“Most creative directors don’t have any management training”

Creative Career Conundrums is a weekly advice column from If You Could Jobs. Each week their selected panel of professionals from the creative industry answers your burning career questions to help you navigate the creative journey.

This week’s question:

“I work for a small, family-owned, mostly B2B business. I started as social media specialist but became creative director after getting very bored with only doing social media management. So now I am in charge of creating graphics, videos, photos and copy for social media, website, and newsletter use. While I have the title of creative director, I don’t actually direct anyone, because our team is so small. I’m worried if I ever change jobs, it will look good that I was creative director but I won't actually have any skills in directing others!

How can I improve my ability to direct people as a creative director and sole creative on my team?”

Creative directors aren’t just in charge of teams. You are the director of all the creative output, steering the direction of the work. You hold the overall vision. Of course there is a managerial element to the role. Some CD’s have multiple teams below them, some have just one designer – it’s what makes the job title quite difficult to define. There’s such a wide range of meaning depending on the business you’re in.

So you’re right to be questioning how your role would translate to somewhere else.

Most CDs don’t have any management training. As creatives work their way up through the ranks, the focus is on honing your skill. Your eye for finding and making brilliant work. Even as a design director, you’re very rarely the person the team reports to. For most people, the first time they truly experience leading a team is once they’re sat in that seat.

The fact you have already identified this could be a weakness in your skillset puts you above a lot of CDs. Sadly, there is an assumption that just because you’re a great creative, you’ll make a great manager. Which is rarely the case. People learn on the job, which can have a pretty long lasting impact on the teams they’re training on.

So you can get ahead of that now. You can absolutely improve your leadership skills without having a full design team. A few things you could try –

• Finding junior talent that you can spend time with. Join a mentorship program, start to hone your ability to listen. Learn how to build a professional relationship with someone.
• Introduce a placement programme into the business. They don’t need to be design grads, local schools are always looking to give students a taste of the working world. Make sure they report to you. Test drive your ability to set expectations for their time with you. Learn how to set them tasks that are clear.
• There are so many brilliant books, talks, podcasts about this. A couple I love; Do Lead by Les McKeown helps you figure out your natural leadership style. I’ve watched this old but brilliant TED talk by Itay Talgam countless times, he uses orchestras & conductors as metaphors for management.
• You could even join your local scout hut. Leading a room of 11 year olds through an activity would teach you more about leadership than running an entire creative project.

By the time you’re running a team of your own, you’ll know what kind of leader you want to be. The learning won’t end there, but you’ll have given yourself a headstart.

In answering your creative career conundrums we realise that some issues need expert support, so we’ve collated a list of additional resources that can support you across things that might arise at work.

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