What do you do when your creative people present you with something you absolutely hate?

If you ever want to see anything you like from the people you pay to innovate, you need find something to like. Most of us find it difficult not to show our disappointment when the work we pay for fails to meet our expectations. But everything from lashing out in anger to sighing from faint disenchantment diminishes your rapport and chances of success with the creative people who regularly present creative work to you.

If you don’t care whether you ever see your creative people again, give them hell. But if you want to build a creative team that consistently delivers stellar creative work, take the following simple steps every time they stand up and present their work.

1. Look at it. Stop. Let the work get through to you. Resist your urge to judge it.


2. Say you like it. I don’t care if it makes you sick to your stomach. Find something in the presentation to appreciate and express your appreciation. Assume that your people have just busted their butts for you and thank them.


3. Listen. Allow for the remote possibility that you may have missed something. And let your people present their case before you make your first constructive remark.

By the time you do these three things, you will have established an atmosphere conducive to the most mutually beneficial exchange of ideas. Your creative people will be much more inclined not only to hear your evaluation but to appreciate it as well. Then and only then should you begin to clearly and with as much detail as possible articulate what you want, what disappoints you, and what you expect from the next effort.

Do it this way and you’ll get a whole lot closer to the solution you’re looking for than you could ever get with rejection or disapproval.

Play Don’t Fence Me In by Peter Lloyd and Cole Porter