Working with Creative Teams: How to Reduce Confusion and Maintain Strong Relationships

Jun 25, 2018 — General

When creative teams collaborate to create something, the output is nothing short of sheer beauty and best-in-class. Every creative mind is outpouring creativity with its own perception and working together toward achieving a single goal. However, when two or more creative teams such as design, content development, and branding collaborate to work on a single project, the process of successful completion of the project is not a cakewalk. The process is filled with a lot of brainstorming, different perceptions, and various perspectives. With such circumstances, it is necessary to reduce confusion and focus on completion of the project by giving the creative best; at the same time, maintaining strong relationships. Collaboration between teams involves sharing a common vision, giving respect to each other, and clarifying the role of each team while achieving business outcomes and live up to the client’s expectations. Following are some of the ways in which confusion can be reduced and strong relationships can be achieved while giving the creative best:

1. Provide a big picture

It is difficult for a team to stay motivated and committed if it does not know how its work impacts the big picture. It is necessary to give teams a shared goal and roadmap of the project. For this, it is necessary to create a discussion session between teams and ask the leadership team to join the discussion. Moreover, there should a feedback loop that tells teams what the impact of their contribution is.

2. Create a common language

When a team-specific language is used, there will be a lot of confusions as other teams will not be able to understand the language. The terminologies used by design team will not be understandable to the development team and technical language used by the development team will not be easy to understand for the design team. This will create confusion. The miscommunication can hamper the productivity and the entire project. When a common language is created and the same terminologies are used, the confusion will be reduced and productivity will be enhanced. Moreover, when new team members will join, it will be easier for them to understand and participate actively.

3. Facilitate interaction between teams

The fast pace of the work environment and meeting tight deadlines are a few challenges that need to face while working on the majority of projects. To achieve these objectives, there should be easier ways of information sharing between teams and the right software or equipment should be deployed to facilitate interaction between teams. Some of the members can be working remotely. The applications should be deployed that will keep everyone informed about the project progress and improve interaction between teams if there are any concerns.

4. Collaboration between leaders

Relationship between heads of teams plays a crucial role in developing a good collaborative environment between teams. Leaders can build a relationship with leaders of other departments by leading by example and initiating periodic meetings. Moreover, they can try to understand the challenges of other teams and offer help in every way they can. They can help each other through problem-solving and be brainstorming ideas about various aspects of projects. This builds a sense of trust between departments and can be invaluable for a good collaboration.

5. Practice empathy

The mutual interaction and a good rapport between teams can make collaboration effective and efficient. For this, it is important for teams to be in each others’ shoes and see things from others’ perspectives. Moreover, a team should come up with various ways in which it can make other teams more effective and enable smooth collaboration. Keeping personal emotions in check is also important to foster a good collaboration.

As a smooth collaboration depends on various factors, building trust and understanding among teams is of utmost necessity. Being one of the leading branding companies in Pune, Kaizen Design Studio helps businesses create brand awareness, reach a wide audience, and achieve goals by providing branding services through seamless collaboration between its teams.