A search on Amazon shows 62,000+ books on leadership but almost nothing to help creative team leaders build and sustain a creative environment. Creativity and innovation can be delicate and emotionally fraught processes. Leadership theories are helpful, but what do you do when your star designer suddenly starts mailing it in? Or a project team is frozen in infighting? Or one of your designers just can't find their footing in a new project? When you got your big promotion for being an amazing designer, no one told you that you needed an entirely new skill set. Sink or swim, baby. For this session, Sarah B. Nelson gets practical on the topic of creative leadership. From vision development to team alignment, from bottom-up empowerment to top-down intervention, Sarah will inspire you with practical ideas to motivate your team and rouse them to greatness. She will draw on her extensive experience leading creative teams at Adaptive Path and Hot Studio—and inform the discussion with research and interviews from organizational psychologists, experienced managers, and successful creative leaders.

1. creative and effective leadership
in design environments
Sarah B. Nelson, Hot Studio

2. effective creative leadership
Sarah B. Nelson, Hot Studio

3. on being “creative”

4. “The frightening and most difficult thing about
being what someone calls a ‘creative person’ is
that you have absolutely no idea where any of
your thoughts come from, and you have no idea
where they’re going to come from tomorrow.”
— from Art and Copy

5. what’s your job?

6. “The boss's unstated job is to go and get
the pizza for his/her people.”
— John Maeda, Twitter, Feb 24th, 2011

10. to start, something concrete

11. Sean creative lead Kristy PM John UX LEad
Goals Goals Goals
1 1 1
2 2 2
3 3 3
FEARS FEARS FEARS
1 1 1
2 2 2
3 3 3
EXPECTATIONS EXPECTATIONS EXPECTATIONS
1 1 1
2 2 2
3 3 3

12. Sean creative lead
Goals
1 Add a new e-commerce piece to my portfolio
2 To increase our experience with research projects
3 Try out a new analysis technique for our research
FEARS
1 That I won’t be able to spend enough time with the team
2 that the client’s expectations are unreasonable
3 That the project is underscoped
EXPECTATIONS
1 Of Sarah: That she is as accessible as possible
2 of the team: That people communicate honestly with each other
3 of SaRAH: that she has the team’s back

13. just because you wrote it on the board
doesn’t mean its true

14. emotional literacy

15. “Emotional Literacy is made up of ‘the ability to
understand your emotions, the ability to listen to
others and empathise with their emotions, and
the ability to express emotions productively. To be
emotionally literate is to be able to handle
emotions in a way that improves your personal
power and improves the quality of life around
you. Emotional literacy improves relationships,
creates loving possibilities between people, makes
co-operative work possible, and facilitates the
feeling of community.”
— Charles Steiner

16. 1. Self-awareness – the ability to read one's
emotions and recognize their impact while using
gut feelings to guide decisions.
2. Self-management – involves controlling one's
emotions and impulses and adapting to changing
circumstances.
3. Social awareness – the ability to sense,
understand, and react to others' emotions while
comprehending social networks.
4. Relationship management – the ability to
inspire, influence, and develop others while
managing conflict.
— Daniel Goleman

17. know yourself

18. Fear

19. Hungry
Angry
Lonely
Tired

20. now, some common situations
killing an idea...
team conflict
attitude adjustment
leading with question

21. killing an idea...

22. Imagine you have a designer who has an idea that
she is really attached to. She's been talking about
the idea, sharing it with everyone. She stayed up
all night working on it. She's passionate and
engaged - just what you want! The trouble is, you
are pretty sure that the idea just isn't going to fly
with the client or key stakeholder. The rest of your
team knows it, too. How would you handle this
situation?

23. “I would try to advocate for the designer if
possible. Depending on the situation, I would see
if there was a way we could a) pitch it to the client
in addition to other more viable options or b) do
an internal design critique and refine the idea as a
learning experience and a means to deliver a more
viable option to the client.”
— creative leader survey participant

24. “I would want that leader to be completely
honest. I don't want to get smoke blown up my
you-know-what. If it isn't working I want to know
why, and if parts of that thinking could be re-
purposed into something else.”
— practitioner survey participant

25. “I think it's worthwhile to let someone sell why
their idea is so awesome. But if the team/
leadership doesn't buy into it the idea probably
won't be successful for the team. You need some
degree of team buy-in.”
— practitioner survey participant

26. team conflict...

27. Now, imagine you have two brilliant people, an
engineer and a designer, who are constantly at
odds. Each are talented, each have done great
work in the past, but together their work is
grinding to a standstill. The whole project is at
risk. Assuming you have no other people to
substitute, how would you handle this situation?

28. “Talk to them separately and try to understand
the root cause of the issue. If that doesn't work
then I would bring them into a room together
call-out the issue and ask them what they feel
could be done to get the project back on track
and moving forward.”
— creative leader survey participant

29. “I would want the creative leader to acknowledge
it openly (in the internal team) and honestly. No
side conversations, we should be brought
together to hash it out, with the lead as a
supportive mediator, and ultimately, the decider.”
— practitioner survey participant

30. “Take us out for drinks.”
— practitioner survey participant

31. “The creative leader in this situation should help
the team make a decision. This decision will likely
mean that someone isn't happy, but if the entire
team makes a decision together, it's much harder
to hold a grudge against a particular person.”
— practitioner survey participant

32. adjusting an attitude...

33. What excited you When this project is When this project is
about this project? finished, it will... finished, I will...
The chance change the
to learn way the Have a new
something client does piece for my
new business portfolio
Establish a Have tried
Working with new model prototyping
John and for e- with
Kristy commerce Fireworks
An Bring in
opportunity more have helped
to work on interesting launch a
a project w/ work for us new product
Impact

34. one last *awesome* technique...

35. leading with questions

36. why?
what were you thinking here?
tell me more about that...
say it again but use different words
how can I help you?
what do you need from me?

37. your questions?
sarah.nelson@hotstudio.com
www.hotstudio.com
sarah.b.nelson@gmail.com
www.sarahbnelson.com
@sarahbeee
sarahbnelson.tumblr.com