Creativity and innovation are delicate abstractions wrapped up in the peculiarities of an employee’s specific skill, personal interests, confidence levels, relationships, and many other vagaries of human nature. When managers need a straightforward task completed, they can just turn to the most relevant employee and issue a clear instruction. But new idea generation doesn’t work this way. Simply demanding that employees be more innovative won’t bring out their inner brilliance.

So what will? How can you encourage your employees to make spontaneous connections and generate truly profitable—and truly new—ideas? You can start by not standing in their way. Try these tips and let the productive brainstorming and employee creativity begin.

1. Don’t threaten them. Rarely do great new concepts ever come together under the possibility of punishment, the chance of humiliation, or the fear of being fired. If you want real ideas, not tired retreads of the same old material, you’ll need to find a way to step back.

2. Don’t dictate how the work gets done. Some working styles bring out the best in 80 percent of your employees. But these tactics won’t work for the remaining 20 percent. Ask yourself which matters more—the steps taken to complete the project, or the end result? If, for example, you’ve decided that the best ideas are generated when employees are required to work in teams, you’ll get great results from your office extroverts. But you’ll be limiting the contributions of introverts who work better alone.

3. Lay off the deadlines. High pressure deadlines may help some employees focus and commit to the task at hand, but more often, deadlines only push employees to cut corners and repurpose ideas and methods that have already been tested and proven. If time is of the essence, use incentives, not punishments, to encourage speed.

4. Watch your language and gestures. If you find yourself subtly interrupting employees when they speak, saying no to ideas before giving them serious thought, or dismissing the same employees over and over out of simple habit, stop doing this. Employees should feel supported and free to share their thoughts and suggestions, even the ones that are not yet fully formed. If you shush them too often, they’ll keep their thoughts to themselves (and they may not even realize they’re doing it.)

For more ideas on how to get out of the way and let your employees act, think, create, and make suggestions without fear of failure, reach out to the innovative Texas staffing pros at Expert.