Want to get the very most out of your team? Then you might be tempted to try and put lots of pressure on them. Perhaps that means giving them unreasonable deadlines. Maybe it means telling them they need to complete X amount of work to get rewarded. Whether you choose carrot or stick, the assumption might be that they need some external motivator.
The only problem? This doesn’t seem right… When you take this approach, you’ll be limiting what your team can accomplish, stifling their creativity, and ultimately shooting your own business in the foot. Oops!
Here’s why…
How We Work Best
This approach can work if your objective is sheer numbers and quantity. However, most of us would agree that we value creativity and intuition more. This is the difference between a good business that survives and a great business that works to change the world.
And the problem is that tight deadlines ruin creativity. One reason is that tight deadlines cause us to have a stress response. This triggers the release of excitatory neurotransmitters and hormones like adrenaline, norepinephrine, and dopamine. While these get us psyched up and helped us focus, that same focus makes us harder to be creative.
Because creativity occurs when our mind is free to wander (and wonder), we can explore disparate ideas in our brains, and it is this process that helps us find new connections and, therefore, recombine them in unique ways. It is generally agreed that recombining two old ideas is a good idea.
This is why we are thought to be at our most creative when engaging in mundane tasks like washing up, showering, or walking.
Procrastination Isn’t All Bad.
Taking our time also gives us enough time to think about alternative ways to do things. This has led to many studies demonstrating a simple correlation between procrastination and creative problem-solving. People who procrastinate also tend to be more effective at coming up with unique ideas!
So if you want to be more creative and have a more creative team, cut them some slack! You could even take a leaf out of Google’s book and provide your team with downtime to allow them to come up with their projects and ideas.
