Leaders need to create safe places to develop the most creative teams, said Nicole Velik, founder of Australia-based The Ideas Bodega, at PromaxBDA: The Conference 2015 on Tuesday, June 9, at the J.W. Marriott LA Live.

Velik was addressing PromaxBDA’s Leadership Institute, in which creative executives gather to gain insight on new ways to lead.

To kick off the session, Velik told the story of an employee who brought an idea to her team at the end of a pitch meeting for a really big piece of business. The idea was so good that the team was forced to backtrack and rethink its entire pitch.

“When did you have that idea?” the CEO asked the employee. “I believe you had that idea before walking into the room.” She admitted that she did.

“Shame on you,” the employer told the employee. “Now we have to regroup and go over your idea because it’s that much better.”

A few years later, however, the CEO said “shame on us,” because he knew that he hadn’t provided a safe place for the employee to bring her idea forward.

“Providing a safe environment for people to bring ideas and potential ideas that will fail is very important,” Velik said.

Among the qualities that the audience said creative leaders should possess were trust, patience, open-mindedness, good listening skills, empathy and self-confidence, and Velik added another one: vulnerability.

“Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change,” Velik said. “You have to have the ability to come up with a dumb idea first, the ability to say something that might not be that well thought out, the ability to create space for others to come up with ideas.”

There are ways for organizations to build time and methods into employees’ weeks that allow them to more effectively tap into their creativity.

As an example of this, Velik talked about the factual creative team at the Australian broadcaster Foxtel. Carly Heaton had arrived as their new team leader, and early on she held a brainstorming session called, “A Perfect World,” inviting her new team to offer their craziest suggestions about how they would like to work. They told her things like they would like work from home when they wanted, get outside more and move around more. While not all of their ideas could be realistically implemented, they did lead to some changes, such as walking meetings and standing desks.

The team learned from that and continued to come up with new ideas. As a result, the team members grew increasingly close while also becoming quantifiably more creative. And the way that was measured was that the Foxtel factual team swept the next round of the Australian and New Zealand PromaxBDA Awards.

That example led Velik to ask the room: “What are you doing to constantly inspire people? When you are in the daily grind, it’s hard to inspire people. What are you putting in place to constantly inspire people?”

Inspiring people every day is a tall order, but small changes can bring it about, Velik said.

Leaders should schedule “open door” times in which they offer team members the opportunity to come by and chat. Similarly, leaders should spend time out on the floor, talking to employees.

“Sometimes these offline meetings generate the best ideas,” Velik said.

Other simple changes included allowing employees to bring their dogs to work –under certain guidelines – and to take one day a month or quarter to unplug and do something creative, like going to see a museum exhibit.

“You have as many hours in the day as Beyonce so make them count,” said Velik. “Carve out time for creativity.”

Image of Velik courtesy of Image Group LA.

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