The Right Questions with James Victore
The Right Questions is designed to help you get paid to do what you love and stay sane in the process.
The Right Questions with James Victore
Episode 44: Your Boss is Afraid... of Me
If you are a stuck or frustrated creative and want to get paid to do what you love, let's talk. https://yourworkisagift.com/coaching
Ever wonder why companies talk about creativity but rarely let it flourish? I'll tell you exactly why, and it starts with fear.
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Your boss is afraid of me. That's right, I said it your boss is afraid of me. I have heard this in many forms and from many voices and I understand it. I understand it. I like to talk about dangerous ideas like creativity or freedom, or self-reliance, or or self-reliance or individuality. I get it, but I have a story to back this up. I actually have a bunch of stories to back it up. Here's one A few years ago, I was asked to speak at the annual corporate conference for a major sports brand.
Speaker 1:I won't tell you who they are, but I can tell you that their logo is a rather nice star. They wanted me to speak as their keynote speaker at their little in-house conference and told me their theme was unleashing creativity. What a perfect theme. I thought that dovetailed nicely into my own objective, which is to unleash creativity, to look under the hood, as you might say, fuel it with nitrous, take it for a spin and see what it can do, hit the road and change the world. They were going to pay me $15,000 to be the keynote speaker at the brand's conference and there was going to be a run through the night before. So I arrived in Boston in time to get set up. I gave them my visuals for my presentation, which I crafted just for them, and I got up on stage and I said, hey, you know, by the way, I'm not going to go, do you know, to my whole talk here, but I'm going to go through. I'll hit all the slides, make sure they work and hit the major points. And I went through and I said, well, here's where I'm going to talk about how we're all born wildly creative. And then here's my idea about in the particular lies, the universal. You guys know that one right. Here's where I'm gonna talk about where your gift is, where your work is a gift. Right, lovely idea. Here's where I'm gonna mention about being weird and how weird is your superpower and you need to put it in your work. You know things like that. So I finished neatly in about five or 10 minutes and was prepared to go out for a lovely steak dinner with my assistant. We had found this awesome restaurant on the way over to the auditorium.
Speaker 1:As I was getting off the stage, the creative director came to me and said, hey, can you wait here for a moment? To me and said, hey, can you wait here for a moment? The CFO and the COO want to talk to you and I thought, yeah, sure, this could go a bunch of different ways. And I waited in the darkened and empty auditorium and you know, I felt like I was being held after school in detention. That was the last time that I had had that feeling. So a few minutes later the creative director brought the CFO and the COO and the CFO said James, I don't think this talk is for us. And I was surprised and I was taken aback. But I defended myself and I said, oh, no, no, no, no, it's OK.
Speaker 1:I just last week performed a version of this at my own conference and the conference was called Take this Job and Love it and I delivered pretty much the same speech and I turned people on. I got them excited about what they do for a living. I got them excited about their jobs. I practically unleashed creativity and they said, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we get it, we understand. And they gave me my check for $15,000 and said thank you. I was a little shocked and took the check and I left and I had a lovely steak dinner with my assistant where we basically laughed through the whole fucking dinner. I am always happy to be paid not to speak.
Speaker 1:Later, actually weeks later, I heard from the creative director and he said, since they had invited their entire corporate team, including everybody in creative and branding and marketing, they felt that after hearing me, some of their people would not show up to work the next day. I think I unleashed creativity a little bit too much there for them. Like I said, I've heard this in many different forms. Too much there for them. Like I said, I've heard this in many different forms. And after speaking at conferences, people come up and say, boy, I'm glad my team wasn't here to hear that. And I feel like I'm talking to some warden at a detention facility and I am of many minds about this idea that your boss may be afraid of me, the first being any creative director or corporate chair who feels they cannot allow their team to hear certain powerful voices in fear of losing them is a fucking coward and is subconsciously or consciously aware of the dissatisfaction they themselves are breeding, or they're just obviously not treating their team well and they know they're, you know, being held captive.
Speaker 1:If someone is going to hear my voice and ideas about choice and about creative freedom and leave, then so be it. You don't need them on your team. You're just holding them hostage. It's better for both parties Then you can both be happy. Last thing you want is to maintain a crew of unsatisfied workers, of unsatisfied workers, especially unsatisfied creative workers. Listen, clients and bosses and workers these are all relationships and they have to be treated as such, like when we talk about HR, we refer to people as HR. It's not HR. They have names, they have a purpose there, they have a job. Get to know their names, get to know what drives them, why they make decisions. These are people. The people this company wanted on their team are the drones, the worker bees, the ones just happy to have a job and you can't expect to unleash creativity and not lose a few geniuses along the way People who see the shackles right and can also see the door.
Speaker 1:Here's a funny side note. I remember a sign that hung in a lovely dank bar in lower Manhattan that I often frequented when I was in art school and I was just starting out, and it read firings will continue until morale improves. I always thought that was kind of awesome. After a talk in Dallas last year, I was asked at the Q&A about how to keep morale up in an agency scenario and I said actually it's not your job to keep morale up in an agency scenario. Your people should just be fucking happy. If they're creative, they should be able to figure it out. It's your job to hire good people, hire creative people and let them do their job. If morale dips, it's because people know the secret. They know they cannot bring their A game to work. They know there's a false ceiling that you've installed in your business and there is no pizza on Friday or bring your dog to work day that is going to fix that. They know that you are lying when you say you have a creative agency, when all you do is pull hard on the reins, when all you're doing is presenting them a job and they can get a job anywhere.
Speaker 1:For me, my purpose is to be like Moses for the creative sect. My purpose is to set my people free. My purpose is to, yes, unleash creativity in you. So that is what I mean when I say your boss is afraid of me. And actually what I mean to say and here's the real truth is your boss is afraid of you. They're afraid of your creativity, they're afraid of your spirit. I love your spirit. They're afraid that you have choices. Whether you see them or not is up to you. They are afraid that you have an opinion and a voice and are dying to use it and dying to put it in your work. And you know what you are capable of Hell, you even know what your team and what your agency or corporation is capable of. But someone else is holding you back and wants to play it safe.
Speaker 1:I was having a coffee the other day with a uh, what do you? What would I call him? I guess a mid-level marketing dude from an agency. Recently. He knew of my work and he gushed over it, you know, as people generally do, and he said yeah, I want to do forward-thinking, creative work, I just don't want to be the first to do it. I applauded him and his ability to tell the truth like that, but most businesses don't allow creativity or risk until they've seen it done elsewhere. Most businesses are happy to follow trends and are very comfortable in the safety of coming in second. I get it.
Speaker 1:Business and creativity are two different fields and it's very difficult to talk about them in one sentence. Business is risk averse, business is about committees and safety and security and comfort, and creativity is about risk and innovation and taking chances. Taking chances to reach the fucking stars, to really move somebody. Those are beautiful chances. So there are bosses, coos and CFOs and all the other C-suites who are not interested in what I have to say, and those people are the ones who fear the truth. But these are not the kind of people we need to work for.
Speaker 1:All of us were born wildly creative we need to work for. All of us were born wildly creative and many of us held on to that torch through schooling, through parenting, through the teen years. We went to a creative college or a creative university. We took a quote, unquote creative job, just to find out a year or so later that it's actually just a job. It's not creative. That leads to creative frustration. That leads to creative constipation and stress. And job-related stress, even in the creative industry, is a real thing. It is a fucking plague and I am damn serious when I say this. That can create horrible things within you, bottling up your creativity. That can create obesity and disease and chronic illness.
Speaker 1:And if you find yourself in that situation, remember you always have a choice. Freedom is something you take for yourself. Nobody owns you. Listen, there is always a way out and never work for assholes. It's up to you to unleash creativity in yourself. Don't wait for me, or hell call me, drop me a line. Drop me a line. I'll unleash it Because I believe in you even when you don't. I'm James Victoria. This is the Right Questions. Thank you so much for showing up. I love you. Tell your friends to listen to us. If you want help, literally just drop me a line, go to my website, hit the little pink button in the upper right-hand corner and let's book a call. You guys, I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you and I'll talk to you later. Bye.