Giving a Unicorn Feedback: Leading a Creative to Where You Want Them to Be

In my last article I spoke about developing and leading that mythical creature- the unicorn -or creative on your team. As one myself, I have found over the course of my career that when it comes to giving feedback most leaders struggle, and to be perfectly blunt get it wrong, resulting in a frustrated creative and an exasperated manager. The amount of non-value added time spent in this whirling dervish could be utilized in so many more productive ways. Thus, I am going to cover how to give feedback to a creative so that results are achieved, stress levels are at a minimal and your unicorn won’t run away into the forest never to be heard from again.

As a creative I have worked in industries ranging from Financial Services to the Non Profit sector. When I was in typical “non creative” roles the feedback loop wasn’t often an issue, mainly because I was having to push down my creative side to be able to run a Six Sigma project, meet call center metrics, or ensure the plant was ISO900 certified. However, when I moved into Marketing/Communications and PR which I believe is the perfect role for my skillset, I noticed from the beginning that feedback was always an issue. Either I walked away frustrated and feeling unappreciated or my manager couldn’t communicate in my “work” language causing endless back and forth on projects and both of us wanted to just go back to our separate corners because it was irritating, challenging and unsatisfying. It doesn’t have to be. If everyone understands and appreciates that both parties have a different “love language” as author Gary Chapman would put it, productivity will go up, employees will have a higher rate of job satisfaction and projects will be on time and on point.

The first rule of feedback to a creative is to not say “I just don’t like it” or to infer that by going radio silent. Whether it’s legitimate or not, the latter causes us to assume something is amiss. If all that is said is “I don’t like it” the same applies- we can do absolutely nothing with that information. In our minds we don’t know if it’s layout, color palette, graphic design, font, etc. because we’ve put effort into every single one of those attributes and to give feedback that is nebulous or to ignore it completely isn’t going to result on us being able to take action. Remember, we have thought about everything from a print bleed to which font will be easier to read for the consumer. The myriad of details that goes into the simplest projects is rarely understood.

Yesterday, I designed a 13 second video and redid it three times to ensure the images were all in the same color palette, the music fit the theme and the text was centered perfectly. I vexed about one of the stock images because I knew it showed a body of water and even though it was an eye-catching image, someone would say “hey don’t you have a localized image to use”. When it launches today, I know three things will most likely happen. 1. No one will appear to have noticed it and no commentary will come forth. 2. At 13 secs the assumption will be well that it must have been easy. 3. No one will ask me what the goal is.

Door number 3 will be the most gut wrenching one because there is a reason for every key stroke and design element. The video is designed to humanize a brand, draw community members to the brand and have consumers engage with the brand. Even though I have espoused the importance of those approaches’ ad nauseum I am willing to bet you an Adobe suite package that at some point I will be asked why. Brand is the bread and water creatives live off and it is infused in everything we do.

The second rule of feedback is to ask yourself what did you ask to be done with the project from the very beginning? Remember, what you think is the beginning may be very different from what we think it is. If you handed us a piece of printed collateral from the competition a year ago and said hey, I really like this can we do something similar, we haven’t forgotten. If you’ve changed your mind, we don’t know. Unless you lay out exactly what you want, we are forced to guess and pull from content you’ve shared, comments you have made while trying to balance all of that with design guidelines that in the creative’s world you don’t break. Our eyes twitch when we see comic sans font used in publications so you can bet, we are mired down in the details. This is important to projects because if we’re not clear on what you want and what you want to achieve, we’re going to work hard in a vacuum of uncertainty. It’s going to cause stress and frustration and you will get a project that may not be in line with what you were envisioning -we’re great at translating -I can tell my creative director I want something crunchy and edgy that pops and she’ll produce it. That is because we speak the same language but often the requester and the creator are on different continents and no Rosetta Stone course is going to help. Please also never say “I can’t tell you what I want, but I’ll know it when I see it”. It didn’t work for the Titanic and it won’t work for the creative.

Last and most importantly, when giving feedback pause first and ask one simple question “Can you walk me through this and tell me what your vision was/is?” Trust me this one question will save time and productivity and bridge the understanding gap. Random is not a part of our lexicon. We look at a project through a different lens that moves from wide open to microscopic in a millisecond. Most creatives I know have an art background- so if it helps picture us as Bob Ross and we’re trying to show you how to make happy trees that will see more trees. Also trust that we always have an end goal, it is woven into everything we do based on the organization’s priorities. Our work never stops—whether it’s social media marketing, website design, etc. if the priority changes let us know—I’ve lost count of the number of projects my team and I have worked on only to find out that someone changed their mind and forgot to tell us. We will scrap it and start over, but we’ll be frustrated and that can be avoided entirely with open, two-way communication that is consistent.

One final thought—marketers and creatives by nature survive on the pat on the back and job well done- we don’t need a parade or mariachi band but acknowledgment of the voluminous work we put in goes a long way. We will increase our productivity ratio by at least 50%. It’s how we are wired. Bottom line we want to hit the target and if you tell us we did or tell us we didn’t in a way that is actionable we will work twice as hard to get it right. We may even go the extra mile and give the project a sparkled dust unicorn element that you didn’t even know you needed but will appreciate.

Being a unicorn isn’t easy, managing and developing unicorns isn’t easy and giving feedback to anyone isn’t always easy but it can be done in such a way to avoid breaks in productivity, wounded egos and frustration that gets in the way of the work.

The creative is going to meet you half way and wants feedback and at the end of the day remember “there's nothing wrong with having a tree as a friend (Bob Ross) or a unicorn on your team.