Other Than Incentives, Here Are Ways to Motivate Your Creative Teams
- Adilla
- Jun 13
- 4 min read
Motivation, a word that many people seek that keeps them going on the daily. Especially creative professionals who rely heavily on motivation to keep them inspired to keep their work innovative and competitive.
You would think that monetary value would be enough to keep them pumped for work, but a pay cheque doesn’t always inspire great ideas; employee recognition does. To name a few.
So, what will motivate these creative professionals to continue to do their work well?
Table of Contents
What Motivates Creative Teams?
1. Challenging and Inspiring Tasks
Nothing motivates creatives more than being able to exercise their creative minds, especially towards tasks that they are interested in. Repetitive tasks can be mundane and demotivating. By having these sorts of tasks, your creative output would be sorted.
2. Work Tasks That Match Their Ambitions
When your tasks match your personal goals, you are more likely to be motivated to perform these tasks. This gives you a sense of purpose that comes with fulfilling your goal and is a driving factor to keep you going.
3. Encouraged To Share Ideas
Beyond the tasks and goals, when you are encouraged to share your ideas and implement them, the boost of recognition is motivating. As I mentioned before, employee recognition does wonders for employee motivation.
What To Do as A Creative Leader?
1. Balance of direction and autonomy
As leaders of creative professionals, it's important to find this balance so your creative teams don’t feel micromanaged. Letting your team make mistakes without trying to correct them is a good way to lessen the reins on their creative progress and keep them motivated to keep trying.
2. Compliment and criticise meaningfully
Complimenting your creative team members will not only encourage them to share their ideas more willingly with you but also build trust. When you do this, be sure to compliment them even when they are not in your presence. This will also build a sense of faith and motivation.
3. Celebrate the wins
Some underestimate the importance of patting your team's back verbally. Praising or celebrating their wins will encourage and motivate them to keep contributing and performing in their work. Even if it’s a small win!
How To Incorporate Motivation into Daily Workflow?
While there are many ways to implement motivation into your team’s daily workflow, such as setting up small achievable goals while tracking their task progress to take note of their contribution. There are other factors that tend to be overlooked.
One of them is the work environment energy. There is nothing more demotivating than a low or negative energy in an office space. It is important for creative leaders to keep the energy of their work environment high, or at the very least stable and encouraging.
Besides that, a reliable team that takes accountability and takes care of each other. Not in a way that would baby the team, but ones that are there to encourage you and share similar goals that help each other to stay responsible with their tasks.
Project Management Software To Celebrate Every Victory, Big Or Small.
As I mentioned before, celebrating the wins of your team is a must, no matter how small they are. However, manually keeping track of your team’s achievements can be overwhelming, and you might miss a few honourable mentions as you share these wins. The best way to do this is by keeping track through creative project management software.
Our TESSR Woohoo is the right feature to assist you in making sure your team is well-praised and celebrated. What it does, essentially, is give a better understanding of the overall progress of the tasks you assign to your teams. It does this by calculating a weighted completion percentage of projects that you set.
The Woohoo data helps not only leaders but also team members to track progress, analyse and gain insights on where to improve. Plus, from here, leaders can make informed decisions on how to plan and balance the workload of their team. Or, in this case, keep note of what your team has completed and achieved.
Conclusion
A pay cheque means nothing to employees if it does not come with a sense of fulfilment and motivation to do their work. Creative professionals need these to boost their creative juices and pump up competitive work that stands out.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Why does employee motivation become a staple beyond monetary value?
Employees are looking for a workplace that fulfils their needs beyond their pay cheque. They realise that their engagement and retention are at their best when these needs are met.
Is it important for leaders to know what their employees' personalities are for their work performance?
It is important in a way that you will be able to find tasks that will match them or resources that better fit who they are. It helps you become an effective team leader.
What is a way to boost the energy that is needed to keep your team motivated?
To name a few, practice gratitude, positive communication, and a supportive and inclusive environment. A positive energy at work will help encourage growth among your team members.
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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