Set Creativity Free: 3 Useful Insights

Building trust, being constructive, and embracing collective creativity are key to promoting a positive and innovative environment. Leaders should create a positive story, empower their team, and provide constructive feedback. Mistakes should be seen as learning opportunities. Creativity is a collaborative effort, so leaders should invite everyone to participate and leverage tools like Ideanote's automated workflow.

When you invite people to contribute ideas, what you’re really doing is encouraging them to express thoughts, share observations, and otherwise open themselves up to you and others. For some, this can quickly stir up a potent feeling of anxiety, so what do you do?

It’s your job as a leader to relieve feelings of discomfort by doing what you can to create a positive environment that promotes creativity and free thinking?

Here are 3 valuable insights to help you on your way:

1. Building Trust is Key

Creativity is all about a large number of people that represent different things, working together to combine their knowledge in novel ways; but unleashing everyone’s creativity takes trust, and people must feel empowered to speak up, feel that their ideas have a voice, and that this voice matters.

Therefore, I invite you to create and share a positive story with your people. Let them know your intentions, and empower them to share by showing them their inputs are appreciated by giving plenty of positive feedback.

2. Always be Constructive

Counterintuitive to some, strong leadership often means giving up control. To get the best results, focus on creating an environment where people feel comfortable taking risks. Don’t punish mistakes, but treat them as opportunities to learn.

Criticism must always be constructive. Literally. As you or others test new concept or pull apart old ideas, your input must always aim to improve. There’s no point in taking something apart if doing so doesn’t give people a way of rebuilding it better than it was before.

3. Creativity is People

Creativity is not some mysteries act best pursued alone, and it should never be reduced to a single idea. The power of creativity lies in the sum total of people’s efforts, and in the way their contributions are combined.

You never know where the next great idea will come from, so make good use of the tools available to you and invite everyone to participate. The more, the merrier!

Lean into the automated workflow provided by Ideanote, and unleash the power of the crowd one phase at a time.