Creativity needs space to flourish, mistakes to be adjusted and publicity to be shared!

By Sotirios C Ikonomou
Do you provide the right environment to awaken your team's creative intelligence?
We leaders have to embrace our employees’ new ideas and initiatives and guide them throughout implementation. However, the right environment is the most essential component to awaken and challenge the creativity of our people.
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Creating the right environment at work is exactly like the “space” that a painter or a photographer needs in his studio to be inspired and create. If you take away this space, creativity will be less empowered.
In the hospitality sector, by not creating the right environment at work our employees will be less motivated to influence others by establishing a trend of routine.Providing the right space is to recognise the employee’s ability to create and to invent ideas that he or she can translate into actions and services. The key element in the process is to provide your team with trust and independence, to allow them to practice their initiatives freely under your guidance as their leader.
As parents show the right support for their children even when mistakes are made, your team should feel the importance of the process, of trial and error, rather than just the outcome. In the hospitality sector if leaders do not create a supportive environment, and continuously point out mistakes, we might miss out on some innovative and inspiring initiatives. Having creative and flourishing teams directly influences the Problem Handling, the Employee Engagement, and Heart Beat metrics scores. Guest satisfaction increases loyalty to our Brand and to our hotels.  
At InterContinental David Tel Aviv, we believe that each one of our employees is creative and we encourage their Creative Intelligence (CQ) by giving them sufficient space to practice and perform.We have created a series of videos called “My Story, Our Guests, One Family”  that brings to life the DNA of our creative teams.
We have set out to document outstanding employee service by filming the employees tell their stories, describing the guest’s feelings and emotions that emerged due to the services they provided. 
This way our employees are recognised and empowered for their actions in public, others are influenced as we offer them the “space” to awaken their creativity. But most importantly, our guests are getting a handful from the IC Tel Aviv jar of creativity.

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