Learning to collaborate creatively brings about changes, and change requires the involvement of those affected. As a creative coach, I utilize workshops and trainings to facilitate this process. Workshops focus on experiential learning, while trainings focus on knowledge transfer.

Workshops and trainings are beneficial for teams that can develop together in this way, as well as for functional groups tasked with sharing acquired knowledge with the teams. The specific approach that makes sense for your own company can be clarified through preliminary consulting.

Creativity and Team Culture

Employees and teams play a crucial role in driving innovation. Their creativity enables companies to adapt and remain competitive. The way employees communicate and collaborate is an expression of the company culture, which can either foster or hinder creativity.

For example, teams may impede their creativity when employees withhold their ideas out of fear. New ideas are often initially ridiculed or harshly criticized in order to maintain the status quo and avoid change. However, everything that is alive is in constant motion and can adapt to its environment.

Teams can nurture their creativity by developing an understanding of creative processes and embracing failure as part of the journey. They can also foster psychological safety, establish mechanisms for generating new ideas, and encourage idea-sharing across hierarchical levels.

Promoting creativity in teams is primarily a cultural issue, in addition to providing resources and support from leadership. Open communication, trust, self-management, and fostering an inspiring and engaging meeting culture all contribute to a creative environment.

Mindset and Methods

Creative individuals have access to two states of consciousness: the child-like state and the protector-like state. On one hand, they need to feel secure enough to freely explore and play, and on the other hand, they need to protect the play and align their activities with goals.

One effective method for strengthening teams is retrospectives. In addition, creative teams can benefit from practices such as daily stand-ups, transparent roles, clarified delegation, Kanban, and the Consent Principle for decision making. Creative projects can also benefit from premortems, postmortems, and so-called braintrust meetings.

The effectiveness of brainstorming in teams is scientifically doubted. Personally, I prefer techniques such as clustering (Rico), freewriting (Macrorie), or the provocative and constructive techniques pioneered by Osborn, such as surrealism, lateral thinking, synectics, or the SCAMPER technique.

In teams, I have also had great experiences with the 6-5-3 method (Rohrbach), brainwriting (Sakai), headstand brainstorming (Schroer), the six thinking hats (de Bono), the Walt Disney method (Dilts), and many others. Breathing exercises and mindfulness exercises can also support creativity.

Last but not least, storytelling. It can be used to develop leaders, inspire employees, facilitate cultural change processes, gain support, and captivate customers. Even in customer service, storytelling can help solve problems and build trust.

Feel free to schedule an introductory call via Calendry here to address any further questions. I am available and looking forward to collaborating!