Unexpectedly, my best management practices have been developed from the most mismanaged professional situations I’ve experienced. Throughout my own career, I’ve had to fight to be treated respectfully, so respecting any team member is always my first principle of management. Fundamental respect for your team members is embedded in each of the following guidelines, and should always be your base operating theory.
The following list can help you grow and nurture your team into a content producing machine!
Your team members have lives. Let them live them.
So often, when you’re managing a large project, with demanding clients, you are under the gun and need your deliverables NOW. It’s important to remember that your team members have other stuff going on than just finishing the project. If you really want to nurture creative talent and retain them, you must plan for your people’s lives! Make sure they are covered for their vacations, give them their action plans far enough in advance that they’re not scrambling at the last minute, OVERESTIMATE the time it will take to get things done, and be sensitive to when they are going through difficult times.
Don’t shoot down “crazy” ideas.
Sometimes that out-there, left-field, it-can’t-be-done idea your team mate floats at happy hour is THE IDEA. Allowing room for ideation and space for everyone to be creative ensures a collaborative team environment. As a creative director and project manager it’s your responsibility to take your team mates’ wild creative concepts and make them into actionable projects that can benefit your clients.
3. RESPECT your teammates’ identity.
It’s 2018 y’all! It’s absolutely crucial with an increasingly millennial workforce for managers in the creative fields be conversant in diverse gender identities and respectful of our teammates’ preferred pronouns! I feel like this should go without saying, but it’s not often the case that people get to express their true identities in business. In the creative field it’s so important that people get to be themselves and have their gender identity respected by all team members. Make sure to take the time to educate team members who are not conversant in diverse gender identities and/or sexual orientations on the protocols of respecting LGBTQA coworkers.
4. DIVERSITY FIRST.
When hiring, hire diverse first! A creative content studio needs diverse voices, and those voices and not truly included unless they are equally empowered.
Companies that embrace diversity and inclusion in all aspects of their business statistically outperform their peers.
– Josh Bersin
via Diversity And Inclusion: A Beginner’s Guide For HR Professionals
It’s not only the right thing to do, it’s critical to your company’s success to encourage diversity in all hires, and to maintain guidelines to ensure that everyone has equal opportunity.
A survey of 330 HR executives by Professor Roberson found that diversity and inclusion best practices include:
fair treatment
equal access to opportunity
teamwork and collaboration
a focus on innovation and creativity
organizational flexibility, responsiveness, and agility
conflict resolution processes that are collaborative
evidence of leadership’s commitment to diversity (e.g., appointing a Chief Diversity / Equality Officer)
representation of diversity at all levels of the organization
representation of diversity among internal and external stakeholders
diversity education and training
The interesting thing to note is that employees perceive their company as diverse and inclusive based on practices that aren’t even directly related to diversity such as a focus on innovation and creativity.
Instead, these best practices are ones that are desired by everyone in the workplace.
via Diversity And Inclusion: A Beginner’s Guide For HR Professionals
5. BE THE BRIDGE for your your team between upper management and clients.
As a project manager you are the communication conduit between production, upper management, outside vendors, brand partners, and clients. It’s so important to have protocols in place managing the flow of information.
Build these communication protocols into your project planning! As your team’s lead communicator, it’s important for you to manage expectations across the board, and take responsibility for any failures or miscommunication throughout the process.
6. STAY ORGANIZED.
I have to say as an artistic soul, organization has been my biggest professional challenge. But, a disorganized manager is a bad manager. Involve your whole team in the practice of project organization and systems streamlining. Empower them to make suggestions and changes that help streamline your processes. Give them the space to suggest new and innovative ways of upgrading operations. If organization is a fundamental goal of the whole team, your projects are going to sing.
7. KEEP LEARNING- and learn together.
Part of nurturing a creative and collaborative work environment is to engender a fundamental love of and pursuit of learning. Let your team mates dedicate a few hours each week to pursue new platforms, research markets, vet services, and have them report back to the team at large. The digital landscape is constantly changing. To produce competitive work, your team NEEDS to be first when it comes to discovering new ways to produce and disseminate content. By instituting learning as a core practice in your team, you’re supporting a font of creativity that will continue to produce fresh ideas!
