Discovered a promising junior designer on my team is basically copy-and-pasting from other creatives rather than generating original ideas. It's a tough conversation to have, but I feel obligated to address it before it becomes a bigger issue. How do you start a mentorship conversation that might feel more like an accusation?

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Start by saying that you understand their desire to come up with great work and perhaps the pressure of that is causing them to “pull” from too many sources. And you don’t except them to be the top creative as much as you just want them to learn how to be a better version of themselves. They won’t nail it every time but they will get better and grow. Basically take the pressure off of their fear of failure. I assume this person is feeling very insecure and incapable. But as a Jr. creative, they should be given some level of permission to fail as long as they are trying.

Young creatives sometimes imitate until they gain experience and discover their own voice.

Maybe in creative reviews or when reviewing their ideas you can say “this feels too similar to X”

Also evaluate if it’s an issue of laziness or if they’re just incapable of this given their experience? Maybe they just need to get their 10k hours in?

Encourage them to generate LOTS of ideas. Tell them you want to see more experimentation in their work, and that quantity often leads to uncovering more original insights.

Don’t make it a conversation of just words. Get some proof, put it in front of them and ask them to explain why the work is similar. Go from there. It’ll open up the conversation and I promise they’ll never do it again.

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