Teaching to learn: the benefits of building a mentorship culture.

It was the summer of 2019, what feels like a lifetime ago now.  I was having lunch on the patio of Le Select Bistro and my advertising cup was full. I was feeling particularly lucky that day, on two fronts.  For one, I was sitting across from one of the industry’s most heralded and awarded Creative Directors and leaders: Nancy Vonk.  And two, I had managed to convince my boss to invest in a presentation and leadership workshop for my team, to be run by Nancy's company SWIM.

I hung on her every word as we discussed the state of the ad industry, a conversation which inevitably led to the topic of leadership, mentorship and the importance of creative coaching. And of course, why there was such a dire need for it. I had a whole creative department desperate for it. And Nancy had established a very successful business dispensing it.

It’s a sad reality for many creative leaders in our industry. While they may be celebrated writers, art directors and designers who have honed their craft for years, when it comes to management and leadership skills, many, if not most, are making it up as they go along. We find ourselves ascending, and in some cases being totally thrust into, roles of creative leaders that we’ve been told our entire careers are true markers of  creative success, and we’re suddenly running teams, departments and even agencies, without any training or experience on the actual managing part of the job. It’s like giving someone the keys to a car without ever getting their driver’s license! Anyone in charge of managing people knows what a delicate, challenging and perplexing job it is 99% of the time. It truly is more art than science and the rules seem to always be changing. Essentially, a completely different job than what we’ve been training for our entire careers.

Why is that?

Why are we not spending just as much time practicing giving feedback as we do cracking a creative brief?

Developing a team growth mindset

5 years after that lunch with Nancy, I’m sad to report that things haven’t gotten any better. In fact, arguably they are worse. For the past 4 years, we’ve enjoyed the comfort of zoom calls instead of sitting in the discomfort of difficult in-person conversations. We have creatives that are 2-3 years into their WFH careers yet having barely met or interacted with their colleagues IRL. The learning by osmosis and organic mentorship that happens in an office when you’re surrounded by people more senior than you, observing, admiring, copying - are experiences that have been robbed from these young new creatives. Sadly, most don’t even realize how behind they are as a result.  So many insist they’re more productive working from home. And the truth is, they don’t know what they don’t know.

At the same time, tight margins, a shaky economy and many independent agencies surviving project to project, means there’s little incentive and nary a budget to invest in coaching sessions and organizational leadership training. Everyone just wants to keep it in-house and is just hoping employees ‘learn on the job’ as they go . But I’ll say it again - we don’t know what we don’t know.

During the pandemic, I decided to go back to school. But not to study. To teach. I started instructing at School of Design at GBC. What started as a few guest lecturing stints turned into an academic side hustle. To be completely transparent, I had an underlying motive. While I’d like to think of myself as a strong presenter of creative work, I’ve always been a little terrified of standing up in front of crowds and having to think on my feet and field questions. I saw lecturing in front of a large crowd for 3 hours straight as just the kind of daunting challenge I needed to get over my discomfort of public speaking. I’ve loved meeting new students and hearing their perspective on the world of design and advertising. While sometimes it's hectic juggling my day job with my new side hustle, it’s been incredibly fulfilling. But the biggest and most surprising benefit of teaching others has been the  discovery of how much I have learned in the process myself. And not just the public speaking part. I’ve been able to cement concepts, gain clarity, and improve my coaching skills significantly in that time. I’ve become a stronger creative and leader by teaching others how to be better creatives and leaders.

There’s a name for this - It’s called the protege effect. Teaching, pretending to teach, or preparing to teach helps a person learn and consolidate that same information better than if they were just learning it for themselves.

Creating leaders at every level

In his recent book Hidden Potential, renowned organization psychologist Adam Grant notes “teaching others can build competence. But it’s coaching others that elevates our confidence.” By helping encourage and motivate others to overcome challenges and obstacles, we often build up our own motivation and personal grit. We essentially become more confident in our ability to overcome challenges after helping others do the same.

Which brings me back to this idea of young creatives needing more mentorship. It’s more important than ever to help them make up the time they lost in the pandemic - to become confident, skilled and truly contributing members of creative departments. So many are still playing catch up. While it’s certainly the job of creative leaders like myself to continue to mentor their teams, we need to think bigger and more ambitiously: how can we empower that kind of mentorship across the entire creative department? The entire agency?  The entire industry?

We need to build cascading models of mentorship - a mentorship ladder, if you will. Instead of this role of mentorship being put on managers and leaders who are already saddled with so much other managerial responsibility, we can bring others in to help, and grow themselves in the process. The mentor/mentee relationship doesn’t have to be that of a senior mentoring a junior. There’s no reason that a junior creative cannot mentor a slightly more junior creative. After all, mentorship is not about having 10 years on your mentee, it’s the experience and knowledge shared that is of value. Any experience is worthwhile. I’d even argue that a smaller experience gap makes the mentor more relatable and empathetic.

Building culture

I suspect that building strong mentorship cultures will also lead to stronger agency cultures. Because culture is not about mandating a return to the office or plying people with free beer and pizza (though who doesn’t love free food?!) It’s about building community and having a shared purpose. Mentorship develops both. And both mentor and mentee become better and more motivated employees as a result of it.

I was having a 1:1 with one of our new hires, a recent grad. We've paired them with another young creative, and they expressed just how valuable and helpful this mentorship has been, arguably more valuable than the one with their more senior creatives and direct managers. Whether being the mentor or the mentee, I can already see that both have benefitted immensely from the experience! Their friendship, their work, and our staff culture are better for it.

Saying mentorship is important is nothing new. It’s well proven and studied.  What I do think we need to do better and more of is to mandate developing mentorship and leadership across all levels of our organizations, especially in creative departments, at the most junior level. These are skills everyone needs to start building at the beginning of their careers, not when they finally get to add a ‘creative director’ title to their LinkedIn profile. We need to trust that our young creatives, while still having a lot to learn, already have a lot to teach others. The notion and value of mentorship at any level cannot be overstated. It doesn’t just help accelerate onboarding: I believe it helps develop creativity itself.

To this day, I lament the fact that I never had a mentor early in my career. Other than my various art director partners, I was never assigned a ‘buddy’ or given dedicated time to mentor or be mentored. Whatever I have learned I've had to do on my own - reading, seeking out, or …teaching it to others. I’m still working on being a better mentor, creative director and leader. Working on being more empathetic, clearer in giving direction, more useful in my feedback. And of course, trying to find that seemingly elusive balance of giving my team the autonomy they crave and deserve, and the support they want and still need. I also know I still have a lot to learn. Just wish I had started earlier.