Even if you don’t think that your business is in a particularly creative industry, having people on your team that can think and act creatively can benefit any business out there. However, knowing how you as a business owner or manager can help your employees tap into their creativity can often be a challenge.
So if you’re wanting your team to be more creative and assist your company in finding creative solutions to big problems, here are three ways you can encourage creativity from your employees.
Embrace Diversity
One of the best ways to get your employees to start thinking about things differently is to surround them with people who automatically think differently than they do.
According to Kathy Bernhard, a contributor to Forbes.com, having diverse teams within your organization can encourage people to learn from the varying skills and abilities that others have in order to expound upon their own traits and ideas. Additionally, surrounding your staff with people who think about things differently can also encourage more debate among your employees, which could prove to make everyone work harder and smarter toward achieving both individual and organizational goals. So if you’ve been keeping people who are alike together in groups or workspaces, consider switching things up a bit.
Change Up Physical Locations
Just like being around different people can encourage more creativity, spending time in different spaces can increase creative juices, too.
To implement this within your workspace, Adam Fridman, a contributor to Inc.com, recommends that you make alternate areas of your office look and feel differently. This could include creating workspace in outdoor areas or greenspace, wrapping a wall with a piece of art, playing music in certain rooms, or even getting out of the office altogether. By changing up the physical space that your employees inhabit on a regular basis, you can help inspire their minds to think about things differently and come up with creative solutions to both old and new problems.
Be More Flexible
Sometimes, flexibility and freedom are all an employee needs to be more creative at work.
According to AllBusiness.com, being flexible by allowing people the flexibility to think about things differently and come up with their own ways of accomplishing tasks or meeting objectives is a great way to get people thinking creatively. If you merely encourage people to stick to the status quo and do things the way they’ve always been done, there will never be room for creativity or innovation within your organization.
If you’re wanting your employees to be more creative in the workplace, consider using the tips mentioned above to show you how you can encourage this type of creative thinking within the members of your staff.
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