How Poor Project Management Is Burning Out Creative Teams
- Adilla
- May 30
- 5 min read
Good project management makes life easy, not just for the execution of the project but for your team’s work performance. However, creatives might be more inclined to not structure their project in as much detail as they think they should because of the chaotic nature that comes with creative work.
Nevertheless, don’t underestimate what good management does for your team because the alternative will impact your team negatively, especially for creatives. It might lead to creative burnout if poor management is not dealt with properly.
Unsure if your management style is impacting your team? Take a quiz on management style, or you can find the traits of poor management below:
· Unclear direction or goals and unrealistic expectations
· Poor communication between the manager and team members
· Excessively control and review tasks
· Resistance to change and indecisiveness
· Unfairness and favouritism with poor workload distribution
Having some or even one of those traits could affect the overall work performance of your creative team.
Table of Contents
How Poor Management Stresses Out Creative Teams
Poor management can’t possibly affect that badly, right? Well, let’s say you’re a bit disorganised. Stereotypically, if you are a leader of a creative team, you would be a fellow creative who is a bit resistant to structure or getting organised.
When a project is disorganised, whether emails are not properly sorted or tasks are not delegated properly, you and your creative team members would be in a constant state of anxiousness. Not only will it stress out your team, but it will also demotivate them from doing their work. Their passion and drive to create will dwindle. Or worse, a creative burnout.
The Impacts of Missed Deadlines
Let’s say you, as the leader, delegated the tasks, organised and structured everything that’s needed in a creative project, like deadlines, progress check-ins and meeting reviews. And maybe your goal is efficiency and prioritising finishing the project early, which, in hindsight, is a good goal to have.
However, what if you didn’t make space for any potential risks or issues that could delay your team’s tasks? Or the deadline you set is too strict and doesn’t give any flexibility for your team if they ever get sick, need to be away from work, or are trying out a creative idea. So, they might end up missing deadlines.
Missing deadlines doesn’t just affect the progress of a project but also the emotional impact on an individual. Not only will they feel they are unable to perform their work well, but the manager will also feel that they are untrustworthy to meet the deadlines of a project. Efficiency ends up becoming a punishment to creatives.
How Creative Project Management Can Improve Your Project Management
If you’re struggling to find a management style that fits your creative projects and teams, check out creative project management. Not only will it suit the chaos of it all, but it will also promote a healthy collaboration between teams and produce work quality that encourages your creative team to experiment. This will unload some stress in creative teams.
As a creative project manager, you would understand the struggle of structuring a creative project because of its unpredictable and chaotic nature. However, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take the time to organise and structure a creative project. A leader must have risk management skills to handle any sudden issues that arise in a project. One thing is for sure: when managing creative workload, there is deadline flexibility.
Benefits of Using Creative Project Management Tools
When you are ready to implement creative project management with your team, look into using project management tools that could ease your work. If you’re unsure whether you should use these tools, here are the tools’ benefits to help your decision:
Project Overview, Track Progress and Risk Identification
The ability to see a visual overview of your project can ease the anxiety of not being able to finish your project in time. Hence, you’ll be able to track the progress of your project on a time basis that you have set for the project. Plus, seeing the bigger picture of the project, you can get a rough idea of what risks your team might encounter as they progress with the project.
Task and Time Management
Project management tools can help you keep track of tasks and schedules that are delegated to your team. This eliminates the need for you to constantly ask your team what they are doing. With a view of your team’s schedule, you’ll be able to manage your time more effectively. Remember to put a buffer time between tasks with your creative team and a deadline.
Effective Communication and Collaboration, Promoting Teamwork
A feature that would stand out for project management tools fitted for creative work would be to ease communication and collaboration that centres around giving visual feedback. When it comes to creative work, it's important to be able to give a review with context to prevent any miscommunication mistakes when feedback is given. With a streamlined channel to communicate and collaborate, it will encourage team members to give constructive feedback.
If this is an important feature to have in your project management software, consider trying out TESSR. Visual collaboration with teams is made possible by our TESSR Review module, which offers contextual remarks for feedback in addition to visual annotations. Our software is free to use! Curious? Book a demo with us.
Conclusion
Poor project management not only impacts everyone’s overall work performance but also negatively impacts their emotions. This leads to problems that affect the quality of the project and the health of a team. Project managers need to find a management style that complements their team’s abilities and the requirements of their projects.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Is there a way for team members to inform their leaders that their leadership needs improvement?
Team members are encouraged to promote an environment with open communication, so when a leader is not performing well in their ability to lead the team, they can inform their leaders comfortably. This will help leaders take accountability for their efforts in managing the team better.
What if it's not the management style but the requirements of the project that are affecting the team?
This is dependent on what type of requirements are affecting the team. However, if the project has a hard deadline that is not achievable, it is best for leaders to step up and let their clients know of this issue. Leaders can find wiggle room where they can still achieve the deadline, but some milestones might only be able to be achieved at a different time.
What to do if team members are unwilling to cooperate and communicate when performing tasks?
Managers will have to take the time to have a one-to-one meeting with their team members to identify if they have bottlenecks that can be dealt with to ease cooperation and communication.
Author Bio
With a background in Arts English, Adilla has been a casual writer for various hobbies like parodies of animated shows and plots for board games. She loves to read anything and everything from fantasy stories to articles on tips and tricks. Now an advocate for mental health and effective project management for the creative industry. Currently, Adilla resides in Malaysia and is a creative writer at TESSR. To know more about her, check out her LinkedIn.
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