How Entrepreneurs Can Encourage Creativity Among Team Members

Creativity means doing things in a new or different way.  Creativity means seeing things from a different perspective and reshaping assumptions. Creativity enhances the process of problem-solving.  Creativity helps people improve how they approach their work. Creativity leads to happier and more devoted teams.

Inspiring creativity among your employees is a sure way to success. The best way to inspire your employees to think creatively is to let them know that anything is possible is they put the mind to it.  Creativity means teaching your employees to think like there is no box.

For people to solve problems creatively, they have to value new ideas and know how to deal with innovations when they are suggested. To encourage the creativity of your team members:

You must be willing to absorb the risk of failure. You need to give your employees the freedom to experiment. Experimenting come with errors, so expect mistakes and be ready to learn from inevitable failure. If you are afraid of mistakes, you restrict the freedom of your employees to be creative and experiment.

You need to be able to welcome rough ideas. In trying to encourage creativity among your employees, you have to support the implementation of an idea you think is great even if it is not yet 100% complete. You must be willing to listen and encourage your team to press on even if what they are proposing seems half-baked, as long as their ideas hold promise do not criticize it.  Early criticism can kill creativity.

To encourage creativity among your team, you must be willing to be flexible with your policies. You need to have a feel of when it is best to stretch the companies policies for the greater long term good. If you are too rigid with the standard operating procedures of your business, you will make progress and evade some mistakes, but it is certain that your business will not achieve those big breakthroughs that come with taking calculated risks.  

You need to be a good listener. Listen actively to pull out good ideas and build on suggestions. Do not try to impose your solutions without first listening to the other side.

To encourage creativity, you must not dwell on past mistakes or hold mistakes against your team members. Always reminding your employees how their ideas cost your business to lose out on a deal will kill their creativity. Be more future oriented than past oriented. Be willing to begin with the relationship as it is today and work for a better tomorrow. Learn from experiences and past mistakes but don’t wallow in the past.

Trust your intuitions. When presented with ideas that seem right to you, be courageous enough to commit to implementing them on the spot without waiting for further opinions or advice. Try to be enthusiastic. Encourage and energize others to try out new ideas and behaviors. Use your resources to facilitate others in making improvements.