How To Manage Your Creative Team Without Breaking Their Souls

By February 17, 2017Pro Talent Series

Want to get the most out of your creative team? You’ve come to the right place. We’ve put together a list of ways to manage creatives without breaking their souls.

Work with the big picture

Start with a broad idea and work out the details later. Prescriptive instructions not only limit the creativity of a project but they irritate your creative team big time. BIG time.

Create collaborative workspaces

You want your work environment to facilitate innovative thinking and communication. Allow space for storyboarding and idea sharing. Some colour helps too!  Maria Raga, CEO of Depop says having an open culture is important for creatives.

“We are in the fashion space so we want to attract creatives… We encourage an environment that is very open and collaborative. We also have boards all around the office to draw on and use for all teams.”

creative team
Give a proper brief

Your creative team are problem solvers first and foremost. Therefore your brief needs to clearly communicate what the problem is you’re trying to solve. Include all elements of the project – target audiences, previous campaigns, intended outcome, research and inspirations.

Establish styleguide

Work with your creative team to set some parameters around style. Nothing too stringent but basics around font, colours and logos are important to ensure brand consistency. While each project you undertake should feel original, it should also have your team’s own stamp on it.

Educate the whole team on the creatives’ role

Helping other departments understand the role and process of your creatives will lead to a more harmonious work environment. It will also save a lot of back and forth from people making unrealistic requests or demands.

creative team
 Avoid micromanagement

Stating the obvious perhaps, but effective managers don’t micromanage. This means that while you can dictate the output of your creative team you can’t dictate the process. Give your team the freedom and autonomy to determine their own workflow.

Be realistic

Although you want your creative projects to be as inventive and original as possible, this won’t always be feasible. Be realistic about time and budgetary constraints and make a decision: Do you want the project to be as innovative as possible, as quick as possible or as cheap as possible? Choose wisely.


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Author Aoife Geary

Aoife Geary is the Content Editor at Jobbio specialising in the areas of Workplace Culture, Diversity, Startups and Digital Trends. She's partial to a burrito, a bad pun and living way beyond her means.

More posts by Aoife Geary

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