Tag: teamwork | Artisan Creative

Celebrating Margaret Jung’s 28th year with Artisan Creative

Saturday, March 11th, 2023|

March marks the 28th anniversary of our senior account manager, Margaret Jung, with Artisan Creative. It is a momentous occasion and cause for celebration. Working for the same company for over a quarter of a century is quite the feat, especially in this day and age.

Those of you who have been fortunate to meet Margaret, know that she enters every room with the biggest smile, loudest hello, and is filled with joy and enthusiasm.

Working for a company whose values are aligned with hers, the opportunity to create a difference in people’s lives and to build long-lasting relationships is what motivates her. Her energy, enthusiasm, and drive come down to one phrase: creating relationships based on trust.

She is a consummate business development professional, highly knowledgeable in the world of creative and marketing recruitment, and has a first-rate understanding of the design marketplace.

Margaret shares 28 lessons learned along the way to stay strong over the past 28 years.

Stay positive
Be open to change
Be realistic
Work with and hire the right people–it goes a long way
Know you have a team to back you up
Support your team
Believe in the core values of your company and share the same philosophy with your team
Be accountable to yourself and the team
Be self-aware
Know your capabilities
Keep yourself motivated
Have a boss who gives you constant encouragement and advice
Lead by example
Have the mindset of being your own boss (especially in a remote business model like Artisan Creative’s)
Have good communication skills with both internal and external stakeholders
Understand that things aren’t always black and white
Compromise when needed
Don’t be afraid of having difficult conversations
Sometimes you need to just pick up the phone to get your point across (emails and/or text can get lost in translation)
Follow-up, follow-up, follow-up…
Control what you can control and what you can’t–move on
First impressions are lasting impressions
Stress can be managed. It’s not the end of the world
Be true to yourself, know your limitations and stick with it
Having the 3D’s- drive, determination and discipline
Having Empathy for others especially since we are in the “people” business
Be good to yourself – take breaks and do what makes you happy- life is not always about “work”.
Finally, life is so much better when you are laughing.

If you need help with recruitment to hire a position on your team, reach out to Margaret. You’ll see what we mean.

Thank you, Margaret, for an amazing 28 years. Here’s to creating even more impact and new relationships in 2023 and beyond.

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Planning a Remote Holiday Party

Wednesday, December 8th, 2021|

Every holiday season, our Senior Account Manager, has hosted a festive luncheon for our team during the holidays. She has done so for 24 years in a row, except for 2020! This year we had hoped to come together again person, however opted for another virtual gathering instead.

And, while we couldn’t be in person, we laughed, exchanged gifts, and ate together (via zoom). Our team from across the U.S. was able to join in, and a few of our pets made unexpected zoom appearances too.

Although it was different, it was great fun and we connected from the heart, evaluated 2021, and put plans in place for 2022. Additionally,

We reviewed our Vision Boards with one another and shared our personal and professional accomplishments for the year, and reviewed our goals for the new year.
Secret Santa gift exchange took place via Elfster complete with oohs and aahs and zoom screenshots to capture the festivities.
We pre-ordered and prepared lunch and eat together.
We shared our gratitude and wrapped up our gathering.

This year continues to be filled with new learnings and wonderful, unexpected surprises. This party was no exception.

After all, our core value of creating trusted relationships means connecting and creating memories, and what better way to connect than to celebrate one another!

Wishing you and yours a happy holiday season and a lively virtual gathering.

We hope you’ve enjoyed 598th a.blog.

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5 Tips for Active Listening on Zoom

Wednesday, March 24th, 2021|

Yes, we are in a Zoom (insert Microsoft teams, Google Meet, etc.) world and distractions are aplenty. Whether you are interviewing or conducting a team meeting, it’s imperative to be present and connect.

Between notifications for email and Slack, phone calls, LinkedIn posts, tweets, and so on, digital communication is at an all-time high and, this all-time high requires true listening. Today active listening is a skill that too often gets lost in a sea of technological noise.

We can all improve our active listening skills in a few easy steps and in the process build better relationships, resolve conflicts, and understand issues, whether in the workplace or elsewhere.

Here are 5 tips to help develop our active listening skills while on Zoom:

Quiet Your Mind. Quieting the mind before a meeting is critical for being present without thinking ahead to say next or trying to problem solve. This is key to active listening! Before a meeting starts, turn off other notifications, close your eyes, and take three deeps breaths. Turn on Zoom and you are ready to go.
Maintain eye contact. Have the speaker on speaker view. If it’s distracting to see yourself, hide your own view. When possible stand while you are conducting your meeting. You’ll find that your voice may project better and you’ll be more present.
Be empathetic. The soul of active listening is empathy. If the person you’re listening to is sad, happy, fearful, or angry in your conversation, place yourself in their shoes. Repeat back what they just said. Use statements such as “Let me make sure I understand or let me make sure I heard you correctly”. If you don’t understand something, ask for clarity.
Stay Curious and stay out of judgment. Ask questions for clarity vs. for problem-solving.
Look for nonverbal cues. Their cadence, tone of voice, and body language can offer a lot of information. Look for small signs of nervousness, enthusiasm, or anxiety in their mannerisms, gestures, and posture to help determine how they really feel.

The digital meeting space is here to stay. Even when we can be together again in person, many companies have shifted to a remote environment. These 5 tips can help develop our active listening skills while on Zoom and create greater connections.

We hope you’ve enjoyed the 582nd issue of our weekly a.blog.

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Giving Thanks 2019

Wednesday, November 27th, 2019|

We give thanks to our clients and talent, and to our a.team for 23 years of building a more creative world together. Happy Thanksgiving.

Here at Artisan Creative, we have a #gratitude Slack channel where throughout the year our a.team shares what they are grateful for daily. Everything from bike rides and nature walks to home remodels and healthy families, we recognize every day how very fortunate we are in so many ways.

Here are some snippets of shares on Slack from the past year:

Grateful for health.
Grateful for family.
Grateful for laughter.
Grateful for loving relationships with friends and family.
Grateful for enriching experiences.
Grateful for launching our artisan podcast on creativity, inspiration, and determination.
Grateful for our virtual office and not commuting—celebrating 10 years of working remotely.
Grateful for a strong body and mind.
Grateful for learning to wake up to life at a deeper level.
Grateful for new friendships.
Grateful for old friendships.
Grateful for sunrises and sunsets.
Grateful for being able to give back and helping others.
Grateful for our 4-legged furry friends.
Grateful for air travel that makes it possible to see family and friends who are far away.
Grateful for babies sleeping through the night.
Grateful for positive attitudes.
Grateful for the bathroom remodel being done.
Grateful for “Find My Phone”!
Grateful for self-care.
Grateful for new beginnings.
Grateful for the amazing a.team!
Grateful for 23 years of Artisan Creative.
Grateful for our clients and talents.
Grateful for new additions to our team this year.
Grateful for our focus on life-work integration.
Grateful for living and being true to our core values.
Grateful for continual learning and growth.
Grateful for knowing and understanding our strengths.
Grateful for mindfulness.
Grateful for the entrepreneurial journey.
Grateful for a happy life!

Wishing you and yours a very happy Thanksgiving.
The artisan a.team

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Creative Team-Building Activities

Wednesday, November 20th, 2019|

In business, as in life, so much comes down to effective communication, coordination, and collaboration. When teams work together to solve problems in a fun environment, they can bond, connect, and learn to trust each other in ways that will help them navigate through difficult challenges in the future.

This explains the perennial popularity of team-building activities. Team-building exercises can take place inside or outside the office. They can be competitive and cooperative. Some are more fun and creatively galvanizing than others.

If you’re leading a creative team through a project or you’re a manager supervising creative professionals, it’s important for you to decide what team-building activities will best help your team to coalesce, cooperate, and put their best qualities into play.

If you’re looking for unusual team-building exercises to fire up the imaginations and problem-solving skills of your team, here are a few we suggest.

Escape Rooms

Escape room games have exploded in popularity in the last few years. They give your team a chance to work in concert and breakthrough to freedom, generally through solving a series of puzzles. As team-building exercises for professionals, escape rooms can reveal hidden leadership potential, teach colleagues new ways to support each other under pressure, and reveal issues that may need attention, all in an atmosphere leavened by storytelling, humor, and fun. Winning an escape room game can be a strong bonding experience, and even if you lose, you will gain valuable insights into how you can work better together.

Painting Parties

A painting party can give your team a chance to get moving, get their hands dirty, work their imaginative muscles, and share fun new aspects of their personalities, all in an environment emphasizing creativity, conviviality, and joyful expression. Kristine Griffith, owner of Paint ‘n Sip, a mobile paint-party service based in Los Angeles, describes a painting party as “a relaxed environment and a non-competitive activity that releases stress and facilitates conversation on a level above workplace politics. Bonding ensues.”

Storytelling Games

When you encourage your teams to tell stories about themselves and their work, it can help them develop a sense of structure, better appreciate their shared values and mission, and see their challenges by fresh and more useful lights. Such “inside games” draw on skills ranging from recalling shared memories to strategizing and mapmaking, and can incorporate the tools of brainstorming, authentic relationship-building, and improvisational comedy. You could even make a deliverable, such as a parody music video. Such games can be great standalone team-building activities as well as wonderful ways to break the ice before meetings.

At Artisan Creative, we have many ways to support managers in helping their teams reach their fullest potential. Contact Artisan today to get started.

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Managing a Remote Team

Wednesday, April 10th, 2019|

Remote work is on the rise. Taking advantage of the increasingly robust connective and collaborative capabilities of digital technology has been statistically shown to reduce employee stress, improve employee engagement, and save time and money for companies.

It just requires an ever-so-slightly modified style of management.

Digital nomads will play increasingly important roles in the future of business. If you’re a manager, it’s time to prepare yourself to help foster success for employees and contractors who work mostly or entirely off-site. Here are some key tips for managing a happy and productive remote team.

Start With Onboarding

From your onboarding and training processes onward, make sure your expectations are clear and that remote work best practices are baked into the culture of your business and enthusiastically embraced and understood by your team.

Facilitate Transparency

When employers, managers, and professional collaborators can’t hold regular in-person meetings, clear systems for accountability and transparency are crucial. Make it easy for remote team members to track and report on their work and to reach out to others for help as soon as they need it.

Use Technology and Stay Connected

Even if different members of your team live in different time zones, they need to be able to communicate with each other, as everyone must feel connected. For example, Zoom and slack can help you hold weekly video meetings, even if they’re simply status check-ins. Use the most appropriate project management software to track responsibilities and accomplishments and to enhance off-site collaboration. Build a strong company culture, encourage your team to support each other and take pride in what they do together.

Hire People You Can Trust, and Trust Them

The people who are best suited to remote work are generally highly motivated self-starters. They take responsibility without too much guidance or external discipline. They communicate clearly, sincerely, and consistently.

Take extra care to only bring in those who can contribute their best efforts to your team without peer pressure, micromanagement, and constant attention. Then, let them work. When managing a remote team, instead of being a taskmaster or a disciplinarian, be free to serve as a resource and a positive example of how people can work closely together without the need for geographic proximity, cubicles, or Casual Fridays.

Artisan Creative runs on the efforts of a tightly bonded and highly successful remote team. We have been a remote workforce since 2009 and understand better than most, the unique challenges of managing a remote team and how the right approach can set you up for success. We’d love to share our expertise with you. Contact Artisan Creative today to learn more.

We hope you’ve enjoyed our 516th a.blog.

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Happy Holidays

Monday, December 24th, 2018|

Wishing you the very best this holiday season.

Thank you for a busy, productive and connected 2018.

Here’s to more of the same in 2019.

The Artisan Creative a.team

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Working with Non-Millennials

Wednesday, May 16th, 2018|

In the last few decades technology has changed the world of business rapidly and profoundly. This rate of change continues to accelerate. To overcome the widening gap in knowledge and to be able to collaborate more effectively, it is essential for members of different generations to understand each other in a spirit of teamwork, empathy, and mutual respect.

With their range of experiences, Baby Boomers, Generation X-ers, and Millennials can often generate more useful and exciting ideas together. Cross-generational diversity and cross-collaboration can become a great organizational strength and lead to expanded creatvity and new solutions to solving challenges.

We’ve explored some of the cultural attitudes that make members of the Millennial generation unique and valuable coworkers. Today, we’ll share tips for Millennials who strive to work more effectively with seasoned teammates.

Respect Their Independence and Set Expectations

Members of Generation X, in particular, are often distinguished by a rebellious, skeptical, and iconoclastic spirit. They grew up mostly before the advent of smartphone communications and always-on social networking. Compared to Millennials, they tend to be motivated less by community and more by a sense of individuality, as do many Boomers.

“When working with an X-er, don’t be surprised or offended if they choose to work alone,” writes Mira Zaslove in Fortune . She adds, “X-ers tend to be hands-off, low face-time managers. So when working for an X-er, ask them to clearly define their expectations. When you do receive a compliment from an X-er, you’ve done a great job.”

Help Them Understand New Technologies and Trends

Many Millennial workers are digital natives, having had access to fast-paced technologies and the internet their entire lives. Thus, it may be difficult for them to appreciate how wondrous and strange these innovations can seem to those who did not always have them, or who witnessed their rapid proliferation firsthand from the 1980s through today.

When working with colleagues on new technology, “never say, ‘This is so easy,'” writes Ann Friedman of The Los Angeles Times . “Recognize that baby boomers have a lot of fear and anger about technology, and tread gently.”

It is important to appreciate how glorious our new technological breakthroughs really are. Demonstrating the utility of a new application or device to someone who doesn’t regularly use it may even renew your own sense of delight.

It All Comes Down to Communication

When communication is optimized, almost any group of people can come together to pursue shared goals. Working to achieve that understanding is how we mine the greatest value from our work and our lives.

Appreciating and working with our differences requires well-honed active listening skills, along with an appreciation for different learning styles and preferences in communication and collaboration.

When we respect our shared and individual goals and work together to continuously improve our company cultures, our differences make us much stronger through our diverstiy.

At Artisan Creative, our experience has shown us how great teams are built among individuals from all walks of life. Contact us today to take your career or your business to the next level.

We hope you enjoy our 471st a.blog.

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4 Tips for Being a Better Co-Worker

Wednesday, February 21st, 2018|

Whether you’re working on-site or remotely, as part of an agency or in-house team, it is increasingly important to work more respectfully and effectively with others. Good team players are in demand because they get results, are collaborative, and easy to work with. Moreover, maintaining a positive attitude toward those around you especially through challenging times will ripple out into all areas of your life.

Here are four easy to be a better coworker in 2018 and beyond.

1. Communication

As interdependent creatures, our lives require a collaborative effort. In order to contribute and do work they can take pride in, your coworkers must be heard, and know that they are heard.

Practice active listening techniques and asking questions to make sure everyone on your team has ample opportunity to shine and to add their secret sauce to the recipe. This will allow you to work more efficiently, more effectively, and will give you a chance to see what the team can accomplish when everyone has a chance to offer their best.

2. Appreciation

Everyone deserves equal respect, and we all bring different skills, talents, and passions to a team. When you praise and encourage coworkers where they excel, as well as share constructive feedback where appropriate, you have the potential to help and discover the unique greatness of each individual you work with.

When you offer appreciation, be specific. It’s nice to be told, “you’re awesome.” It’s more useful and meaningful to know what particular things that have done well. For example, you could say, ” I really appreciate the way you communicate your ideas, as it opens a new perspective on how to approach this particular challenge. What other thoughts do you have on this?”

3. Credit

None of us live in a vacuum. We are each the products of our environments and of the relationships we foster with those around us. Everything we create in life is the result of an endless series of interactions and collaborations.

Therefore, when you achieve a goal or accomplish something remarkable, always share the credit with those who helped you along the way. This will show others that you think in terms of the group, which will inspire them to contribute to more success in the future.

Share your credit, and others will share your responsibility.

4. Support

Many of us spend as much time with our coworkers as we do with our friends and families. Therefore, even if you’re not at the center of a colleague’s life, it is important to pay attention to what’s going on with them and to offer emotional support as much as you can.

If a coworker needs to step back or take time off for their physical and emotional health, let them know you respect their decision to care for themselves, and offer to pick up the slack in whatever ways are needed.

Be mindful of the humanity of everyone you work with, whether colleagues, clients, customers, or the people who serve you in any capacity – especially when it’s difficult! By sowing goodwill, and having empathy you’ll accomplish more, get more of what you really want, and experience greater peace of mind.

At Artisan Creative, we strive to help professionals make the most of their careers and lives and help teams thrive. Contact us today to find your dream team.

We hope you’ve enjoyed the 462nd issue of our a.blog.

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3 Benefits of Working Remotely

Wednesday, January 31st, 2018|

Although some work challenges may seem best tackled by teams coming together in person, with each leap forward in virtual networking technology, colleagues in far-flung locations can come together just as productively in a virtual setting. The continuous rapid pace of improvement in this area makes it more efficient and more rewarding for creative professionals to do their work remotely.

According to The New York Times, 43% of employed Americans do at least some of their work off-site. Those who have embraced remote work, and the lifestyle that comes with it, have discovered significant benefits.

The Artisan Creative a.team has been working remotely since 2009 and we’d like to share some of those benefits with you:

More Productivity

To work remotely is to relinquish stressful and time-consuming rush-hour commutes and eliminate workplace distractions. Remote workers can create routines, schedules, and environments that are best suited to their own preferences and patterns, which often result in getting more done, in less time, with less hassle than would be required to complete the same tasks in an office.

To work well without constant oversight requires some discipline and responsibility, and for those who excel at it, remote work can be an enormous boon to their careers, improve their results, and stimulate a new work ethic.

More Freedom

For those with the discipline and independence to live a remote work-based lifestyle, traditional borders and living restrictions have disappeared.

By being adept at working off-site, building their networks, and collaborating well virtually, professionals no longer need to relocate to prohibitively expensive cities to advance their careers. Some even choose to become “digital nomads” and travel as they work, seeing the world while pursuing creative careers on their laptops and mobile devices.

Even if the corporate headquarters is across town, having the liberty to work from home, a co-working space, or a coffee shop can open new lifestyle options for those who wish to spend more time with their friends and families or simply have the space to create.

More Ease

Off-site work used to be much more of a challenge and a commitment for all parties involved. Now, with so many effective options, much of the past friction has been eliminated.

As mentioned earlier, the technology that drives document-sharing, teleconferences, virtual meetings, and location-independent digital collaboration has advanced tremendously, and it gets better every day.

There may come a time in the not-so-distant future when the majority of teams do most of their work and collaboration remotely. Already, the increase of remote work is popular with the rising Millennial Generation and represents a wider range of lifestyle choices in a highly networked global society.

Contact Artisan Creative to prepare for the future of work and learn how to thrive in a changing creative economy.

We hope you’ve enjoyed the 460th issue of our weekly a.blog.

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