When you're trying to help your Creatives resolve some issues, it's often better to ask questions instead of just telling them what they should do. You're more likely to help them reach a solution that's good for them and you.
If you have a Creative who's having problems, whether work-related or something from their personal life that's affecting them at work, resist the natural urge to immediately offer up your advice on what they should do. Think about how you respond to advice. More specifically, think about how you respond to unsolicited advice. Do you sometimes resent it? Do you get defensive? That's natural, so don't assume others will react to it differently than you do.
When you observe someone's performance or they mention a problem, it's easy to jump up and offer suggestions based on what you've seen and heard. Realize, though, that you probably don't know all the facts. Asking questions will help you understand not only the root problem but also any factors that affect their options. Solutions that you suggest might not be feasible due to other considerations, something you'll only know if you ask them about it first.
At the end of the day, most Creatives want to solve problems on their own. Few people really enjoy being told what to do. If you ask the right questions, you can help walk them down a path toward the answer. If they see the answer in terms of their own perspective rather than yours, they're more likely to accept it; they're also more likely to incorporate it into their daily lives. That old line about "give someone a fish and they eat for a day, teach them to fish and they eat for a lifetime" has a lot of truth behind it. If you help people work toward the answer rather than just giving it to them, they understand it a lot better and will probably internalize it.
People often know the answer, they just need someone to help them verbalize it. Asking them some leading questions can help them give voice to those answers, which become much more meaningful when coming from them rather than coming from you. If there's a problem with their conduct, the simple question "if someone else was doing the same thing, and it affected you, would you be ok with it?," puts them in a position where they can't really escape the best answer. Sometimes, all they need is to know that someone agrees with what they're already thinking, and if you can get it out into the open and discuss the answer they already know to be best, they can move forward with it.
Remember, too, that Creatives can often be a pretty ego-centric bunch. With everyone having somewhat unique talents, and being used to expressing their perspective through their creativity, they often don't want to entertain the notion of someone else coming up with the answer. I saw something along these lines in the military, when I was in Iraq: as a mid-level officer I would be sitting along the wall in meetings while more senior officers had a discussion at the table. Knowing that my lower rank could keep my ideas from being accepted, I instead asked questions in such a way that there was only one answer: the answer I wanted them to give. This allowed them to think that the ideas they were generating were their own, so they were more likely to implement them. This might sound a bit passive aggressive, but you have a responsibility to run a business, and if this kind of approach works best then that's what you need to do.
All of this is just as true for helping people through personal issues as well as professional ones; a Creative who's distracted by a love life gone bad can have the same impact on your business as one who's distracted by a project gone bad. While you probably don't want to spend too much time digging through your Creatives' personal lives, you should be available to help your folks, not just because it's good for business but also because it's just a nice thing to do. You're more likely to help them, though, by asking the right questions than by simply offering up what YOU think is the right answer.
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