Team Archives - Emotive Brand

Emotive Design Is Felt in the Gut

Posted on May 24, 2018 by Chris Ames

This week, we had the pleasure of adding Beth Abrahamson as a Senior Designer to our team. She is a multidisciplinary graphic designer whose practice challenges the distinction between art and design. Constantly shifting in and out of different mediums – collage, ceramics, photography, drawing – she’s an expert at imagining how these forms can live in the digital world. With an MFA in Design from California College of the Arts, Beth has recently worked with AirBnB, Southern Exposure, San Francisco Art Institute, and many others. We sat down with Beth to discuss her work, the importance of collaboration, and the definition of emotive design.

Tell us a bit about your background.

I came here seven years ago to attend the San Francisco Art Institute for a design and technology program. After graduating from California College of the Arts, I hopped between freelancing at design studios, companies in-house, and building my own client base.

What brings you back to a studio environment?

I really value the ability to see so many different types of environments. It’s so interesting to be able to be a fly on the wall. Every place is different, and sometimes as a freelancer, you’re treated as an outsider. I came here because I was seeking the kind of collaboration and diversity you only get with a studio.

What advice would you give to studios on how to best integrate freelancers so they feel embraced?

It sounds simple, but all anyone wants is to be treated as part of the team. Fostering a healthy team dynamic is super important, and it can make all the difference. You want a place where everyone brings a different skillset, knows their role, and has a seat at the table. There’s such a big difference between “sitting in close proximity to other people” and actually collaborating. As a creative person, I thrive on variety – in projects, clients, and mindsets. With a studio, the sum is greater than the parts.

At Emotive Brand, strategy drives everything. Have you had experience working with strategists before?

It’s so crucial for design, and it’s an area I really want to learn more about. Good design always has to be backed up by good strategy. I value the environment that Bella and Tracy have created here. Both their authenticity and their approach. It’s very rare to have this female-led dynamic, and whether or not you want to admit it, it makes a difference. Just in the approach to empathy, emotional intelligence, and communication. It’s about achieving that perfect balance of everyone having a role and everyone feeling like their voice is heard.

How would you describe your approach to design?

I am a firm believer in the concept defining the aesthetics, and not the other way around. It’s about the process. I take a lot of inspiration from the world around me – from physical things, from mundane forms, or things that may seem mundane at first glance. A big part of my process has been about translating ideas across mediums. Not just working on the computer but working by hand – building things, cutting things. All of that informs what then becomes the digital graphic. With a lot of my work, you can feel the artist’s hand. I try to create a simplicity and accessibility.

Outside of the 9-to-5, what are you working on right now?

I’ve been teaching myself ceramics for the last two years and I’m totally obsessed. There’s a very strong relationship to graphic design. Right now, I’m working on vessels that have different geometric forms as handles. Those forms are coming from some 2D work that I’ve done, and vice versa. An idea will often move from a blind contour drawing, to a screen print, to a ceramic shape.

How would you define emotive design?

For me, emotive design is felt in the gut. It inspires others, draws them in. It’s about translating passion from the maker to the viewer – and in that transfer of ideas and feeling, there is a deep connection. When it works well, that connection – between people or brands – is unbreakable.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco brand strategy and design agency.

What Makes a Great Strategist?

Posted on October 19, 2017 by Tracy Lloyd

A Team of Strategists

Lots of businesses use the title of strategist for roles within their organization. For us at Emotive Brand, we have a very clear and defined view of what makes a good brand strategist. We carefully curate our project teams of strategists with a focus on selecting the skill sets and experience that are best suited for our clients and our projects.

The Need for a Great Strategist

In today’s hyper competitive, interconnected, always shifting world, businesses need great strategists to really drive their business and brand forward.

When recruiting and hiring strategists at our agency, there are certain qualities we look for.

1.Information masters

First off, successful strategists are talented and powerful listeners. In order to get to the heart of business problems and help align leadership teams around an impactful strategy, strategists need to be great listeners and also know who to listen to. Great strategists know how to get the information they need using many different frameworks and formats from people first-hand.

Effective strategists understand that listening is sometimes about reading between the lines, absorbing what people say, what they don’t say, and what their body language communicates. In strategy projects, clients are often so close to the problems, they can’t really see what is happening. Through listening, strategists gain a keen understanding of a business, its current situation, where it needs to go, and why.

But great strategists don’t just listen. They are able to distill the information gathered from listening into powerful insights and ideas. It’s not just about processing information. A strategist can actually take that information and do something with it – moving it to a different, more enlightened place by reframing what was heard and delivering that back in a different and evolved way.

Great strategists have the simultaneous ability to see both the big picture and all the little details that might lead to big insights. They are able to constantly adjust and adapt to new information. The ability to balance many different inputs and ideas and then be able to make adjustments so that everything fits together is critical.

This means effective strategists consistently develop and test hypothesis. It’s all about gathering the right types of information and proving or disproving before moving on.

2. Business experts

This is two-fold. First, being a strategist requires business experience. Like many other professions, strategy is a learning process that develops when fostered. And business acumen in different industries is often what turns a good strategist into great strategist. So as people work with different clients, solve unique problems, notice patterns, develop skills, and gather information, their strategic minds become honed and they are able to understand more and more what it takes to be great.

Second, great strategists must become experts in whatever business their client is in no matter how complicated or how long it takes to reach that level of understanding.

They dig deep to understand a business at the highest level – grasping the ins and outs of product architecture, a complicated sales approach, a complex ecosystem…they have to deeply understand it all. It must be as if they’ve worked for that business and industry for years.

Great strategists also have to build confidence that they are knowledgeable and fully understand the client’s business. Once that trust is earned, client’s are able to be led to new levels of thinking. They know that until they are confident and knowledgeable, they can’t be impactful facilitators. It’s necessary to make their clients confident that they bring an extensive mastery to the table.

3. Strategy as a journey

Great strategists always have a strategy for the strategy. They know their ideas have to be bulletproof. When creating a strategy, they are constantly challenging their own thinking. They know everyone is going to look to poke a hole in it. And if they don’t fill in the hole, someone else will.

In the end, after having heard the input of everyone from the start, deeply listening to each voice, and distilling what everyone has said, great strategists always go back and gut test. Where is the client going to get hung up? Successful strategists have strategically accounted for these places and can protect them and move the strategy forward.

4. Strategists in the world at large

Great strategists delight in the world and its interconnectivity. They draw on the cues of everything that’s happening within it. This is why the most talented strategist are often veracious readers who immerse in a wide net of areas. Curiosity is key here. And great strategists are always well-rounded, holistic thinkers.

It’s super important that strategists keep current with trends and forces – beyond just the category they are working in, but also, within the world at large. Great strategists can’t resort to old patterns of thinking or outdated models. They evolve as the world evolves and business shifts.

Successful strategy isn’t possible unless it’s up to speed and embedded in what’s contextually happening in the competitive world the strategy exists in and the larger world as well. So successful strategists can draw insights from everywhere.

5. Trusted advisors and enthusiastic coaches

One of our favorite parallels to draw at EB is between brand strategy and coaching. As such, great strategists often act as coaches. They understand that not every client is the same – some need to move fast, others prefer distance over speed. They help clients break out of outdated behaviors and practices that are holding them back, adapt to new skills, shift, increase performance, and gain competitive edge. Great strategists adapt to the objectives of the client and create a customize path to transformation.

In order to move a strategy forward, strategists have to establish trust. Oftentimes, this means going out of their way for clients and being willing to do a little something extra to show their support and dedication to the project. Empathy is also key here. Great strategists gain client’s confidence every step of the way and understand what it takes to make the client feel confident enough to bring the strategy to life.

Greatness in Action

In order to have maximum impact, a strategist has to be able to consume, assimilate, and distill lots of disparate information into clear and powerful concepts and ideas. They also have to be able to express that concept with compelling language and build a powerful case to explain, defend, and generate excitement around their strategy. This is a no small task.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco brand strategy and design agency.

Building the Perfect Team? Is it Even Possible?

Posted on April 27, 2017 by Tracy Lloyd

A recent New York Times Magazine article, “What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team,” went viral and became one of the most emailed and widely shared stories for days – for good reason, in our opinion. Building a good team is a difficult task for most companies, organizations, agencies, classrooms, and families alike. And building the perfect team? That often feels impossible.

So why do some groups thrive? Why do others falter? Is there a key to team success? These were the questions Google set out to answer. Here’s our spin on what Google discovered.

Teams = Teams

The best teams are teams and not just collections of individuals. A team is bigger than the sum of its part – at least it should be.

Oftentimes, when people are placed in a team, they enter the group with already well-established boundaries and preconceived ideas about hierarchy, roles, and regulations. When this happens, the team focuses more on meeting deadlines and goals and their interactions become less collaborative. Of course, deadlines and goals are important for any organization, but the purpose of a team is much more significant. Teams should be focused on collaborating in pursuit of creativity and building new ideas. The best teams are the most collaborative ones.

So, try starting a team effort with a different mindset: collaborative, respectful, and honest. Think of your teammates as people who are on your side working towards a common good. Try to take advantage of their strengths, opinions, and experiences that each individual brings to the table, instead of trying to compete with one another, outperform another teammate, or simply please your co-workers or leader.

Empathy and Emotional Intelligence Matter

In their research, Google unearthed what separates good teams from dysfunctional ones, and the answer surprised them. It’s all about how teammates treat each other while working together.

When team members treat each other with respect and exhibit empathy and compassion, the overall intelligence of the team increases. When people are socially sensitive – for example, when they notice subtle signs of how others are feeling, such as tone of voice, facial cues, and body language – teams excel, producing better results.

In team situations, it’s important to take time to set aside your personal or professional motivations. Instead, notice the other people in the room. How are your co-workers feeling? How are you making them feel? How can you be more empathetic to their needs and desires? This kind of unselfish, empathetic mindset can help move your team and overall business forward as a whole.

Psychological Safety and Emotional Sharing

We’ve been saying this for years, but it was gratifying to read what Google wrote about this additional finding : feelings matter. A lot. Feeling safe, also known as psychological safety, matters more to building a successful team than any other factor – more than clear goals or establishing a culture of dependency. Feeling safe matters the most.

Which makes sense. You can’t be open, receptive, or even engaged if you’re fearful about your role in the team and/or how you’re being perceived.

The challenge is that psychological safety isn’t easily measured or implemented. There’s no simple formula for ensuring it, but communication, empathy, and connectedness definitely help to foster it.

Google discovered one easy and effective tactic for establishing and fostering psychological safety: emotional sharing. When people share something personal and human, they create authentic human bonds. In any human relationship, professional or personal, when emotional discussions become the norm (frequent, comfortable), the relationship becomes more successful.

So don’t just jump into the subject of the meeting. Start a meeting by asking how people are doing or feeling. Share something about yourself and show a little vulnerability. Be human. You are human. We all are. Why should that be different when you’re working with a team?

Experience > Optimization

Most business goals tend to focus on optimization. But Google’s research finds that team success actually hinges upon the experience of the team effort itself, not on optimizing team productivity.

How do people feel about the project? How do they feel about the future? Do clients trust their agencies? Do employees feel safe enough to share opinions and thoughts equally with peers? Lots of aspects of a business can be optimized, but a person’s feelings most definitely cannot. If you really want to succeed, don’t try to optimize teamwork; humanize it. By approaching team building in this way, you will create a naturally optimized environment.

All in all, it makes sense that an organization as performance-driven and innovative as Google would make such a strong effort to understand how teams work and how to make them work better. But the surprising takeaway is that the latest technology and careful planning don’t necessarily accelerate successful teamwork. The thing to do – and this fits in well with our experience at Emotive Brand – is to be human and emotive and learn to enjoy the experience.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco brand strategy firm.

Hello!

Tag: Team