I believe building and running a design or branding agency is in many ways like leading a professional sports team. Both are team oriented, employ highly skilled, motivated individuals working under constant pressure to ‘win’ against similarly constructed competitors.
There are numerous styles of leadership that owners, founders, and senior executives can employee when guiding their business or organization. Including styles such as Transactional, Servant, Coaching and my personal favorite, Transformational.
Transformational leaders inspire and motivate their teams by articulating a compelling vision and fostering a sense of purpose for the team. They encourage innovation, and personal growth, by creating a positive and dynamic work environment. Most of all they live out their stated values and commitment in visible and tangible behaviors.
To extend the sports analogy and further my point, here’s a recent example of transformational leadership and accountability from the NBA.
If you follow pro basketball, you’re probably aware that that the Milwaukee Bucks were favored to win the league title last season. Instead, they were summarily bounced from the playoffs in the first round at the hands of the Miami Heat.
Bucks’ superstar, Giannis Antetokounmpo’s response after the Bucks’ defeat in the playoffs offers an invaluable lesson in leadership. Rather than succumbing to disappointment or defining failure solely by short-term victories, Giannis emphasized a broader perspective on success—one that fosters continuous learning and growth.
As creative leaders, we can draw inspiration from Giannis’ approach and shift our leadership style towards a long-term, sustainable viewpoint. Instead of the traditional hierarchical, command and control model, I believe creative leaders should focus on broader, visionary aspects like adherence to high standards, commitment to company values, openness to collaboration, and fostering mutual respect among colleagues. By emphasizing these factors, leaders can create an environment that nurtures individual growth and teamwork, ultimately leading to greater resilience in the face of challenges.
Incorporating Giannis’ outlook into our leadership style cultivates a culture of continuous improvement, where managers and team members embrace challenges as opportunities for growth rather than as failures. By encouraging an atmosphere of trust and promoting a focus on personal development, we empower our team to harness their potential and excel in their creative endeavors.
Just as Giannis’ response resonated with a wide audience, adopting this transformational leadership approach can reverberate throughout our organization and extend its impact beyond the realm of sports. By guiding our team members with a focus on character, collaboration, and learning, we set the stage for long-term success in the competitive world of design and branding.
It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum.
It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout. The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters, as opposed to using ‘Content here, content here’, making it look like readable English. Many desktop publishing packages and web page editors now use Lorem Ipsum as their default model text, and a search for ‘lorem ipsum’ will uncover many web sites still in their infancy. Various versions have evolved over the years, sometimes by accident, sometimes on purpose (injected humour and the like).