It DOES Matter Who Gets the Credit

There's an old saying that says there's no limit to the amount of good you can do if you don't care who gets the credit. That's true to a point, but don't use that as an excuse to take credit away from your Creatives.

A friend of mine used to work for a well known fashion designer. My friend was a very talented designer himself and was the source of some very nice clothes (this wasn't just him talking, I did see the sketches myself). But the boss' attitude was that his name was on the clothes, so as far as anyone was concerned, he was the only one doing the designing. The other designers, as far as the world knew, didn't exist.

Now it may seem like, for branding purposes, such an approach would be useful. If it’s the name on the tag, or on the firm, that draws customers, then the public persona may require one person’s face rather than an ensemble. But your people deserve credit at least in professional circles, and you should find a way to balance that with your profit-making requirements.

Sure, you can keep your Creatives out of the public eye (though honestly, does anyone really think any big designer does all the creative work by him or herself??), but they should get the professional recognition they deserve from their peers. This is awfully important for their morale and motivation. Your talented people want to be recognized for their abilities, maybe not necessarily by customers but certainly by others in their field, both in their own firm and elsewhere. This is a pretty natural feeling and if you ignore it you run the risk of them bailing out on you when you need them. So you should at least acknowledge them within your field rather than pretending they don’t exist.

Taking the credit yourself puts your firm at risk by helping create a bad reputation for you. Creative firms tend to see a high turnover rate, and as word gets out about your style, the more talented Creatives are likely to avoid you. Since the talented Creatives are the ones you want, this is bad news for your company, and since you‘ve insisted on taking all credit for yourself, any substandard work done by less-talented employees reflects on you personally..

Your employees need that professional recognition as well if they’re going to advance in their field. Chances are they won’t be staying with you for 40 years and will be looking for opportunities for greater responsibility and new challenges elsewhere. Denying their contributions hurts their ability to do that, and frankly, that’s just unfair on your part.

Taking credit for others’ work is the sign of a big ego or a weak character (not that those two are mutually exclusive -- it could be a sign of both). Strong leaders have enough confidence in themselves that they aren’t worried about being overshadowed by their Creatives. Weak leaders try to keep oters from seeing what it really takes for them to be successful. So ask yourself: which one are you?