When I was asked to write this article, I did a lot of thinking about the transition to being a leader. It’s a significant shift – suddenly your job isn’t to do your job; it’s to empower other people to carry out their work.

I started at Creative HQ in January 2019. I was super excited to be joining a team of people who were doing such cool things. I was also absolutely terrified. You see, Creative HQ marked the first time I was going to take on a long-term management role that wasn’t a short-term contract or done as part of being a project manager. I spent my summer reading books and countless Medium articles on how to be a good leader. I made lists of qualities I liked in leaders from my previous workplaces; I’d determined I didn’t need to wear heels (thank god). My motto became “you manage things, you lead people” and I wanted to figure out how to be a good leader, not just another manager. I’m sure you see where this is going… I discovered that there wasn’t much I could do to be a good leader except… be a leader.

There are some things that can make this transition a bit easier and it’s these things that I thought I’d share with you today.

Learn to let go

Honestly one of the hardest things about being a manager? Realising that I’m no longer responsible for DOING the job, I’m responsible for the PEOPLE doing the job. Don’t get me wrong; I love this role. I love helping people achieve cool things, and I love empowering people to do the work I know they can do. But it’s also really hard to sit back when you see someone doing something in a way you wouldn’t do it. It’s a damn hard thing letting go, but it’s so necessary otherwise you’re never going to be able to do the things you need to be doing as a manager.

Having a long-term plan is a necessity 

Confession: I have never written a running budget in my life. And suddenly I was given a figure, and I needed to make it last all year without blowing it in the first quarter. And then before I can write a budget, I need to think up the strategy for the year that’s going to inform our activities. And then, you’ve got to figure out what your team is going to be able to work on over the course of the year and factor in when external events are happening. My top tip? Use Google! There are heaps of templates and ideas on how to make these documents. And also, ask people! I’ve asked so many questions and have found the majority of individuals are incredibly generous with their time.

You’re going to get it wrong, sometimes

Becoming a manager is an exhilarating time. You’ve got the power to effect change, make an impact on an organisation and guide a team towards bigger and better things. But, you are going to make mistakes, and that is 100% ok. Being a great leader is something I need to work towards every single day – and I am not there yet! I’m abrupt, I don’t always have enough patience, and I can go on the defensive in situations where I don’t need to be defensive. These are all things I’m working on and knowing that I’m going to get things wrong in my journey to being a great leader gives me comfort that I’ll get there one day.

You need to set goals for your team, and yourself 

A big part of management is working with your team to develop their goals and while you’re doing this, it’s important to keep your eyes on your own goals as well. I’ve become a proponent of having a three-year plan – mostly because five is way too many, but three seems just about right. And knowing how my current role fits in with my plans inspires me to be a better manager.

Leadership is about empowerment 

To me, good leadership is about empowering people to be the best version of themselves. You should be trying to build confidence to do their job the best they can. I think one of the easiest ways we can do that is acknowledgement. Acknowledge that they’re doing something well, whether it’s just to them or their manager or even in public. I try to do this on a regular basis, regardless of whether they are on my team or not (we all work for the same company after all).

Another part of empowerment is knowing what your team wants to achieve. I do a quarterly check-in on each team member’s Professional Development Plan which outlines what the person wants to do, how they’re going to do it and how Creative HQ can help them. I find that knowing what a person wants to achieve means that I can delegate projects that I know they’ll enjoy and be enough of a stretch that it will feel like an achievement when they pull it off. I think being a good leader is about having faith in your team that they can achieve their goals.

There’s always someone you can ask for help

I’m exceptionally fortunate to have a manager who is an outstanding leader (so great we interviewed him about it) and knowing that I can chat with him anytime has made such a difference to my work life. What I’ve learned over the past eight months is that being a manager is the easy bit. It’s being a leader that is the hard bit. Ultimately though, it’s also the most rewarding.

Catching up with Stefan Korn is always an enjoyable experience. Even the most basic meetings become an exercise in leadership development when you are watching a leader effectively lead. The Creative HQ team is lucky enough to have these experiences on a regular basis – Stefan is, after all, our Chief Executive. He is also someone who has a huge impact on the innovation ecosystem – being on the board of Callaghan Innovation and involved in many startups himself.

At its core, Creative HQ is about helping people and this statement could be equally applied to Stefan’s leadership style. He believes in helping people reach their greatness – “bringing out in people the brilliance that is already there is what motivates me the most, seeing people do things they never thought they could do.”  A good leader should be comfortable staying behind the scenes when they need to – being a good leader, in Stefan’s world, is often subtle and doesn’t mean being the loudest person in the room.

Leadership as facilitation is a theme that runs throughout our conversation. Being able to see a person’s strengths and encourage their “self-efficacy” through guided mastery is an essential part of Stefan’s role. “Knowing when to give someone a gentle nudge, support or a challenge is the art of leadership – being able to help others gain the confidence to do what they really want to do. I love the concept of creative leadership – which doesn’t mean leaders being more creative – but helping others develop the confidence to be who they want to be, to purposefully design their own realities and to be in charge of how their lives unfold”.

For Stefan, following Kendrick Lamar’s advice, part of being a leader, is the ability to listen and be humble. An early experience of this was during Stefan’s internship at Hewlett Packard. “Part of the Hewlett Packard culture was that every morning you’d have tea and coffee together, so all staff would be near the cafeteria. At the time, Hewlett Packard had around ten regional offices and one central office for the whole of Germany – there were thousands of people working at HP, and the manager of our local office got nominated to take over the entire company in Germany. So we’re having coffee, and this guy says “well you’ve probably heard that I’ve been asked to take on the MD job for Germany. What advice would you give me for my new role?”. “I thought this was such a great and subtle practice of effective leadership.”

Stefan’s faith in the people that make up Creative HQ has seen the team grow in leaps and bounds over the past four years. Since Stefan took over as CEO in September 2013, the Creative HQ team has added around 20 staff members,  had over 200 companies through our programmes and have achieved record income from innovation services. “The first couple of years were really about making the organisation highly functional and something everyone can feel proud of, Now we are looking at growth and expansion.” Leading a company through these sorts of shifts isn’t simple, but Stefan believes in creating a culture where people can thrive and build. “Leaders are in a position where they need to take responsibility when things don’t go according to plan and being genuine in these circumstances substantially improves company culture. In my book, company culture is 100% a direct reflection of the person leading the organisation. Every leader sets the culture of their organisation – some do it consciously and with purpose.”

Creative HQ practices a high performance, ‘no-blame’ culture. Sometimes things don’t work out, and there’s a lot we can learn from those mistakes. It’s important to Stefan that the team knows it is okay for people to escalate when they need to and knowing that their leader has their back. In highly functional leadership there is no room for egos – “blamestorming” which often becomes the subject of meetings when things go wrong is a total waste of time. Acceptance, calmness, resolve and a pragmatic approach to doing what makes the most sense in any given situation is the way to deal with issues and problems which occur inevitably in any organisation and team.  “I like situational leadership – it’s not always one person making the calls, but whoever is in the best position to do so.” It’s with this practice that everyone in our team can step into leadership roles. Working at Creative HQ is an inspiring and rewarding experience. A major part of this is the fact that our leader has mastered the art of knowing when we “need gentle encouragement, a big challenge or extra support when things are hard.”

Stefan embraces the motto “great leaders create other great leaders,” and it is his quiet faith in everyone at Creative HQ that allows them to unleash their inner leader.