Let Creatives Be Creative
Are you letting the creatives you work with, fulfil their needs to be creative?
Sounds obvious, doesn’t it? But you would be surprised how often this doesn’t happen. By all means, set a brief, and an end result, but don’t be so regimented within that. Let the creative you are hiring take creative control.
Those in a creative role, take on this role because of a need for creativity. They have an innate curiosity and a different way of viewing the world regardless of what their creative role is. It is this that fuels their creativity and allows them to produce their best work. Restricting their creativity limits the ways they can look at, and execute a brief. This dulls their enthusiasm and removes the excitement from the project. The result? Work that is good, and fits the brief but isn’t the best they could be producing. And creatives pride themselves on constantly producing their next best piece of work.
As a creative, there have been times I’ve accepted jobs based on the fact that it results in money coming in, and pays the bills, not because I’ve been excited about the brief. It’s easy to do, the photographic industry is a competitive one. And whilst I pride myself on creating the best work I possibly can, taking on this work, especially when the brief is really strict and set in stone, rather than a set of guidelines just resulted in creative burnout. It resulted in me losing all enthusiasm for creating ANYTHING. I stopped blogging, I stopped actively promoting my work. In essence, I lost any creative drive I had at that time.
It took conversations with close friends (who are also creatives) and a 1:1 session with a business and marketing strategist/coach to realise that I was missing the creativity within projects. That it wasn’t a specific photographic niche that I loved photographing, but more that I love photography because of the creativity it brings. It also made me realise just how much I’ve missed writing pieces like this. This resulted in a shift in focus, a website re-do, and a new strategy going forward (watch this space).
That is just one example of what hampering creativity can do, and I know others who have experienced similar things.
What can you do then, as someone hiring a creative, to ensure this doesn’t happen?
Use a project brief as guidance, rather than a strict set of rules.
Create a space where you can talk through, and bounce ideas off of the person you are working with.
Trust the person, whether they are a writer, photographer, videographer etc. to create the best work for you, regardless of how this process might look.
Embrace the creativity and enjoy the process.
At the end of the day, the project should be about the end results, not the process it took to get there. Allowing the creative to fulfil a project in a way that works for them, and their creativity will only result in the best possible results. It’s a win-win, right?
What are your thoughts? Let me know in the comments!