How can you maintain your creative vision while collaborating with a team?

Collaboration often necessitates sacrificing individual creativity, but it doesn't have to. Start by defining clear goals that align your creative vision with project objectives. Communicate your vision openly, encouraging diverse perspectives while staying receptive to input. Flexibility is key; be prepared to adapt your vision as needed without compromising its core. Measure success collectively, valuing the impact of the team's creative alignment. Remember, collaboration can amplify individual creativity when everyone understands the 'why' behind the project. It's not about losing your vision; it's about enriching it.

To maintain your creative vision within a team, start with an alignment exercise. Everyone must express their personal and professional goals for the project. ACD can be useful here, helping the team recognize any hegemony or power embedded in the goals set or the voices that are most heard. Then, the team must synthesize these individual objectives into collective goals. Here, marketing principles come into play, transforming these collective goals into KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), which will serve as the team's compass throughout the project.

In my experience when defining goals in a creative project, an excellent way is to present them from the perspective of the client, user or beneficiary of what we are going to do. Having that external, but most important, person as the center of the initiative will give us a much more objective perspective that will help align the thinking of those involved.

One thing it's extremely important when you work in teams and you want to innovate and be creative as a group is to have cognitive diversity. People from different backgrounds will certainly enrich the discussions and be able to imagine and create something new! "Different brains" working together always foster different points of view that in the end are the key to innovation and to be even more creative as a group.

It’s important to recognize that as leaders we need to set the stage and create an environment where creativity and collaboration can easily flow together! A fantastic starting point is defining the end zone as a team and then working backwards from there to identify key steps in the process. Another great way to foster creativity as a TEAM is to split the work into smaller groups to create focus on different areas. This typically gives teams more autonomy and expression while giving them the opportunity to get to know smaller groups of people more intimately.

Normally, people have the tendency to give feedback for negative performances in our work team, that is a mistake. The theory says that positive feedback should be given 4 times with one negative to have a motivated team. Our team needs support and the leader must have the ability to give feedback in such a way that bad performances become opportunities.

Feedback in many cases is more of a job of observation than of questions. It is based on evaluating reactions, behaviors and acceptance of initiatives, but without the influence of the question itself.

Feedbacks should not tell about your "self", they are valiable in enriching your vision, show you areas that you are not seeing or too attached to, also your behaviours that are not leading you to your objetive. Remember, you ARE a perfect person that sometimes DO wrong stuff and many many times do great things.

Our ability to seek feedback, reflect on it and then consider how it applies to the situation is critical for growth and development as leaders. Creating a team atmosphere where feedback is given often and becomes part of the culture gives everyone on the team the opportunity to gain different perspectives. It also helps to hold team members accountable to each other and the work they are doing together will often come clearly into focus.

When it comes to Design-Thinking, the feedback loop is essential. Especially when the project team is by nature removed from the end users (ie: the engineers developing a sales dashboard or a PMO professional supporting a client's new product). Seeking understanding of their process, blockers, annoyances as well as the parts that work well in the current state should also part of the feedback to avoid repeating mistakes or bypassing what is important to the team. When it comes to personal performance, it has to be given with tact and an understanding of personal and specific circumstances at one moment in time.

To benefit from diversity, establish ground rules for message delivery, feedback, and communication. Encourage respectful dialogue, active listening, and uninterrupted expression of diverse viewpoints. Give constructive feedback focused on improvement, not personal criticism. Emphasize clear and concise communication, promoting understanding. These guidelines create an inclusive environment where diverse perspectives thrive, harnessing the wealth of ideas and experiences from each individual.

The beauty of teamwork is having a diverse crew with unique backgrounds, cultures, and skills. It's like a creative melting pot! ?? But let's keep it real, diversity can sometimes bring challenges and it can be hard to get out of your own way and biases. It is important to stay curious, be empathetic, and embrace inclusivity. - Stay curious to explore different viewpoints and uncover hidden creativity. - Be empathetic, in understanding where your teammates are coming from, never assume bad intentions. Make a conscious effort to create and maintain a supportive space. - Educate yourself about different backgrounds and cultures to foster inclusivity. By celebrating our differences, we can unleash our strengths!

Maintaining a creative vision in a collaborative environment is a delicate dance between the individual and the collective. It is the concept of "multivocality" that Mikhail Bakhtin addressed in his Critical Discourse Analysis: multiple voices in a productive dialogue. The key is diversity of perspectives, but consistency in message. In the context of marketing, this translates into aligning individual creativity with the brand's strategic objectives. By balancing individual uniqueness with team cohesion, you can keep your creative spark burning while achieving your marketing goals in an effective and impactful way.

Diversity is an advantage in the creative process, as long as the center of the initiative is the consumer, user or beneficiary of the initiative itself. Diversity is a disadvantage when it obeys a personal agenda and is not focused on the objective.

Seek first to understand, then to be understood! Read the first sentence again. It is quite powerful. People are a product of their environment and past. However, people are also dynamic creatures who are capable of evolving and maturing their behavior. A thing that often requires the most maturing for many is controlling one own's eagerness to convey a message and not listen to other views on the world. Therefore, "Seek first to understand, then to be understood" is such an important principle to live by. Here, listening is not enough. You should understand "Why" people have the view they possess: ASK QUESTIONS.

The best exercise is to try not to say "No", and not to say "Yes, but" during the whole creative session. This to foster collaboration, and co-creation based on "YES, and". Once this becomes instinctive, creativity has no limit, and workshops become really fun.

In a team environment, negotiation and compromise are essential to create a space where individual creativity can flourish without compromising collective goals. Ury talks about the concept of "Shared Interests". This involves identifying what each party wants to achieve and finding common ground. In the context of a marketing team, this means aligning each member's creative vision with the brand's strategic goals. After the launch of any campaign or project, collective reflection helps the team understand what worked, what didn't, and how we can improve in the future.

One thing I've found helpful is to start by listening to everyone's ideas. Most often, the most successful creative projects start with a concept and blend others' ideas until you've got the best possible product. That means being willing to hear what other people are saying and see where their ideas work better than mine. Sometimes that means giving up just a bit of what I was thinking, and sometimes it means I give up a lot. If someone else's ideas are better, why not go their way? Creativity can't be inflexible.

It's also important to remember that when you are experimenting something for the first time, you will probably bring up new ideas and ways of doing things, because you are not filtering what comes up to your mind with the usual obstacles that are put in the way by those who use it in a regular basis. So creativity gains space in this open enviroment.

Sometimes the greatest epiphanies come when you change setting - get out of your comfort zone! Ever heard about crowdsourcing? Research shows that some of the greatest and most innovative ideas come from people working in different industries or functions. This may be due to a classic example of tunnel vision / getting too comfortable in the usual. The tools and methods you are used to apply might not be so normal in other jobs or areas - and vice versa. In conclusion, change the scenery. Get away from your desk and go for a walk. Sign up for a new, different course. Call a friend who works in a different company. It is important that you challenge yourself and expand the circumference of your comfort zone to change status quo!

From my experience working with a team, has been one of the few times I have made connections that have led to more opportunities. Having fun while working ensures that you remain motivated and actually look forward to working and completing that project. It becomes easier and less daunting to ask for guidance or seek clarity when the whole serious vibe is not present. Just remember not to use fun as an excuse to not work

Channel your inner child and bring out the Lego bricks. Not all meetings and interactions have to happen in a boring dark meeting room nor via MS Teams. Spice up the classic meetings and workshops by bringing Lego bricks into the equation. Creating something physically with your own hands sparks new thoughts as it challenges the brain's neural network differently. Is this not being a bit too unserious in a professional context? Trust me when I say: No! Try it out. You will be surprised with how many types of people will experience a positive effect - a positive catalyst for creative ideas while adding fun to classic work topics.

When a team is having fun working on a project, and specially, when the team leader joins that group in a fearless atitude, inviting coworkers to participate and not seeing mistakes as a problem, the output will definitly will be the best possible. A good working and learning enviroment involves people and allows everybody to participate and produce their best.

Last time, I did not know what ice breaker I should invent. The meeting was on Teams+Klaxoon Board, and participants had desactivated their webcams. So I said "Let's put a picture of a cat inside a post-it, so everyone understands the feature, for future exercises". We heard panic in the voice of the Commercial Director "Where are we supposed to find pictures of cats?" Everybody laughed! and we ended up having a joyful workshop.

ACD teaches us to be aware of how power and ideology are embedded in language. In a team environment, this means being mindful of how different "voices" or perspectives are valued or marginalized during the creative process. So how can I maintain my creative vision while collaborating on a team? Here are some strategies, based on the principles of negotiation and commitment, as well as critical analysis and marketing, the team should start by defining what they want to achieve collectively. This serves as a starting point for all future negotiations and commitments.

From my perspective, creative work is not a task of inventing, it is rather a work of knowing people, cultures, contexts, motivations, fears... everything related to people's daily lives. It's like the trick of the rabbit that comes out of the magician's hat... first you have to put the rabbit in, the magic is in the grace to take out the rabbit that is there without anyone noticing.

The idea of creative collaboration reminds me of how dog packs engage in a chase. The lead dogs run after the target following every little twist and turn. The dogs behind them see the detours and avoid them. Dogs behind them take an even shorter path, and so on, the dogs in the rear taking the shortest path. As they dogs in the front tire, they fall back and start running a more efficient route, etc. This is the core of wisdom, imagine yourself at the back of the pack and learn from the mistakes of others. Communication and acceptance of neurodiversity are great mentions, but most managers don't have those skills in their toolkits. You have an advantage if you do.