The Secret to Happy Creative Employees

What does your Creative team do when confronted with a challenge? Do they roll-up their sleeves and get their hands dirty? Or do they groan and avoid eye contact?

How your team responds to a challenge depends on your leadership. So, if you want them to step up when presented with an “impossible project”, you need to know how to motivate them.

Keep the following in mind to maintain happy creative employees motivated to tackle whatever you throw at them.

Make Deposits in Them

It seems like the simplest concept in the world, but it’s surprising how many leaders fail to grasp it.

People are like bank accounts—before you can ever make a withdrawal, you must make deposits.

Deposits are not big things. Rather, they are incredibly small.

It’s thanking your team for their hard work at the end of the day. It’s remembering their birthday without someone reminding you. It’s taking them to lunch once a quarter as a team on your dime and making time for them when they show up at your office with a concern. It’s letting them go home an hour early without taking sick or vacation time because they have an appointment and they made that tight deadline you dropped on them the week before.

Hell, it can even be something as trivial as a little bit of small talk before you jump into an intense meeting.

Anytime you show empathy, concern, or genuine interest in your team as people, you’re making a deposit in them. Those deposits go a long way in motivating your team to pull out all the stops to achieve a goal you’ve set for them.

Think of deposits as showing your team your human side and letting them show you a bit of theirs, too.

Know When You’re Taking a Withdrawal

Too many leaders take their teams for granted. Don’t be one of them. Whenever you make a request of your team, understand the human cost of it and recognize it.

When you ratchet up the stress on a project—asking your team to push a concept further, meet a tight deadline, try a different tactic, or go back to the drawing board—you are taking a withdrawal. Consider the extra effort your request required to achieve and acknowledge the extra steps your team must go through to deliver. People respond to gratitude, so show it.

Keep in mind, just like with a bank account, it usually takes a few deposits to counter one withdrawal.

Don’t Go into the Red Too Often

Creative employees do their best work when they feel supported, motivated, and challenged. Don’t be afraid to push your team out of their comfort zone because that is often when inspiration will strike—but know when to pull back.

Pushing too hard and too often can break down relationships, not build them up. And if you take too many withdrawals, without balancing it with deposits, you’ll burn your employees out.

Think About What Motivates You

Maybe you aren’t a people person, or perhaps you don’t have time for small talk. Whatever your reason, it’s okay if you’re not sure how to start building stronger, more authentic relationships with your creative team. All that matters is that you want to and you make the effort.

When at a loss on how to reach them, take a few steps back and ask yourself what motivated you in your career to do your best work. Don’t be afraid to recall an experience from your past and share it with your team. Empathy is a powerful emotion with the potential to forge strong bonds between people—so tap into it!

Opening up a little about your professional achievements and failures is a great tactic to break down barriers and help you resonate with the people who work for you.