We teach craft. But we rarely teach careers.

It was the Beatles who famously honed their craft playing the club circuit in Hamburg. Malcolm Gladwell calls this kind of deliberate practice the “10,000-hour rule” - the idea that mastery takes time and experience. I remember working at Wieden in Amsterdam and thinking: this is what that feels like. A real apprenticeship in creative brand building.

I’m not a creative, but I have been a creative leader, running agencies. And from that experience - and now as a leadership coach often working with creatives - I’ve seen what really makes careers thrive. Good agencies absolutely prioritise developing creative talent. And that’s essential.

But it’s just the beginning.

So here’s some guidance on skills to help entry-level creatives can build a good creative career - and why this matters just as much to the companies they work for as it does to the individuals.

Building strong relationships

Being a creative is a highly sociable job. You interact with clients, production partners, account teams, strategists. So invest in developing relationships - across your department, other departments and beyond your agency walls.

This takes time. Relationships are based on trust and experience. Agency life can give you a real sense of being in the trenches together, which helps. But go beyond that and make the time to get to know people (and yes, the post-work pub drinks is an excellent forum for this as it reduces hierarchy).

When you hit a tough patch - and you will - those relationships will often be the people who put you right.

For organisations, strong relationships mean better collaboration and fewer internal frictions. Ultimately, that leads to stronger work.

Learning to handle feedback (and give it well)

Creative work inevitably involves critique, disagreement and difficult conversations. Sometimes feedback is well handled. Sometimes it’s brutal. Often the most brutal version is when your boss doesn’t give feedback at all - and you’re left wondering what you did wrong.

There are two sides to this coin. Agencies need to support CDs and ECDs to give feedback well (many of them hate difficult conversations). And creatives need to learn how to handle feedback well.

This is a hugely valuable skill for any creative and one that makes a massive difference to the quality of the work. A good framework of for how to digest, ask questions and not take it personally is enormously valuable.

When it’s mastered, agencies get faster progress from idea to solution without unnecessary conflict. In my opinion, healthy creative debate is the holy grail of an agency’s culture.

Behaving well under pressure

Pressure is inevitable. How people behave during it often defines their reputation.Some people find it easier than others, but it’s a skill that can be learned. How we handle ourselves in the difficult moments is often what shapes a career - and colleagues remember it.

This includes how you treat the people around you, as well as how you handle yourself. It really is that Kipling sentiment about keeping your head when others are losing theirs.

For organisations, teams that manage pressure well tend to work better together and sustain strong creative work over time.

Advocating for your development

Early-career creatives are often unsure how to ask for opportunities, feedback or progression. Learning to articulate your value and ambitions builds confidence and clarity about the next step in your career. On the surface this can look like it serves the individual more than the organisation (teaching creatives how to ask for a pay rise - why would we do that?). But actually what you want to teach is how to have transparent conversations about progression that benefit both parties.

When people know how to advocate for themselves, organisations benefit from more engaged and motivated teams. We’ve all had the great employee who left and blindsided their department because nobody really knew what they wanted.

Conclusion

Creative industries will always celebrate talent and rightly so.

But the careers that endure, and the cultures that produce the best work, are rarely built on talent alone.

They’re built on the everyday human skills of working well with others: relationships, communication, resilience and self-awareness.

And the wonderful thing is, they can all be taught.

Abi Findlay is a Partner at Grace & Co, and is a tutor on the IPA Creative Essentials Certificate - an eight-week qualification programme for early-career creatives beginning in April 2026.

The opinions expressed here are those of the authors and were submitted in accordance with the IPA terms and conditions regarding the uploading and contribution of content to the IPA newsletters, IPA website, or other IPA media, and should not be interpreted as representing the opinion of the IPA.