As A Leader, You Have To Make Enough Space And Time for Reflection And Creativity

Scott Dadich, CEO and founder of Godfrey Dadich Partners, shares his key leadership lessons, including what he believes is the hardest part of leadership. This interview is part of our Art of Leading interview series with The ExCo Group‘s Adam Bryant.

Reimer: What is your approach to being a leader in a creative business so that you get the best work out of people?

Dadich: I’ve found that I can have the biggest impact at what I call the five percent level. And that a five percent improvement in a work product can make a huge difference. I love surrounding myself with A players. When you do that, and they deliver A-quality work, then I have the chance to provide that last little turn of the screw or ask that one last question or provoke one last change that gets it into that A-plus territory. That’s been my guiding principle. If I feel like I have to focus on 20 percent of the work, then there’s something off with the system—or I’m overreaching in terms of my involvement in a creative product.

I also am constantly reminded of the importance of making enough space and time for reflection and creativity for myself. You can’t be governed by a meeting schedule or a production framework because you need those moments when creativity can happen. I had an amazing boss at Condé Nast who looked at my schedule and said to me, “You’re in meetings all day, but meetings are not going to help us get to where we need to go. Meetings are not ‘work.’ That’s not where you’re expected to lead.”

Bryant: What have you learned about giving feedback that is direct yet respectful of people’s work?

Dadich: There were many years of failure in doing that early on when I was too harsh and too direct. Where I’ve found a bit more comfort and a bit more success is in a more curious feedback posture—saying, for example, “Let’s back up a second. How did we get here? What decisions were made to lead us to this moment? Why is the story 3,000 words instead of 5,000? Why is this red instead of blue?” Often, that conversation can lead to more probing or direct lines of feedback to say, “If I were to go back and think about that again, I might have come at this a different way.” And that discussion might lead to people changing their opinions.

Often, that approach is from a place of genuine curiosity because, if I am in that five percent framework that I mentioned earlier, then I haven’t been around for every decision. I haven’t been the one pushing buttons and making key decisions in the early stages of the process. Sometimes, with that fresh perspective, you can say, “Coming to this cold, I don’t understand what we’re trying to get at here.”

Reimer: If we had met you earlier in life, would we have seen signs of a future CEO?

Dadich: There’s not a lot that would have indicated that I would be in the position I am in today. I was good at math and science in high school, and I was fortunate to have been offered an engineering scholarship at the University of Texas. But I always had an affinity for creativity as a kid, including building model cars and redesigning album art to make mixtape covers. It took a series of completely fortuitous moments to provide a path to do more creative work.

I struggled as a freshman at the University of Texas. I grew up in Lubbock, Texas, and went to school with about 300 people in my year. But suddenly, I was in classes of 1,000 people. I was probably also young developmentally, having grown up in a fairly small town, so I gave up my scholarship, moved in with my best friend from high school, and transferred to Texas Tech for general studies.

I was on my own and making ends meet. My roommate had a job at a bagel store and told me I should join him because they were looking for a baker. I could work the graveyard shift to pay for rent and school and then go to classes in the afternoon. When I was there, I learned that one of the owners had hired a sign painter to do the menu boards behind the big counter. I said, “Whatever you’re going to pay that sign painter, I’ll do it for half, and I’ll do it tonight.”

She took me up on it. I was good at lettering and drawing, and I stayed up all night and did the menu boards. The next morning, one of our regular customers—a woman named Sonia—saw them and said, “These are great. Who did these?” The owner introduced her to me, and she gave me her card and said, “I’m an art director at the local ad agency. I started as a sign painter, and you’ve got some talent. You should come see me.”

I didn’t even know what an art director was when she gave me an internship. Pretty soon, they hired me as a junior designer, and about a year later, I was made an art director and eventually ran the biggest account at the agency. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about the role I’m in, the chance Sonia took on me, or the generosity she extended to me.

Bryant: How do you hire? What questions do you ask when you are interviewing candidates?

Dadich: If someone’s interviewing with me, they’ve probably been through ten or more interviews with colleagues, so I’m less worried about technical skill. I’m much more interested in their ability to be adaptable and in their ability to tell a story—to frame their personal context in a way that’s interesting, digestible, and meaningful to me.

In the interview, I typically only ask two questions. The first is, “Tell me your story. What led to us sitting here together today?” That can yield an answer that is 32 minutes long, six minutes, or 30 seconds, or it can totally flummox people. The ability to navigate that challenge right at the top of our conversation tells me a lot about somebody.

Then, I ask them to tie their story and journey into how they understand the role they might step into here. That provides visibility into why they’ve been interested in this role and what work they’ve done to understand our business. That ends up being the bulk of the conversation.

The inventiveness and quick-on-your-feet responses required for those two questions end up being all I really need to understand somebody’s context for the job. From there, we can go into other specifics, and there might be nine different tributaries that emerge in the interview. But I find that those two questions really kick off the discussion with the right framework.

Reimer: What do you consider the hardest part of leadership?

Dadich: Setting conditions for the leaders in your organization to do the best work of their lives is the hardest part of a job like this. I feel lucky to have so many colleagues who I’ve worked with for 10, 15, or even 20 years, and we can come together and create an outcome that wouldn’t have been possible if we were going it alone. That idea of “making with” and not “making for” is powerful to me. That’s something that requires daily consciousness and labor and attention and feedback, and sometimes some very uncomfortable conversations with very direct feedback loops—both received and given.

I’m kind of a sensitive person. I’m an introvert. It’s hard sometimes to really be direct in those kinds of contexts. It’s easy to provide glowing feedback and to coach people and say, “You did an amazing job there!” It’s a lot harder to create a system where honesty, candor, and trust are the things that keep people in their chairs and keep people loyal—rewarding behaviors to foster the longevity that I think we all seek in our professional lives.

This interview with Scott Dadich, is part of our Art of Leading interview series with The ExCo Group‘s Adam Bryant.

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