How Can You Boost Creativity and Innovation in a Remote or Hybrid Team?

What Rituals Help Build Psychological Safety and Trust in Creative Workplaces?

Unlock your team’s hidden potential with Anne Jacoby’s Born to Create. Learn how to foster psychological safety, overcome “creativity killers,” and use simple rituals to spark innovation and belonging in the modern workplace.

Ready to turn your office into an innovation hub? Read the full summary now to discover the 3-step framework for building a creative culture that drives real business results.

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CEO and creativity expert Anne Jacoby details how embracing creativity at all levels can lead to more meaningful connections, groundbreaking innovations, and a strong sense of belonging among team members. She provides practical strategies for encouraging creativity across your team. She takes you on a three-act journey to harness the collective creative power of your workforce and create a more fulfilling workplace for everyone.

Take-Aways

• Express your creative ideas.
• Apply your imagination at work.
• Seek feedback with positivity and use it to foster growth.
• Build trust and psychological safety as a creative team leader.
• Nurture an office environment that brings out people’s creativity.
• Boost team collaboration to access creativity.
• Find your company’s “North Star.”
• Implement strategies for spreading your creative company culture.
• Develop rituals to reinforce company culture and gratitude for team efforts.

Summary

Express your creative ideas.

Many people lack faith in their creativity. Strengthening creative confidence involves embracing all ideas and pushing past the fear of ridicule.

As with a skier facing down a steep mountain, the confidence to pursue creativity requires faith in your ability to perceive the right path forward. Skiers call this “seeing the line.” Recognizing surrounding constraints, just as a skier looks for rocks or cliffs on a mountainside, enables you to carve out space for creativity amid daily challenges. This approach fosters a mindset of discipline and readiness to capture creative moments whenever they arise. As you learn to see the line, you will gain the energy to push forward confidently, even in the face of challenging circumstances.

“Knowing what makes us tick is an important first step in developing our creative confidence.”

To boost your creative confidence, assess your creativity. Reflect daily on moments when you feel most creative. Note the conditions that foster your creativity. Over a set period, such as two weeks, track these moments and your surrounding environment. Document specifics such as the time of day, your feelings, and sensory details. Analyze the patterns and themes that emerge from your observations to identify the conditions under which your creativity thrives. This analysis will facilitate a deeper understanding of your personal creative process.

Apply your imagination at work.

Activating your imagination and enhancing creativity involves immersing yourself in imaginative play and embracing the detail-rich experiences of childhood. Consider experiences you enjoyed as a child that allowed you to be creative. Write down those memories.

Being imaginative leads you to become more open-minded. In the business world, this can mean you feel greater empathy toward customer needs and experiences because your imagination helps you adopt different perspectives. Yet, stepping into the imaginative space can be challenging for many people.

“Creativity’s relationship to time can be a complicated one.”

To optimize creativity and boost your imagination, adopt practices that rejuvenate your mind and foster an environment conducive to creative thought. Engaging in “Creativity Boosters,” such as changing your physical workspace, meditating, or indulging in short, mindful breaks can help you overcome blocks and pressure and make your brain more open to innovative ideas. Design a lifestyle that aligns with your values and motivations and that offers a balance between work and creative passions. This approach encourages a sustained creative output and fulfillment.

Seek feedback with positivity and use it to foster growth.

Most people avoid feedback because they expect and fear criticism. While unsolicited feedback can be uncomfortable, seeking feedback about your ideas or work performance puts you in a mental space to learn and grow. If something feels off about how you’re approaching a challenge, or you think your perspective might be wrong, ask others for a critique.

“Just take the note.”

To foster a creative feedback process, engage in self-reflection to understand personal growth areas and identify conditions that enhance creativity. Use positive affirmations to navigate challenges, such as, “I can do the hard things.” Incorporate peer feedback to gain insights into your strengths and areas for improvement. Focus on how feedback — even if it’s just a peer pointing out when you succeeded and encouraging you to keep going — can help you constructively build upon your initial creative ideas. Seek specific feedback from managers on your creative contributions and areas for growth. Use this guidance to foster your autonomy and integrate insights across all aspects of your life for holistic creative development.

Feedback can lead to self-doubt, which can kill creativity. Safeguard your creativity by maintaining a balanced self-feedback loop in which you place checks and balances on the feedback. Through self-encouragement, you can avoid common creativity barriers such as overthinking or perfectionism. Adopting a constructive perspective toward feedback — treating it as an opportunity for growth rather than a critique — coupled with practicing self-compassion and persistence, can effectively counteract creativity killers.

Build trust and psychological safety as a creative team leader.

The role of a creative leader involves nurturing an environment in which team members feel psychologically safe and trusted. Leaders should enable team members to freely express ideas, ask questions, and challenge norms without fear of embarrassment or retribution. Creative leaders set this tone by fostering open communication, encouraging storytelling to build a shared sense of purpose, and leading by example. By demonstrating the behaviors they hope to see, these leaders cultivate a culture of innovation, experimentation, and respectful debate. Trust and psychological safety allow individuals to take risks, fail, and learn in a supportive atmosphere. This drives higher performance and more innovative solutions.

“Learning more about your mindset and held beliefs will help you design the best creative approach with others.”

Building an environment of psychological safety and trust starts with having an open mind as a leader. Traditional leadership thinking might prioritize meeting stakeholder metrics or pushing team members to maximum efficiency. Creative leaders focus on curiosity, learning, challenging traditional goals, and listening. Encourage reflection, learn from missteps, and integrate team values into daily work to shift your team toward more innovative and collaborative problem-solving.

Nurture an office environment that brings out people’s creativity.

Building an office space that encourages people to express their creativity nourishes innovation and good ideas. An office’s physical environment and decor significantly shape team dynamics and creativity. For example, high-growth tech start-ups often feature open floor plans with ping-pong tables, beanbag chairs, and rooms adorned with Post-its and dry-erase markers to encourage spontaneous working group huddles and otherwise foster a culture of collaboration, innovation, and informal interaction.

“When teams are open, committed to growth and learning, and in sync with the organizational purpose, that’s when the magic happens.”

Ask your team for their feedback. Ask what materials or setup would yield their most productive workflow, such as standing desks, an open plan floor, or ergonomic desk chairs. Give them visual examples of available equipment and listen to their needs. Embrace an array of work styles — hybrid, fully remote, or in-person — to get the most out of your team. The more choice you provide your team, the more creativity you access because creativity is a messy process that thrives on flexibility.

Boost team collaboration to access creativity.

Slow down to reflect and savor each moment for deeper understanding and creativity. Take time after brainstorming to ask, “What did everyone learn?” or “What could be the downsides to this idea?” Include outside perspectives. Seek the viewpoints of stakeholders or board members to ensure your team’s ideas flow in the most productive direction.

Observe and assess situations objectively. For example, noticing whether someone is stressed or hungry and taking time to amend the situation makes that person feel like an essential part of the team. Prioritize ruthlessly to focus on what truly matters. Choose only two or three priorities and stick to them. Otherwise, your team will fail at reaching any goal. Practice saying no or delegating tasks to foster balance and bring fresh perspectives.

“By slowing down to empower each team member to contribute their unique creative talent while building strong chemistry across the team, your projects can transcend the ordinary.”

To start strengthening your team collaboration, especially in distributed teams, initiate a session with clear objectives and share experiences of past collaborations to set an optimistic and reflective tone. Encourage team members to identify core ingredients of effective collaboration through brainstorming and write those factors down to discuss and explore further. By role-playing within breakout groups to tackle a shared challenge, teams practice integrating diverse strengths and perspectives, thus enhancing their collaborative skills through real-world scenarios and reflective discussions.

Find your company’s “North Star.”

One of the most effective creativity killers is a company culture that prioritizes profits over innovation. Fostering a company-wide commitment to creativity takes defining a corporate message, or “North Star,” that reflects your desire for innovation.

Clear, consistent communication of your North Star or organizational purpose, such as a commitment to creativity, helps attract and retain talent, drive business, enhance investment opportunities, and set a foundation for a culture that values innovation and creative contributions. A well-articulated and communicated North Star is a guiding light, empowering employees to contribute creatively toward the organization’s shared vision and objectives.

“You start to break the mold of what you think your company should be and inhabit the space of who you authentically are.”

Activating your North Star involves defining your organizational purpose. Ask what makes your company stand out, what values you hold that make working at your company worthwhile, and where you see your company heading in the future. Tailor communication of your core company message to different audiences through appropriate channels. Determine your audience, what kind of message platform they use, and what visuals will grab their attention. Evaluate the timing and consistency of your messaging through tools such as social media, website monitoring, and surveys.

Implement strategies for spreading your creative company culture.

After defining the company culture you desire, construct a strategic plan to implement that culture. You needn’t be an expert in every job to inspire the best creative performance in every employee.

“Embodying the mindset of a conductor within a creativity culture means deeply listening.”

Examine how team members engage to foster a supportive and collaborative atmosphere. Explore where and when co-creation happens to adapt to evolving work arrangements and technologies. Listening, observing, and finding your best creative talents may lead to a redistribution of roles and responsibilities.

Develop rituals to reinforce company culture and gratitude for team efforts.

Rituals foster a creative company culture, marking milestones, personalizing appreciation, and reinforcing the organization’s values. Thoughtfully personalized and integrated rituals enhance employee engagement and foster a sense of belonging and innovation. Rituals that nurture connection and creative growth include dedicating time for social connection through personal shares at the beginning of team meetings, celebrating team wins and contributions during all-hands meetings, and marking personal and professional milestones in meaningful, personalized ways.

“When we practice gratitude as one of the core rituals across our teams, we can reframe challenging moments as learning opportunities.”

Rituals foster gratitude among employees. Gratitude fuels creativity because it makes people feel valued. Feeling like you belong and that the company appreciates your efforts translates to psychological safety, courage to express creative ideas, and empowerment to implement innovative change. ​​​​​​

About the Author

Anne Jacoby is founder and CEO of Spring Street Solutions, a consultancy dedicated to sparking creativity at work.