Leading Creatives

Leadership is tough.  No matter the situation, it’s always a challenge.  But every challenge is different, and it’s important to know how to work a certain situation.  You can do a great job leading bureaucrats, or leading assembly line workers, but then totally tube the opportunity to lead a group of creative people.

“Leaders are made, not born,” is a cliché, but it exists for a reason: because it’s true.  Learning how to lead can happen in a classroom, but learning how to lead well takes time, patience, and, most of all, practice. You’re not likely to get it right the first time.  And if you don’t give it a lot of thought, you’re not likely to get it right ever.

Leading creative people carries its own set of requirements.  It’s not necessarily harder or easier than other leadership situations, it’s just different.  And it’s not just the people…it’s also the environment in which you work.  Leadership in a design firm or a hair salon is different from running a small strategic planning group in a large manufacturing company, or a “Red Team” in a military organization.  Rather than trying to create a one-size-fits-all approach to leadership, it’s better to have a set of tools that you, the leader, can use as needed.  I’m going to introduce you to scenarios and examples, not so you can memorize the specific techniques and use them later but so you can understand why things are important and how to decide what skills to use.

During my time in the government, most of which was spent in “creative” positions, I had some pretty good leaders who knew what I needed to bring success to my organization.  Unfortunately, I also had the other kind of leader, and plenty of ‘em…the bad ones far outnumbered the good.  To me, that was always pretty sad, since not only were we responsible for using taxpayer money wisely, we also wanted to get and keep good people, and that’s hard when your boss doesn’t know how to best use your talents.  We would lose a lot of bright people just when they were getting enough experience to be really great for our agency – at the same time, they were getting enough experience to know this wasn’t were they wanted to work.  We see the same thing in private firms, nonprofits, academia…people who are well-suited to lead in other situations are not only ineffective but actually damaging when they move up or move in and start leading poorly.

One of the ways to develop good leadership skills is to start working on them early, while you’re still a follower.  Rather than just saying “well, if I was running things…,” start thinking about what you would really do and why.  It’s easy, when we’re in lower-level positions, to come up with great ideas, because we aren’t constrained by the realities than constrain our bosses.  Learn all you can about leadership in general, and your field in particular, early on.  Think of your entry-level job as an educational experience and you’ll be better prepared later on when you move up.

With all of that in mind, I decided to start this blog.  I don’t know if anyone will read it, but for those who do, I hope it helps.  You won’t just be making life better for your employees and your firm…you’ll be making it better for yourself, too.

Enjoy.