Being a member of a large video production team can be extremely helpful in improving your skills, if you do two things:

1. Be willing to learn new things.

2. Be willing to accept critical feedback about your work.

If you do these two things, you can really elevate the quality of your work, because members of a healthy video production team really push each other to grow.

But there’s an ugly downside to this reality. If a business is so large and is structured so that the process for approving video content has to go through several levels before getting the green light, you might feel your creativity levels draining.

Why?

Because, when you constantly have to seek the approval of others before a video goes out the door, and you have to rely on others to tell you what is “good,” you can slowly lose confidence in yourself and in your own creative instincts. Then, it becomes harder for you to make your own decisions, because you’ve been conditioned to seek out the approval of others.

So what can be done about it?

The most important thing you can do in this situation is exercise your creative muscles outside of work. You have to produce content just for you, whether it’s a narrative film project, documentary, YouTube channel, travelogue, stock footage portfolio… just get out there and create something where the only person you have to answer to is yourself.

A more drastic approach would be to seek out another job opportunity. It might be with a smaller production house where bureaucratic red tape isn’t a big problem, or you might consider going out on your own as a full time freelancer. But if you do, here are a few things to consider first.

Have you ever had experiences at work when you felt like your creativity was slowly being drained? How did you handle it? Leave your thoughts in the Comments section.