How to Align Personal and Professional Goals in Creative Projects
- Adilla
- 7 days ago
- 5 min read
Is your team struggling to find the motivation and accountability to commit to a project? And you tried everything to keep your creative team going, but still no clear results? Look no further.
When boosting your creative team's motivation and productivity, creative project managers should leverage individual goals in team projects. Yes, try getting into aligning team members' personal goals with the ongoing creative projects.
Table Of Contents
How to Align Personal and Professional Goals in Creative Projects
Why Personal Growth Matters in a Creative Team
By knowing your team’s personal growth, project managers can help set clear goals which can be used as a path for their team to grow within a project. This will pave the way for intentional actions and prevent creatives from feeling overwhelmed or lost in a project. When you connect personal development in creative teams to your project, they are more likely to be motivated and productive, thus making them feel fulfilled.
How to Connect Personal Goals to Project Goals
Identify Goals, Then Align Them to Their Roles
Spend some time identifying your team’s personal goals. Once you do, check if their current task fulfils them. Take advantage of performance reviews or tools like personality tests to assess their strengths and abilities.
By acknowledging their goals and strengths, you can align them to the roles that suit them the most. This will allow them to show their full potential while further improving their skills. Thus, increasing their overall productivity, work quality and self-fulfilment in their work performance.
Encourage Collaboration and Communication While Providing Autonomy
Another way to leverage your team’s personal goal is with a space to openly communicate and collaborate. This will encourage your team to share their thoughts, ideas and feedback that could benefit your project or even find solutions with a bit of collaboration. Besides that, you can also provide activities that promote communication and collaboration if your team struggles in that department, like brainstorm sessions, workshops or events like hackathons.
On that note, when they provide their ideas and solutions, give them the autonomy and flexibility to make decisions and take risks. If your worries lie in them crossing boundaries and rules, give them a guideline on what not to do when doing experiments with their tasks. In addition to encouraging their creativity, this will increase their sense of accountability and ownership.
Give Support While Challenging and Inspiring Your Team
When your team is struggling with their task or delaying their deadline, check in with them if they need support or feedback for solutions. Providing them with the right resources, tools and training they might need to improve their work will also increase their work efficiency.
Encouraging your team to take on new experiences and opportunities will indirectly lead them to achieve their personal development and will inspire their creative minds to create more. Offering them a variety of tasks will prevent them from seeing work as mundane, which could affect their productivity.
Ways To Track Progress Without Micromanaging
There are a few ways to track the progress of your project and your team’s without overwhelming your role as a creative project manager.
SMART Criteria
This method is an acronym to help guide you in managing a project. What it does is that it helps make your project goals Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound. Using the SMART criteria makes breaking down a project easier.
Project Management Tools
Make sure to use PM software that fits your project’s needs and preferences. Planning, organising, tracking, and reporting on project activities, tasks, milestones, and resources are all essential functions of your project management application.
It is also encouraged to have features where you can collaborate with the team directly without needing to switch tools. There are a few software programs that you can utilise, namely Asana, Trello, and TESSR.
Our project management software has the advantage of being made for creatives. The features that are provided in TESSR support creative teams while being suitable for creative project managers to keep track of creative projects.
The TESSR Woohoo module gives a visual overview of team members’ progress using a weighted completion percentage, so project managers will be able to keep track of completed tasks. Besides that, there is a My Work feature that helps creative teams stay organised by allowing them to track their projects and manage their assigned tasks efficiently.
Conclusion
Leveraging your team’s individual goals in team projects could motivate your creatives and increase their productivity, as they would be more likely to take more accountability when they have a personal touch to their work.
FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions)
What are the benefits of personal growth?
There are several benefits to personal growth. To name a few, it helps you become more motivated and productive, develops abilities that will help you grow in your profession, and determines the path you should take to progress in your career.
Is it true that creatives do not have a personal goal because of their resistance to structure?
Most creatives prefer to cherish the freedom of their work. The idea of creating a goal may feel like confining their freedom to explore their craft. However, it is encouraged for them to have personal goals both in and outside of work to prevent creatives from doing repetitive tasks every day.
Would aligning personal goals in creative projects affect the overall goals of the project?
Not at all. It would only encourage team members to collaborate with the project more. Aligning personal goals with project goals can boost the overall performance of the project, as teams would take more accountability for the tasks they are working on.
Author Bio
With a background in Arts English, Adilla has been a casual writer for various hobbies, including parodies of animated shows and plots for board games like Dungeons & Dragons. She loves to read anything and everything from fantasy stories to articles on tips and tricks. Currently, Adilla resides in Malaysia and is a creative writer at TESSR. One day, she is eager to publish her book. To know more about her, check out her LinkedIn.
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