Bossing It: Why a Strong Company Culture is Crucial for Rob Pitman
Rob Pitman is EP and MD at Tinderflint. Rob started his career in broadcast TV before setting up Tinderflint in 2010 as one of three founders. He has worked across a huge range of creative campaigns for global brands and agencies covering a wide range of sectors from automotive to food and charity and comedy to fashion and lifestyle.
LBB> What was your first experience of leadership?
Rob> I’d say that my first real experience of leadership was when we initially brought staff into the business. Tinderflint’s primary 18 months or so was a creative vehicle for us as founders but as the workloads increased and budgets grew we needed support.
Hiring, onboarding and bringing those initial people along with us is one of my fondest memories of the early days of TF and a massive eye opener for me. It’s always messiest the first time you do it but I probably learnt more about working with people and teams in that period than at any other point in my career.
LBB> How did you figure out what kind of leader you wanted to be – or what kind of leader you didn’t want to be?
Rob> This is really easy, I had been set the worst possible example of how to lead by my previous boss.
His view of where the value is in a company, what drives businesses forward, how to inspire/engage/trust/develop people was so far removed from my own that it was the perfect example of what not to do. He had an amazing team of people, working incredibly hard and it was nothing to him, almost as if we owed him for being kind enough to give us a job. He ran what could have been a fantastic company into the ground and treated people terribly to the last.
Generally speaking I believe in people and I believe that by being kind, working hard and being hungry to learn you can go far – that foundational belief partnered with the experience mentioned above forged the kind of leader I hope I have become – first and foremost a servant leader (for any MBA peeps out there) who gives a shit about his teams and realises his main function is to support the talent around him to do their best work, which in turn drives and progresses the business.
LBB> What experience or moment gave you your biggest lesson in leadership?
Rob> The liquidation mentioned above, not that fact that it was happening so much as the way in which it was handled by the boss.
Ghosting was his plan A, B, C and D - hiding in his big house in Surrey whilst bailiffs came knocking and then hiding on a family holiday in the sun as the staff were assembled in mid December and told there would be no job to come back to after Christmas – and that no wages or redundancy payments would be made.
The titanic lack of consideration for others he demonstrated is my biggest lesson in leadership.
LBB> Did you know you always wanted to take on a leadership role? If so how did you work towards it and if not, when did you start realising that you had it in you?
Rob> No, it’s certainly not something I was aiming for. I was/am a creative at heart so running/leading a business was all learnt on the fly. I suppose I only really realised I had it in me retrospectively, after doing it for a few years.
For me the early days of setting up a business are so electrically exciting and busy that you spend most of your time just doing the work. It’s only when someone wise tells you that you need to work on your business not just in it that you start to step back and realise that you are actually leading and you still have a team and a growing business so you must be doing something right.
LBB> When it comes to 'leadership' as a skill, how much do you think is a natural part of personality, how much can be taught and learned?
Rob> This is nature/nurture by another name. I’d say that you can be taught or learn (most effectively from being led by an amazing leader yourself) to be a better leader but that doesn’t necessarily make you a good leader – that is something that I think comes intuitively and naturally to someone or not.
Having said that I also think that the reverse can be true, few people become naturally inspirational leaders without picking up some learning along the way, whether consciously or subconsciously they have been taught. So, I’m going to sit firmly on the fence and say that it is a balance and the ratios of that balance depend entirely on the type of person you are.
LBB> What are the aspects of leadership that you find most personally challenging? And how do you work through them?
Rob> Managing the perpetual sense of responsibility to your people is challenging. You are ultimately responsible for their performance, their professional wellbeing and their financial stability. I don’t mean to diminish personal responsibility on their part but ultimately the buck stops with you and that is tiring.
Any and all failures and losses are shared between you but I’ve always struggled to feel part of their successes – so you bear the burdens but without getting the feel goods.
I work through this principally by trying my best to be present when things are going well and appreciating that for myself, a little self-acknowledgment of the part I plaid in getting things there and then doubling down on heaping the kudos elsewhere.
LBB> Have you ever felt like you've failed whilst in charge? How did you address the issue and what did you learn from it?
Rob> Absolutely, if anyone in a position of responsibility says that they haven’t then they’re lying. Just because you head up a team of people or a business doesn’t automatically make you infallible.
In instances where I’ve made a mistake or failed somewhere I own that failure, openly and honestly – hold my hands up, apologise if necessary and work out how to move forward together. I 100% believe that you learn more from your failures than you do from your successes.
My learnings from failure are that if you have owned it honestly and then stepped up to correct any damage done then it can actually become a positive thing. Showing openness and vulnerability and importantly fallibility is really important for me as a leader – if I had someone leading me who claimed that they were always right and wouldn’t wear any of their shortcomings or failures I’d be out the door pretty fast.
LBB> In terms of leadership and openness, what’s your approach there? Do you think it’s important to be as transparent as possible in the service of being authentic? Or is there a value in being careful and considered?
Rob> As mentioned above I think humble openness is a key tenet of leadership – without it you can’t have vulnerability which means you won’t have trust. There is also absolutely value in being careful and considered but this shouldn’t ever come at the expense of the truth.
Sometimes lies of omission are useful tools to protect feelings but I find that things end up coming out in the wash eventually anyway so although it may feel kinder initially at least with cold hard truth you know how the land lies.
LBB> As you developed your leadership skills did you have a mentor, if so who were/are they and what have you learned? And on the flip side, do you mentor any aspiring leaders and how do you approach that relationship?
Rob> I’ve not really had a specific mentor. There are certainly inspirational leaders that I’ve met, worked with or for over the years who have informed my approach but nothing as formal as a mentor. That being said, my mum has always been the first person I turn to with leadership questions. She led in multiple roles in education for 30 years and had/has a centrally humanist approach to leading and to people in general.
Another familial inspiration comes from my grandad who was an absolute stickler for fairness – every decision he had to make in his life was guided by what he thought was the fairest outcome (even to the detriment of himself) – though not professional mentors those two have guided me in my leadership journey as much as any mentor would have.
In terms of me mentoring others, this isn’t something that I do currently but I would absolutely do it should something suitable come up – always happy to help or be of use if I can.
LBB> In continually changing market circumstances, how do you cope with the responsibility of leading a team through difficult waters?
Rob> It’s really boring but exercise and ice baths are my coping methods. In order to be present as a leader when things aren’t great you have to ensure that you’ve given yourself the capacity to function by doing whatever it is you do to release the pressure valves. When times are tough your responsibility to lead grows 10-fold so you’ve got to do your upmost for yourself first and foremost in order to be as effective for others as is possible.
LBB> As a leader, what are some of the ways in which you’ve prioritised diversity and inclusion within your workforce?
Rob> The nature of our business is that we maintain a small and agile in-house team and then work which a huge range of freelance talent to supplement. We are committed to representing voices from every walk of life, and facilitating the careers of the most talented individuals, regardless of background.
This is a huge and pressing issue in our industry and one that isn’t going to be solved overnight but to that end, we have initially mandated that we will have crew on our productions made up of at least 50% underrepresented groups. This sometimes has to be managed through positive discrimination when crewing up jobs but we believe that a representative crew, chosen on merit, gives us the best platform to make the most effective and creative work.
When hiring for our in-house teams we remove names/images from any applications we receive so as to create as level a playing field as we possibly can. We also advertise roles in a wide range places and portals in order to reach as wide a demographic as we can.
LBB> How important is your company culture to the success of your business? And how have you managed to keep it alive with increases in remote and hybrid working patterns?
Rob> Tinderflint’s culture has been critical to its success. We are successful because of the people we work with - teams, partners and clients and the people we work with are drawn to us mostly as a result of our culture or failing that due to the work we have been able to create by leveraging that culture.
Being a small team in-house makes culture maintenance relatively easy – the fluid nature of what we do has meant that hybrid working isn’t really new – we’ve always had some teams out on shoot, others in edit and others in meetings or pitches. Although these can be geographically different it doesn’t change the centralising and organising principles of the business. So long as we are coming back together regularly and sharing in discussions, wins and losses the culture won’t diminish.
If our team was ever to grow significantly I can totally see how maintenance would be a much more complex issue but thankfully it’s been pretty seamless for us.
LBB> What are the most useful resources you’ve found to help you along your leadership journey?
Rob> The most useful resources I’ve found are the people around me.
You can pick up gems and easter eggs from friends moaning about their jobs, clients explaining their new hierarchical approval processes, watching a HOD on set and seeing how they work with their team – it’s all about keeping your eyes open and being in a lifelong learning mentality. These are some of the soft skill/adaptive resources that you can use to upskill but there are of course more empirical and academic resources everywhere.
Ted Talks – Simon Sinek always resonates with me and if you’ve never heard Linda Cliatt-Wayman’s talk from 2015 I implore you to watch/listen.
Podcasts/books/audiobooks – depending on your preferred medium there are myriad options here but these are very much down to taste. 'The Five Dysfunctions of a Team' by Patrick Lencioni, 'Leaders Eat Last' by Steven Sinek and 'Extreme Ownership' by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin are all ones I’ve enjoyed.
You can also take the formal route and pursue short courses, D&AD Masterclasses are great for that or even diplomas – I did CMI Level 7. Or if you want to go all out there are a massive range of MBAs out there which can be really effective.
