What to Do If Teamwork Inhibits Individual Creativity
If you’re looking for advice on creative thinking, there is a lot to find on how to get more creative, but little has been written on how to avoid blocking the creativity of others. Why?
This post originally appeared on the Help Scout blog .
Most of us would like to believe that we have never suppressed the creativity of our colleagues. But it’s easier than you think, and it always starts with the best intentions. When you work as a team, the environment you contribute to is even more important than your individual work, making avoiding these pitfalls a top priority.
Formative steps are where teams have the greatest impact on any new idea. Our colleagues see layouts, drafts and specifications and can significantly influence their development, usually for the better. But in this nascent stage, groups also need to exercise the utmost care. Here are four mistakes every team should look out for when creating an environment that is conducive to creative work.
1. Creation of a culture of protection
Expecting your first idea to be the right one puts undue stress on the creative process. Solutions become more obvious when you fill in the gaps around them through trial and error. Research even shows that good, new ideas are based on a willingness to constantly rethink the problem.
Unfortunately, this straightforward reality is complicated by human nature. We have to share designs internally before the “final” version can go into production, but first thoughts are the most fragile because we haven’t yet created a compelling case for why they might work. As a result, we either do not offer an idea at all, or we prepare for criticism by being vigilant.
The latter is devastating because it leads to over-presentation, where people create cases that are more developed than their real ideas. It’s like editing before a rough draft is finished – it’s a form of self-censorship where high standards are applied at the wrong time. Worse, the effort put into defending an idea is still a sunk cost , and you end up getting attached to the ideas you present, even if you’re not particularly sure about them.
To avoid this problem, you need to set the tone that you set. Professor Teresa Amabile of Harvard has found that phrases such as “In this department, we do everything by the rules” can discourage people from proposing new ideas. Clichés aside, you can create a similar situation with your chosen language. Our editorial team recently noticed this: we used to call all new articles “presentations” when people wondered how safe and specific their ideas should be before getting feedback. We renamed this phase to make it clear that these are concepts to work on, not fields to be protected.
You probably won’t be surprised to learn that our Idea mailbox is overflowing, and the Resins column contains more hunger than holiday. More importantly, the Ideas column is filled with better ideas . In the very early stages of the creative process, lowering the barrier to entry can help raise the collective bar.
2. Forcing to work on synthesis in groups
Research and written sermons condemning group brainstorming are pretty compelling. I noticed that most of the problems mentioned also show why assemblies are not ideal for generalization work:
- Social laziness. The realization that the group can collectively address individual deficiencies causes some people to minimize their contributions or remain silent on important issues (” Someone else will mention this … “).
- Blocking of production. When other people speak, the rest of the group must wait. This can lead to participants losing focus on their ideas or discouraging them altogether.
- Fear of evaluation. While many brainstorming sessions try to postpone evaluation until later, everyone knows that the group responds calmly to their ideas as soon as they hear them.
There is another hidden danger: compromise. Meetings are conducive to compromise because they weaken the average level of experience in a spontaneous propositional environment. The result is a collective search for common ground, and common ground is easiest to find on simple issues .
So while a good meeting should be about reconciliation, not agreement, the implicit agenda boils down to ” find something we can all agree on .” Since there are always extraordinary excuses in live debate, it’s easy to see why the loudest voices usually win.
But meetings and brainstorming clearly have their place. One of the reasons that ” brainwriting ” – the practice of presenting ideas in a group via written text or chat – has become a popular practice is that it minimizes the problems of brainstorming while leveraging the main benefit: gathering a large pool of ideas. which are not true. are not knocked down until they have time to boil.
3. Offer feedback before asking questions
When we hand out unsolicited or impromptu advice, we often try to prevent them from getting too serious by saying, “Just two cents.” But feedback, both positive and negative, can make a big difference, even if the speaker thinks little about it.
Instead of giving immediate feedback, ask questions. Likewise, when you first started working on an idea on your own, ask clarifying or developmental questions instead of direct feedback or criticism.
Why? Questions expand rather than restrict; they are more likely to open up alternative ideas to people or trigger counterfactual thinking that will lead them to a better answer. Criticism, even in a good mood, is always seen as a challenge to what is there. They are stricter and more like a hunt for visible flaws rather than a tempting “What if?”
As my college professor used to say about the process of writing his book, “Start with boundless optimism, followed by unrelenting paranoia.” The later stages are best for criticism, criticism, and inversion when you are looking for what could go wrong. But a fresh thought usually requires some support, “critical thinking without criticism,” so to speak – be careful not to trample it with an immediate reaction.
4. Applying the wrong process volume
The blank canvas imposes a burden of limitless proportions. When you can do anything, overwhelming choice often makes “nothing” the most tempting option. Moreover, it is difficult to maintain quality when literally everything is going, because there are too many variables to control.
Process is a great elixir, but as Jason Freed pointed out , process and politics can become “systematic overreactions” to simple mistakes or fear of the unknown. This leads to bureaucratic confusion where even casual thoughts have to go through the meat grinder of the process.
Like many other trade-offs, the right balance between order and freedom is key. The best description of this middle ground I’ve seen comes from Pete Myers of Moz , who says the process should make creative work repeatable, but not repetitive.
Editorial teams live with this problem. You need to give writers, teammates, and guests a place to have a say in their writing, while still providing enough structure to argue with the person who wants to present interpretive dance as their next blog post.
One of the ways we have personally worked on this issue is by creating “article archetypes” or repeatable approaches to posting a good idea. Your thoughts aren’t going to be “formulaic” to hell, but you have enough structure to create a relatively consistent feel across our calendar, from original elements to product updates , interviews, and everything in between.
About temporarily lowering your standards
If you look at the points above, you will notice that they all start with a positive outcome: making “improvements” to the process, criticizing or counting staff should have stimulated better ideas, but it didn’t. Why not?
This is because every media has a rough stage, and every person responsible for solving problems must face a bunch of mistakes before they can find a suitable answer. Paradoxically, you are best suited for achieving high standards when you work in an environment that allows you to start low.
When faced with a writing stalemate, it is often advisable to temporarily lower your standards. It is based on the idea that work is not always what gets in the way; sometimes it’s you.
4 Ways to Suppress Creativity in Groups | Scout help