How can you inspire creativity in people management?

1 Understand your team's strengths and preferences

One of the first steps to inspire creativity in people management is to understand the strengths and preferences of your team members. Everyone has different ways of thinking, learning, and expressing their creativity. Some people may prefer to work independently, while others may thrive in collaborative settings. Some may be more analytical, while others may be more intuitive. Some may be more comfortable with ambiguity, while others may need more structure and clarity. By recognizing and appreciating these differences, you can tailor your communication, feedback, and coaching to suit each individual and help them develop their creative potential.

2 Encourage curiosity and exploration

Inspiring creativity in people management can be achieved by encouraging curiosity and exploration. Curiosity fuels creativity by motivating people to seek new information, ask questions, and challenge assumptions. Exploration applies curiosity to discover new possibilities, test hypotheses, and learn from failures. As a people manager, you can foster a culture of curiosity and exploration by sharing inspiring resources that can spark new ideas and perspectives, asking open-ended and probing questions that invite your team members to think deeper and wider about their work, providing opportunities for learning new skills and exploring other domains or disciplines, and celebrating mistakes and failures as learning opportunities.

3 Provide autonomy and support

As a people manager, you can inspire creativity by providing autonomy and support. Autonomy is the degree of control and choice that people have over their work, such as goals, methods, pace, and schedule. Support is the degree of guidance and assistance people receive from their manager and peers, such as feedback, resources, recognition, and encouragement. To balance autonomy and support, set clear objectives and expectations while allowing team members to decide how to achieve them. Provide regular feedback that helps team members improve performance and learn from experiences. Recognize and reward creative efforts and outcomes, as well as contributions to the team and organization. Offer necessary resources, tools, and time to pursue creative projects. Finally, be available and approachable when team members need advice or support.

4 Promote diversity and inclusion

As a people manager, you can leverage diversity and inclusion to inspire creativity by hiring and retaining people from different backgrounds, identities, experiences, and perspectives while ensuring they have equal opportunities for growth and development. Additionally, create a safe and respectful space for your team members to share their opinions, ideas, and feedback. Moreover, encourage your team members to collaborate, learn from each other, and facilitate constructive dialogue and debate among them. Finally, seek and incorporate diverse perspectives and inputs from your team members as well as other stakeholders such as customers, partners, or experts.

5 Model creative behavior

A fifth way to inspire creativity in people management is to model creative behavior. As a people manager, you can demonstrate the desired attitudes and actions that you want your team members to adopt and emulate by showing your own curiosity and exploration, taking risks and trying new things, expressing your own creativity and originality, seeking and applying feedback and suggestions from your team members and others, and challenging and stretching yourself. Additionally, it is important to be transparent and humble about mistakes and failures, share learning and discoveries with your team members, showcase projects that reflect passion and vision, pursue professional and personal development, as well as show appreciation for feedback. Creativity is not a fixed or innate trait; it is a skill that can be developed with practice and support. By following these tips, you can inspire creativity in people management and unleash the potential of your team members.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?