Breaking down creative leadership

9 Creative Director essential core traits

Being a creative leader carries great accountability and influence. When done well, it can inspire, and be the catalyst for delighted clients, fulfilled agency folk, and impactful work. That in my book is validation for creative professionals to aspire to become the very best Creative Director they can be. Believing in some guiding principles and philosophies as one moves into a leadership role is instrumental to their success.

It’s ironic and unfortunate that many agencies do not train their people for creative leadership. Diving in the deep end and developing leadership skills through the hard-knocks school of experience is the typical route. Ideally, creative leadership is honed by following the examples of mentor Creative Directors who set high aspirational standards. The reality is that leadership is also frequently cultivated by a desire to avoid replicating less-than motivational behavior of sub-par Creative Directors (who themselves are likely victims of lack of quality mentorship or training).

With the benefit of working alongside some exceptional Creative Directors throughout 3 decades of agency experience, I have developed my own leadership core traits to guide the management of award-winning creative teams, and I hope they will help you do the same.

1.

UNDERSTAND THE WHY

The creative product your team delivers should always provide impactful engagement through the most relevant messages to relevant audiences. This means always putting the audience first in everything you do. This creativity-with-purpose, user-centric philosophy requires deep insights into audience needs and motivation. This philosophy becomes your objective North Star.

Understanding the WHY puts you in the best position for the creative to engage, inform, direct, and cause action that will make a difference. Evangelize this focus to your team and all partners.

2.

BE A MASTER STORYTELLER

Your very existence as a Creative Director is reliant on your ability to create communication that makes a difference. Using absorbing storytelling to enhance the communication experience is at the crux of everything you do. It breathes life into creative ideas, making them hard to ignore.

Additionally, it is essential that you communicate confidently, with complete clarity to a variety of audiences and stakeholders in many mediums and channels. You need to actively listen, ask open-ended questions, and respectfully provide constructive feedback.

When articulated thoughtfully, these skills create partnerships, convey authority, and build credibility and trust with your stakeholders, and your audiences.

3.

BUILD AN EXCEPTIONAL TEAM

The most critical decisions you’ll make are those deciding who to hire. Talent is everything. Research your candidates, tap into your network. Build a knockout team others want to join. Turn your team itself into a recruiting tool. Do not just hire to put a butt on a seat.

Hiring is only the first step in building an amazing team. Nurture your people. Trust them to do the job they were hired to do. Let them shine. Do not suffocate them with micromanagement.

Recognize their contributions. Credit the right people. All of them! Leadership is not about you! It’s about the people you serve—your team.

Be a mentor. Provide a pathway to advance their careers. Give them the freedom to take smart risks and make mistakes to learn from. Create an environment of ongoing learning for them—and for you. Don’t stand still.

Be understanding. Don’t react. Listen. Be objective and logical. Be responsive and available for them. You are their sounding board and their support system. Care about them.

Lastly, remember that their talent is not a threat. It is a strength—for the team, for the agency, for the client—and for you. Don’t be too big to ask your team for advice and input. Encourage an uninhibited environment so they can voice different perspectives. Use their expertise and experience to everyone’s advantage, including yours.

4.

BELIEVE IN THE WORK. BELIEVE IN THE TEAM.

Be passionate about great ideas, uninhibited creativity, and the delivery of exceptional, on-strategy work. But also know when to let go when a client wants something else. Client delight is paramount.

But defend your teams. Have their backs. If you believe in their work, defend it with solid rationale. If it’s being presented, you endorsed it. Do not blast your team’s work in public. Ask questions to get feedback clarity from the client and understand their needs. Collaborate to evolve the work so all stakeholders feel ownership.

Your role is to be accountable for two objectives sometimes at odds with each other—the goal of your team’s work, and the desires of the client. How well you balance this is the crux of being an effective Creative Director.

5.

TRUST YOUR EXPERTISE, THEN BE DECISIVE

As a creative leader you are the creative subject matter expert in any room. Leverage that expertise as the situation dictates. Know when to step in and stop “design by committee.” Trust your knowledge, and your instinct.

Your team and your clients look to you to make the right decisions. Indecision and rambling will lose your team and your clients quickly. Both need you to be consistently assertive. Never fear being wrong. It is better to make a wrong decision based on experience and a strong rationale than to pussyfoot around.

Trusting one’s own expertise is also a crucial trait to instill in your team.

6.

VALUE AND FOSTER CLIENT PARTNERSHIPS

Building a strong client relationship should not be solely the responsibility of your account teams. Great Creative-Client partnerships are instrumental in producing killer work. Key to this is an open-minded collaboration and shared ownership of the work, which requires a deep-rooted trust.

Trust is built by making your clients feel important and listened to. Check in with them often. Ask them what is working well, and what isn’t. Be real with them. Share what great looks like outside of your team’s work. Take them for lunch or coffee. Earn their trust for the times when the tough decisions need to be made.

7.

BE AN EMPATHETIC BOSS

You’ve been in their shoes. Recognize that, and empathize with your team. Being a creative is not easy, with the entire world having an opinion about your work. Don’t be THAT creative lead that throws his or her title about, dictates all creative direction, and then jets when the real work is getting done. Don’t be that manager who doesn’t understand, or worse, doesn’t care, but is happy to take all the accolades for all the team’s hard work.

Don’t ask anyone to do anything you would not be prepared to do yourself. Lead by example. When necessary, be a working leader, and get into the trenches with them.

Working together does not make you a team. True teamwork takes respect, trust, and caring. When you create an environment in which a team is respected and happy, you’ll find a team that is highly motivated, high functioning, and performing at an elite level.

8.

BE THEIR CALM IN ANY STORM

Agency life will get crazy. Deadlines will get tight. Late nights and weekends will happen. Great ideas will get killed. Sickness is inevitable. People quit. Home isn’t always a bed of roses. Stress levels WILL rise.

Your team is looking to you to be their emotional safe haven. Lean on past experience to model for your team how to work through a crisis, knowing that all crises pass. Trust your intuition and heighten your emotional intelligence. Be pragmatic but understanding, objective but caring. Have a plan, take action, and make the decisions necessary to improve the situation. Don’t point fingers. Ask questions and give solutions. And when nothing else is possible, lend a shoulder to lean on.

Admit when you don’t know, and go find out or find someone who does. Admit when you are wrong. Know when to apologize. Be the adult in the room.

9.

REST=CREATIVITY

Constantly working late nights and weekends, often totaling 60-90 hours-per-week, does not spark world-class creative excellence. On the contrary, it creates churn and burn, bland cut-and-paste solutions, sloppy work, and costly mistakes.

Creativity requires fuel to stimulate original thought and creative problem solving. That fuel comes in many forms:

Read. Exercise. Travel. Watch a new movie. Go to a concert. Listen to music while watching the clouds roll by. Explore your hood or others with fresh eyes. Spend quality time with loved ones. Do nothing at all.

Rest. Fill up on life and culture, and it will inspire you. Recognize when a break is needed and unplug.

Emulating the best

There are many challenges facing creative bosses. One of the most difficult is that you cannot be all things to all people. Don’t try to be. Don’t try to be something you are not. Having some important guiding principles, while just being yourself, will enable you to be the most genuine and effective Creative Director you can be. Your teams will also reflect these attributes.

Trust and integrity are indispensable to creative teams in the era of generative AI and other streamlined options. A trusted, highly-functioning creative team will excel at creating those relatable connections that truly matter for a brand and its audience, while themselves feeling fulfilled and valued.

I have had the benefit of following the example of some exceptional creative leaders. It has prepared me for every step I have taken in my career, while also building on it along the way.

Thank you to Guy Desimini, Laura Tozzo, Rob Rogers, Lora Lukin, Brian Lefkowitz, Andrew Bartel, Diane Ohye, Roderick Boyd, Hans Kaspersetz, Robin Davenport, Jill Brody, Joe Garamella, Suzanne Goss and Takashi Yamura for being my professional beacons.